VCU Technology Services

Trace Messages

If you are sending messages to someone, and he or she claims that the messages are not being received, you must confirm that the e-mail address you are using is correct. You can also attempt to verify the address in Notes using what is known as a Trace.

Overview of Trace messages

In the event you end up with a delivery failure for something that you think should be a valid address, or in the event someone claims they are not receiving your mail, you can send a trace to the address in question to get some additional info. The following uses a fictitious student named Rob Krull, with an address of s2rkrullr@vcu.edu, as an example of this. Please note that not all servers will return all of the information presented below.

To send a trace, prepare a message to the suspect e-mail address, then click the Delivery Options button.

On the Basic tab, click the dropdown beside Delivery Report and select Trace entire path, and put a check in Return Receipt.



Click OK, then send the message. The message itself can be blank. (Note that you may never actually receive a Return Receipt for this message, since some servers do not support return receipts, and many e-mail applications can be configured to refuse to return them.)

When you trace an entire path, you will start receiving several items of mail back from the servers. In the case of Rob Krull, I received 3 messages from the routers. The first was simply an acknowledgement that the message went out through the Notes servers and was received by the VCU redirector:



Then I get another confirmation report. This one claims to have had successful delivery notification to s2rkrullr@vcu.edu, which means that the address should be valid.



Then I receive a Delivery Failure Report, showing me that s2rkrullr@vcu.edu is forwarding to krullman@gateway.net, and there is no krullman account on gateway.net's servers. So Rob is going to have to change his forwarding address, since no e-mail I send to s2rkrullr@vcu.edu will ever reach him.