Incoming emails not working on Outlook (while sending is still fine?!?)

[missfliss]

Hello! I've had everything running along perfectly on Outlook and it suddenly has all gone wrong and stopped working. I had a problem last week, called my email provided (Crazy Domains in Australia) and they got me to change some settings and threw an IP address as an incoming mail server in Outlook. It's now back to my normal mail.domainname.com but I am nolonger getting any emails through Outlook when I'm on wifi. It just says it won't connect to my mail server and gives me a 'Outlook cannot find the server. Verify the server information is entered correctly in the Account Settings, and that your DNS settings in the Network pane of System Preferences are correct.' message. The two strange things are that if I jump off WIFI and connect via hotspot to my phone, it will work and download emails but my home wifi, and the other wifi connections I've tried (at the office etc) won't work and through all of this, whether I'm on wifi or phone tethered I can also send emails, just not receive them. I'm guessing it's something I would need to change in my DNS settings or something but I'm far to blonde to work out what that is us graphic designers are generally rubbish at anything IT. Would love to hear any ideas on how to fix this! Thanks

 

[asriznet]

Hello! I've had everything running along perfectly on Outlook and it suddenly has all gone wrong and stopped working. I had a problem last week, called my email provided (Crazy Domains in Australia) and they got me to change some settings and threw an IP address as an incoming mail server in Outlook. It's now back to my normal mail.domainname.com but I am nolonger getting any emails through Outlook when I'm on wifi. It just says it won't connect to my mail server and gives me a 'Outlook cannot find the server. Verify the server information is entered correctly in the Account Settings, and that your DNS settings in the Network pane of System Preferences are correct.' message. The two strange things are that if I jump off WIFI and connect via hotspot to my phone, it will work and download emails but my home wifi, and the other wifi connections I've tried (at the office etc) won't work and through all of this, whether I'm on wifi or phone tethered I can also send emails, just not receive them. I'm guessing it's something I would need to change in my DNS settings or something but I'm far to blonde to work out what that is us graphic designers are generally rubbish at anything IT. Would love to hear any ideas on how to fix this! Thanks

Looks like a DNS issue.

Try using Google Public DNS and see if it works OK.

Go to System Preference -> Network
- Click on Location Dropdown menu on top
- Edit locations
- Click on the + sign to add a new location and name it as "Test" and click Done
- Now select the "Test" location from the Dropdown menu
- Click Advanced
- Select the DNS Tab
- Click on the plus sign and add these 2 DNS servers: 8.8.8.8 , 8.8.4.4
- Click OK and apply
- restart the computer and try again

If the steps above works, that confirms the issue with DNS, it might be just a delay in DNS propagation, you can try in a week or so and switch back to the "Automatic" Location to test. Once it's working again, you may remove the "Test" location.

 

[missfliss]

Looks like a DNS issue.

Try using Google Public DNS and see if it works OK.

Go to System Preference -> Network
- Click on Location Dropdown menu on top
- Edit locations
- Click on the + sign to add a new location and name it as "Test" and click Done
- Now select the "Test" location from the Dropdown menu
- Click Advanced
- Select the DNS Tab
- Click on the plus sign and add these 2 DNS servers: 8.8.8.8 , 8.8.4.4
- Click OK and apply
- restart the computer and try again

If the steps above works, that confirms the issue with DNS, it might be just a delay in DNS propagation, you can try in a week or so and switch back to the "Automatic" Location to test. Once it's working again, you may remove the "Test" location.

Thanks so much for your detailed reply I tried all those steps but it still didn't work alas so mustn't be a DNS issue

 

[asriznet]

Thanks so much for your detailed reply I tried all those steps but it still didn't work alas so mustn't be a DNS issue

- Can you open up Network utility(just search it in spotlight)
- go to the ping tab
- enter your incoming mail server in the address box and hit "ping"

Do the above steps twice: while using wifi and when u're using hotspot.

Do you get different response in the Ping results box?

 

[missfliss]

Thanks for your quick answer I followed those instructions and got two different end answers (one of them is below) on hotspot, on wifi it gave a completely different number. Is this ok?

10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 93.481/212.450/947.776/247.591 ms

----------

And on wifi:

10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 87.140/89.026/98.821/3.303 ms

 

[asriznet]

Thanks for your quick answer I followed those instructions and got two different end answers (one of them is below) on hotspot, on wifi it gave a completely different number. Is this ok?

10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 93.481/212.450/947.776/247.591 ms

----------

And on wifi:

10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 87.140/89.026/98.821/3.303 ms

The numbers below don't mean much, how about the IP address you get in (brackets)? Are they the same numbers?

example:

Ping has started…

PING gmail-imap.l.google.com (74.125.129.109): 56 data bytes

 

[missfliss]

Oops, sorry - out of my depth even with this haha. The other numbers both said 103.254.137.34 on wifi and hotspot.

 

[asriznet]

Oops, sorry - out of my depth even with this haha. The other numbers both said 103.254.137.34 on wifi and hotspot.

I'm assuming that's the same IP address your email provider asked you to put as incoming mail server previously? What happens if you use that same IP address as the incoming mail server, will it be working again on wifi?

 

[missfliss]

Yes it's the same IP address but when I popped it in Outlook just deleted the whole account and all it's folders. Everything's backed up online though. It's so strange, it's completely dissapeared from Outlook all together now.

 

[asriznet]

Yes it's the same IP address but when I popped it in Outlook just deleted the whole account and all it's folders. Everything's backed up online though. It's so strange, it's completely dissapeared from Outlook all together now.

Wow, that is indeed strange. Does the account still shows up in Outlook -> Tools -> Accounts ? If not, that's a major bug that needs to be reported to microsoft for deleting accounts randomly.