Why can't I send or receive emails?
If you’re having trouble sending or receiving emails on your phone or device, find out how you can solve them with our troubleshooting tips.
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Quick check
If you're having trouble sending or receiving emails on your phone or device:
- Do you have an internet connection? Check for outages
- Do you have the correct username and password? Recover your username or reset your password.
Troubleshoot your email issues in My Telstra
Most email issues can be checked and fixed in My Telstra. It works with most common mail apps, including Apple Mail, Outlook and Windows Mail.
In My Telstra:
- Go to Help ?
- Select your Email service
- Go to Test and troubleshoot and follow the prompts.
If you don’t use My Telstra, try these manual checks
- Server settings - make sure you have the correct incoming and outgoing server settings IMAP, POP and SMTP mail server settings
- Suspended email account – your Telstra Mail account may be suspended, find out Why is my Telstra Mail suspended?
- Attachments too big or Telstra Mail storage full – check if you’ve gone over the 10GB storage limit Telstra Mail allows for emails, contacts and attachments. Check your storage
- Junk folder – check if your emails have been mistakenly sent to your Junk folder
- Filtering and Forwarding rules – check your mail settings to ensure your emails aren’t being filtered or forwarded. See How do I forward my Telstra emails to another address?
- Spam settings and blocking – check your spam settings. Make sure you haven’t blocked the domains you want to receive emails from. See How can I reduce spam email?
- Web browser – clear your internet browser’s cache and cookies. Check your web browser’s support site for instructions.
Frequently asked questions
If your email is bouncing back with the error message “Reference: 451-4.5.3. OB315 Unauthenticated traffic limit met”, find steps in Learn how to fix an unauthenticated traffic limit error.
If you’re sending emails but they’re not appearing in your Sent emails folder, your Telstra Mail account may not be set up to save them.
Sign in to Telstra Mail in your browser and follow these steps:
- Select Settings
- Select Mail
- Make sure the ‘Save sent messages’ box is ticked
- Select Save.
If that doesn’t work:
- Check your settings to see if you have any rules to automatically move or delete messages:
- Go to Settings, click on Mail and then Organise inbox
- Delete any Move or delete rules you have created.
- Check Drafts and Outbox, in case your message has not completed sending. It will not appear in your sent folder until it’s gone from either of these folders.
You can have your Telstra Mail emails forwarded to another email address automatically.
Sign in to My Telstra in a browser and follow these steps:
- Go to Settings
- Select Mail and then Auto-forward
- Tick Enable Auto-forward
- Enter in the full email address where you want emails to be sent in the Destination field. To specify several email addresses, separate each one with a comma
- Keep a copy in your inbox will be ticked by default. Untick this if you do not require copies to be kept
- Select Save.
The use of a virtual private network (VPN) may affect your ability to access, send or receive emails. There’s a chance the IP address it assigns you may be on our block list.
Check if your VPN is active during email use. If it is, turn it off and try sending or receiving your emails. If your email now works, the inability to access your emails was because of your VPN.
Yes, if your mail loads correctly when your security software is disabled, you may need to add Telstra.com.au to a whitelist. Contact your software’s customer support for help.
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