At IU, why am I receiving only some of my email, and where is the rest?

Several different issues may affect your email delivery at Indiana University, depending on your account and specific circumstances.

On this page:

• Over quota
• Preferred address or mail forwarding loop
• Messages with blocked attachments
• Multiple accounts
• Exchange users
• Unix systems
• Bandwidth limits

Over quota

The most likely reason you're having trouble receiving email is that you have exceeded your email account quota. For help correcting over-quota problems, refer to the appropriate Knowledge Base document below:

• If you use the Cyrus mail system (e.g., through IU Webmail), see On my Cyrus mail account, what should I do when I go over quota?
  
  
• If you use Microsoft Outlook to access your Exchange mailbox, see In Microsoft Outlook 2000 and earlier for Windows, how do I fix an "exceeding limit" or "size limit" error?

Preferred address or mail forwarding loop

Email messages that are addressed to your IU email address (e.g.,  username@indiana.edu ), and email messages sent from on campus addressed to your username only, are automatically sent to your preferred address, as registered with the Account Management Service (AMS).

If your preferred email address is not correctly listed in your campus's address database, you will not receive mail, for example:

• You may have inadvertently caused a mail forwarding loop by setting your preferred email address in such a way that there is no final destination for email sent to you.

  Note: A mail forwarding loop is very likely if those who are trying to send you email get bounce-back messages mentioning an "excessive recursion".

• Problems in the database can occur if you encountered an error while using the AMS to create your accounts, or if you left the university temporarily and had to have your accounts re-enabled.

To fix these problems, make sure you have registered your preferred email address properly. For more information, see:

• At IU, how do I register my preferred email address?
• At IU, how do I forward my email?

Note: The preferred address database is updated overnight, so if you just got your email account today, your preferred address won't be listed in the database until tomorrow.

Messages with blocked attachments

UITS maintains mail filters that block attachments that commonly contain viruses, or that are protected or contain protected content. This blocking behavior varies, depending on the attachment's origin, so it is sometimes possible to receive messages with these types of attachments. For information, see At IU, what types of attachments are blocked from my email account?

Multiple accounts

It is possible that you have multiple email accounts, and don't have your mail forwarding set correctly. In this case, messages are going to separate accounts, or being forwarded from one account to another and back again, in an endless loop. Make sure you specify your preferred email address in the AMS and check what accounts you have. Visit:

Click Manage my IU computing accounts. Enter your Network ID username and passphrase, and click Continue. Then follow these steps:

• To register your preferred address, click manage your email, and then, on the next page, click forward your email. The next screen will display your current preferred email address, and give you the option of selecting a different address where you would like to receive your IU email.
  
  
• To see a list of your current university computer accounts, click view your accounts. You can then log into each account you see listed and check to see if mail is going there.

If you have trouble logging into any of your accounts, try resetting your passphrase using the Passphrase Maintenance utility at:

If you don't want to check the mailbox on each account regularly, you need to set the forwarding on each account so that new mail will be sent to your preferred address. The steps to set forwarding are different on different accounts; for complete instructions, see At IU, how do I forward my email?

The AMS doesn't list any departmental accounts you might have. If you think email might be going to an account on a departmental server, contact your computing support provider for help in locating the account and forwarding the email to your preferred address.

Note: If you have accounts you no longer use, you should consider removing them. To do so, send your request via email to  valid@indiana.edu  (at IU Bloomington, IU South Bend, IU Northwest, and IU East) or  actadmin@iupui.edu  (at IUPUI, IUPU Columbus, IU Kokomo, and IU Southeast).

Exchange users

If you have an Exchange account, when other Exchange users send mail to your real name, your username, or your preferred email address, it will always arrive in your Exchange mailbox. This happens even if you have your preferred email address listed for another system. To avoid this problem, you must set a forward rule on the Exchange server. For more information, see In Microsoft Outlook 2000 and later for Windows, how do I automatically forward all of my mail to another address?

Note: Forward rules on the Exchange server can sometimes fail, so it's a good idea to check your Exchange mailbox from time to time even if you have a forward rule set up.

Unix systems

With most Unix mail programs, when you send mail to an email address that consists only of a username (i.e., dvader as opposed to  dvader@indiana.edu  or  dvader@iupui.edu ), the mail will be sent to a user on the same system, bypassing the user's preferred address settings. If the user doesn't have an account on the system, the message will go undelivered and you will receive an error message. If the user has an account on the system but has not set a forward on it, the mail will go unnoticed until the user checks mail on the system.

To avoid this situation, set a forward for all your computer accounts at which you can receive mail. For instructions, see How do I forward my mail from a Unix account?

Bandwidth limits

One of the ways IU protects its email system from huge volumes of spam is by limiting each host to sending only several hundred messages per minute. If someone is trying to send email to you from a non-IU host that has exceeded its message limit, that email may very likely not get through to you.

As the volume of spam on the Internet continues to increase, servers belonging to some popular email hosts are sending IU thousands of messages per minute, with the vast majority of them being undeliverable (i.e., from domains that don't exist). These hosts rapidly exceed their bandwidth thresholds with illegitimate mail, to the detriment of their customers who are trying to send legitimate mail to IU users.

The architecture of IU email systems separates internal university mail flow from the rest of the Internet, providing a layer of protection that allows IU email to flow reliably between its students, faculty, and staff members. For this reason, it is expected that all official university email is sent via the IU system, and not through external, non-IU hosts. For more information, see At IU, what is the policy about official communications from the university to students?

For further information about how IU is fighting spam, see What does IU do to protect users from spam and virus-infected email?

Also see:

• At IU, with my mail forwarding set to my Hotmail account, why am I not receiving all of my messages?
• At IU, how do I forward my email?