Emails not reaching recipient despite being in "sent" folder"

Patty King 0 Reputation points
2026-09-17T19:14:18.5+00:00

It turns out for the last 2 days, emails that I have sent have not been reaching the recipient despite being shown as sent in my folder. This is happening across all servers....gmail, yahoo, outlook and other hotmail accounts. While microsoft Edge is my primary server, I have also tried sending from my hotmail account using Chrome and Safari with no luck.

Outlook | Web | Outlook.com | Email
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  1. AI answer

    2026-09-17T19:14:34.2033333+00:00

    Because the same problem happens in Outlook.com across multiple browsers and with multiple recipient domains, this points to an Outlook.com account or delivery issue rather than a browser problem.

    Try these checks in order:

    1. Check whether Outlook.com storage is full. If Microsoft cloud storage is full, Outlook.com cannot send or receive email.
    2. Send a very simple test message with no attachment and no signature.
    3. Verify the recipient address carefully for typos.
    4. Reduce the number of recipients if sending to multiple people.
    5. If the message has an attachment, make sure it is under 25 MB.
    6. Remove the email signature temporarily and send again, since signatures can sometimes affect sending.
    7. Add the recipients to Contacts in Outlook.com.
    8. If the account password was changed recently, update it and check whether the account was temporarily blocked because of unusual sign-in activity.
    9. If a non-delivery receipt appears, use the reason in that message to narrow the cause. Common causes listed for Outlook.com include invalid address, recipient mailbox full, recipient server issues, or spam filtering on the recipient side.

    Since messages appear in Sent Items but are not arriving and this is happening to Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and Hotmail recipients, the next useful isolation step is:

    • Send a plain test message to another Outlook.com account and one external address.
    • Check whether any recipient gets it.
    • Check whether any bounce-back or non-delivery report is returned.

    If no one receives the messages and there is no non-delivery report, use Outlook.com support from the Help menu in Outlook.com.

    AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

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  2. Hendrix-V 19,130 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-09-18T06:18:20.6766667+00:00

    Hi Patty King,

    Based on what you've described, the key detail is that messages are appearing in Sent Items but are not arriving at recipients across multiple email providers and browsers. This suggests the emails are leaving the Outlook.com interface successfully, but the delivery process may be encountering an issue after sending.

    To help narrow this down, please try the following checks:

    1. Send a new test email containing only a short subject and a few words of text (no attachments, images, or links).
    2. Send the test to both:
      • Another Outlook.com address
      • A non-Microsoft address (such as Gmail)
    3. Check whether either recipient receives the message and whether any delivery failure notification is returned.

    If neither recipient receives the test message and no non-delivery report is generated, it may be helpful to review your Outlook.com account status and contact Outlook support through the Help option in Outlook.com for additional investigation.

    Please note that this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators, contributors including external Microsoft employees cannot directly intervene in Microsoft product features or access back-end systems. Our role is limited to providing technical guidance on reported issues, requests, or ideas.

    Feel free to ask me by clicking "Add Comment" or "Add Answer" if you cannot add comment so your response will be visible. Thanks for your effort.

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

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