Ask Leo!

Why am I getting a delay notification on an email I sent?

Home » EMail » Using Email

Summary: Email can be delayed for many reasons; it's the nature of the email infrastructure. If your message is delayed, your options are limited.

I am trying to send an e-mail to a co-worker and I keep getting the following message:

Delivery Status Notification (Delay)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE.
Delivery to the following recipients has been delayed.

The strange thing is that it is only happening with that specific e-mail address? What does it mean, and why it is happening?

It means exactly what it says: the email you sent hasn't been delivered yet - it's delayed. The mail system will continue to attempt to deliver the email. Eventually it'll either be delivered, or you'll get a fatal error message.

Why? Because.

Seriously, there are many, many reasons that email could be delayed.

If that's a problem for you, then you may be thinking about email the wrong way.

(Portions of this answer are taken from my essay "Email is never urgent. Really." out on TamingEmail.com.)

One thing that many people fail to realize is that email was never meant to be "real time". The entire email infrastructure is built to expect and properly handle delays ranging from minutes to hours to even days. While most of the time email arrives nearly instantaneously, the fact is you can't count on it.

"If you get this 'message has been delayed' warning, there's nothing you can really do."

Email is what's called a "store and forward" system. When you send an email, it's received by a mail server, stored for some period of time, and then forwarded on to the next server in the path to get your email to your recipient. Finally it lands on the recipients mail server, where it's stored until the recipient downloads it (another kind of "forward" to their inbox), or reads it on-line.

Those "periods of time" that a server might hold on to your message before forwarding it are typically very short, but there's really no guarantee that they will be. There could easily be any of a number of legitimate different mail server delays along the path that your email will take to get to your recipient. That's not the system being broken, that's how the system works.

One example might be simply that the recipient's mail server is temporarily off-line. Rather than fail to deliver the email, your mail server simply keeps trying to pass the message along. In some cases it's nice enough to let you know that this is happening by sending you the "Delivery to the following recipients has been delayed." message. Eventually, when the recipient's mail server comes back on line, the delivery succeeds.

A sending server will only try for so long. If I recall correctly, if after 5 days the message cannot be delivered you'll get an error message instead of a warning telling you that the mail didn't make it through.

There are many reasons mail could be delayed. I see it most often when mail servers themselves are overloaded, unstable, or when they have problems with their connectivity to the internet.

If you get this "message has been delayed" warning, there's nothing you can really do. If your message is urgent, you may need to find a way other than email to make contact.

Related:

More articles about: Using Email

Article Useful? Link to it from your own website; just copy/paste this HTML:

Article 11545 | Posted May 30, 2007

Recent Comments

Hi, I have recently been told my people trying to email the above address that it either comes up with a "Delivery Status Notification (Delay)" or "Unable to deliver message to the following recipients, due to being unable to connect successfully to the destination mail server" Delivery Status Notification (Failure). What can I do about this as this has only recently started & I have been using the account for over 5 years with no problems.
The only thing I have done is started to use Norton internet security 2007
Please advise. Thanks in advance Shiraz

Posted by: Shiraz Janjua at July 27, 2007 11:51 AM

Hi, It has nothing to do with NIS. The delay notification and the failed to deliver message are set on the mailserver.

Piet

Posted by: Piet at December 7, 2007 05:37 AM

Post a comment on "Why am I getting a delay notification on an email I sent?":






(Email Address will not be published.)

Remember Me?

By popular demand...
my tip jar
Cuppa Joe
Buy Leo a Latte!

(you may use HTML tags for style)

New!

RSS feed Subscribe to the RSS Feed specifically for comments on this article.

Before commenting, please...

Please wait. Your comment is being processed ...


Ask Your Question:


ask-leo.com
Web

Archives

By Category
By Date

Advertisers

Advertise on Ask Leo!

««   »»

Question? - Ask Leo!
Who is Leo?
Link to Leo!

Terms, Conditions & Privacy