---
title: Email FAQs and troubleshooting notification emails
description: Logs and diagnostics are provided to help determine whether notification emails are being sent and received successfully, what any issues are, and who receives the email.
locale: en-US
canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/platform-administration/troubleshooting-notification-emails.html
release: australia
topic_type: concept
last_updated: "2026-03-12"
reading_time_minutes: 5
keywords: [support-video]
breadcrumb: [Email and SMS notifications, System notifications, Notifications, Configure core features, Administer the ServiceNow AI Platform]
---

# Email FAQs and troubleshooting notification emails

Logs and diagnostics are provided to help determine whether notification emails are being sent and received successfully, what any issues are, and who receives the email.

Diagnostics help monitor the overall health of the system and troubleshoot general problems, such as not receiving any incoming mail. Logs help identify problems with individual emails, and different logs are useful for diagnosing different types of problems.

## Log checking scenarios

<table id="table_wfc_dfh_2gb"><thead><tr><th>

Problem

</th><th>

Log

</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>

Need to check whether an individual notification email was successfully sent

</td><td>

Check the **Sent** System Mailbox for that email. Also check the **Failed** System Mailbox for failure notifications.

</td></tr><tr><td>

Individual email failed

</td><td>

-   Check the message log of the individual email.
-   Check the **Error string** field of the email record.

**Warning:** Some email servers do not return error strings


</td></tr><tr><td>

Email not received by end user

</td><td>

-   Check the **Junk** System Mailbox for notifications about returned emails. These emails also appear in the Emails log with a **Type** of received-ignored.
-   Check the **Error string** field of the email record.

**Warning:** Some email servers do not return error strings

-   Check the message log of the individual email for the reasons different recipients were included or excluded.

</td></tr></tbody>
</table>## Email FAQs

## Troubleshooting resources

See the following resources on troubleshooting inbound and outbound email problems.

<table id="table_rhh_2tr_n4"><thead><tr><th>

Error or symptom

</th><th>

Solution

</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>

Inbound Email FAQ

</td><td>

See [KB0957760](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0957760).

</td></tr><tr><td>

Instance not receiving inbound email

</td><td>

See Inbound email troubleshooting, ServiceNow [KB0524472](https://support.servicenow.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0524472) and [KB0520595](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0520595). These KB articles also provide links to a video series on troubleshooting inbound emails.

</td></tr><tr><td>

Instance not sending outbound email

</td><td>

See Troubleshooting Outbound email, ServiceNow [KB0521382](https://support.servicenow.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0521382). This KB article also provides links to a video series on troubleshooting outbound emails.

</td></tr><tr><td>

Email from Outlook produces an empty Incident record containing an attachment named winmail.dat.

</td><td>

Configure the local Outlook client or Exchange server not to send Rich Text formatted \(RTF\) data to the instance.

</td></tr><tr><td>

Emails are getting set to type send-ignored for no obvious reason

</td><td>

See [KB0790932](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0790932).

</td></tr><tr><td>

Duplicate emails generated by the instance

</td><td>

See Troubleshooting duplicate emails generated by the instance, [KB0529413](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0529413).

</td></tr><tr><td>

SMTP Sender Job Stuck

</td><td>

See SMTP Sender Job Stuck &gt; 30 Mins alert, [KB0755061](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0755061).

</td></tr><tr><td>

Connection to smtp.office365.com failed

</td><td>

See [KB0825391](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0825391).

</td></tr><tr><td>

IMAP with OAuth error AUTHENTICATE failed

</td><td>

See [KB0963959](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0963959).

</td></tr><tr><td>

Error connecting the POP email account on secure port

</td><td>

See [KB0829289](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0829289).

</td></tr><tr><td>

Inbound email processing is stuck alerts

</td><td>

See [KB0855277](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0855277).

</td></tr><tr><td>

Email Reader / SMTP Sender job stuck

</td><td>

See [KB0679998](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0679998).

</td></tr><tr><td>

Email Reader Job stuck/running for more than 2 hours alerts

</td><td>

See [KB0755063](https://support.servicenow.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fkb%3Fid%3Dkb_article_view%26sysparm_article%3DKB0755063).

</td></tr><tr><td>

SMTP retries

</td><td>

The SMTPSender job is responsible for sending emails from the instance and at times there can be delivery failures during transmission.

 Emails that aren't successfully delivered might need retries. Exponential back-off retries is a mechanism to redeliver them in the interval \(1, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 120, 120\) between the retries. The exponential retries continue until the lookback period mentioned in the **glide.email.smtp.claim.lookback.hrs** system property is lapsed.

 The retries are attempted for 4xx status codes and for all other status codes such as 5xx are considered as permanent failure. The **glide.smtp.fail\_message\_ids** and **glide.smtp.defer\_retry\_ids** system properties aren't considered.

 Retried emails type is set to **send-retry-backoff**.

</td></tr></tbody>
</table>## Exponential back-off retries

Emails that aren't successfully delivered might need retries. Exponential back-off retries is a mechanism to redeliver them in the interval \(1, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 120, 120\) between the retries. The exponential retries continue until the lookback period mentioned in the **glide.email.smtp.claim.lookback.hrs** system property is lapsed.

The retries are attempted for 4xx status codes and fail for 5xx status codes during the email delivery. The **glide.smtp.fail\_message\_ids** and **glide.smtp.defer\_retry\_ids** system properties aren't considered.

Retried emails type is set to **send-retry-backoff**.

**Note:** Address validation errors that occur during the email delivery are handled differently. The type of email record is set to **send-retry-delayed** and the email delivery is retried in fixed intervals of 30 minutes until the lookback period is lapsed.

-   **[Email diagnostics](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/platform-administration/r_MailDiagnostics.md)**  
The Diagnostics and Connection page provides information on the current state of your email configuration. This page includes status on email properties, scheduled jobs, and email account connections that affect how your instance receives and sends email.
-   **[System email log and mailboxes](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/platform-administration/r_EmailLogs.md)**  
The system email log records all emails that the instance creates or receives. System mailboxes are filtered views of this log.
-   **[Message logs for individual emails](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/platform-administration/message-logs-individual-emails.md)**  
The email log entries for an individual notification email are accessible as a related list in the email record. The **Error string** field in the email record can provide additional information.

**Parent Topic:**[Email and SMS notifications](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/platform-administration/c_EmailNotifications.md)

**Related topics**  


[Create notification categories]()

[Create an email notification]()

[Email notifications dashboard]()

[Email diagnostics dashboard]()

[Email templates]()

[Email layouts]()

[Email retention]()

[Watermarks on notification emails]()

[Parse an email thread]()

[Email digests]()

[Domain separation and Notifications]()