Mail taking hours to send - no delay requested

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Level 1

9 points

Mail taking hours to send - no delay requested

Not sure if this is a problem inherent in Ventura 13.2.1 or an iCloud problem, but some of the emails I send are taking hours to reach the recipient, even though they immediately show in my Sent folder. When I resend the same email some time later, the recipient receives it and the original email within minutes of each other. I have never requested a "Send Delay" on any of these emails -- they are being delayed at random. In Settings, my "Send Delay" was on the auto setting of 10 seconds; I have just turned it off altogether. The delays I'm experiencing are way longer than 10 seconds. however. Any other advice? Is there a way to see if a message I think I've sent is just hanging out in the ether?

MacBook Air (M1, 2020)

Posted on Mar 13, 2023 5:28 AM

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Answer 1

Owl-53

Level 10

100,801 points

Mar 13, 2023 8:28 AM in response to rachkate

Building on the good advice from previous Contributor

Check with the Recipient if their E-mail Client is set to Auto Check for New Messages or perhaps they have it set to Manually check for new messages

I know my wife's Windows 10 e-mail Client is set to Manual

Check the Apple Status Board for Outages

Apple - Support - System Status

EDITED

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Answer 2

Mar 13, 2023 8:19 AM in response to rachkate

Email is not instant messaging. Email has no time of delivery associated with it or in the email protocol. Once the email leaves your client it passes through any number of relay servers to reach its destination. Any one of these relay servers could be experiencing speed issues for any of many possible reasons.

Maybe your second email was routed over different servers or networks which were not having any issues or were just faster.

To see if an email "is just hanging out in the ether", contact the recipient of the email and ask if they received it.

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Answer 3

rachkate Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 13, 2023 8:24 AM in response to BobTheFisherman

I do understand the process, but this problem has never arisen as consistently as it has in the last 6-8 weeks, which leads me to believe there is something else going on.

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Mail taking hours to send - no delay requested

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