Step 1: Using Email Addresses

Email addresses look like xxxx@yyyyy.zzz where xxxx is a username and yyyyy.zzz is a domain name. These names are often all lower-case. This works well for computer systems, but when people try to write them down by hand, errors can easily happen. You may even write down an email address and later have trouble reading your own writing.

Step 2: Getting the Wrong Address

When you send an email to the wrong address, Eudora will attempt to send it anyway. You probably won't find out you've made an error until the next time you check your email. Usually if the address was wrong you'll get a "no such user" message from the destination server. This is called bouncing.

Step 3: Avoid Mistyped Addresses

You can avoid addressing problems by using easily recognized names or words in your own email address, and by giving someone a business card rather than depending on hand-written notes. Eudora's address book will help also, by allowing you to send to an address like "Aunt Fay" instead of fay21@aol.com which could be difficult for a person to remember correctly every time.

Step 4: Getting an Outdated Address

Email addresses that were good in the past may not be valid today. Even if you have sent email successfully to someone at a certain address, and you're using your address book so you know there's no typing error, your mail may still bounce because the email account has been closed. This usually happens because the recipient has changed to another ISP and you're trying to send mail to the old one.

Step 5: Sending to a Broken Server

Another cause of a good email address going bad is the broken mail server. All computers have some downtime, and when an incoming mail server goes down, any messages sent to it may become lost or bounce. A server disruption affects many users, so servers are usually repaired quickly after they break.

Step 6: Trying Again

When you receive a message that a message you sent has bounced, read it carefully for clues to the problem. If it says you sent to an "unknown user," check the address and try it again. If it says "mail box full," you might try notifying the person by phone before retrying. In either case, you might try sending to an alternate email address (the person's home, school, office, etc.) if available.