My email channel shows no incoming mail — why?
Short answer
Grey means no email arrived in the last four weeks. That is not a fault: a rare newsletter sits on grey most of the time. Check the subscription, the address and the confirmation mail.
Details
An email channel is not fetched. It has an inbound address and waits until something arrives there. That is why its status does not say “reachable” but “something arrived”:
| Display | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green check | At least one email arrived within the last four weeks |
| Grey clock, No email has been received in the last 4 weeks. | Something arrived once, but more than four weeks ago |
| Grey clock, No email has been received yet. | Nothing has arrived since it was created |
If an email has ever arrived, the tooltip names the time under Last email received. That is the quickest way to see whether the channel ever worked.
If nothing has ever arrived
Then the subscription is not complete. The most common causes, in this order:
- The confirmation mail was never confirmed. Many providers send a mail with a confirmation link after sign-up. It lands at the Picasi address, and nobody clicks there. Sign the newsletter up with your own address instead, confirm it there, and then set up a forward to the Picasi address.
- The address was taken down wrongly. The inbound address is the source’s ID followed by
@picasimail.com. Copy it from the channel list instead of typing it out. - The provider does not accept the address. Some newsletter forms reject unknown domains. Then the only way left is a forward from your own mailbox.
If something arrived before and no longer does
- The newsletter appears rarely. A quarterly letter sits on grey two months out of three. Look at the time in the tooltip and compare it with the publishing rhythm.
- The subscription has expired or was cancelled. Some providers end subscriptions that went unopened for a long time. Picasi opens nothing, so that hits email channels more often.
- The forward no longer catches. If you forward from your mailbox, check the rule there: a changed subject or sender can make it run into nothing.
Related topics
Can Picasi receive email newsletters directly? How the inbound address comes about and how you enter it.
Source states The states of fetched channels and the receiving status for email.