This hardly surprises me as I regularly get 5 day old voicemails and text messages on my mobile phone, but I think it's the first time it's happened on email.

I sent a large picture attachment about December and after asking whether it had arrived and it hadn't, forgot about it, as occasionally emails do vanish.
I just heard it arrived last week, dated that day. Does that mean emails can sit on the server and then be sent when it notices them, and stamps them with the date it was seen, as that's what it appears to have done. I also know sometimes large attachments can be returned or jam the system, but I've never seen one hang about for months before it gets through. It wasn't in my drafts or outbox either, which has happened a few times when I tried to send something and my own computer chose not to send it for a while, but this had already been deleted from my sent items so had clearly left my end back then. Has this happened to anyone else?

I too have had feedback about e-mails sent not arriving at the recipients inbox. Perhaps the ISP's e-mail server was having one of its frequent problems at the time (I expect we are still on the same one?). I tend not to rely on the service for sending e-mails if it seems to be running slow when I check the server for incoming e-mails. I've got a Yahoo mail option I can use instead.

Just a bit of musing... Data is transmitted across the Internet in separate lumps called 'packets'. The packets share the cyber-highway with many other people who are also transmitting packets. The separate packets may not take the most direct (or the same) route around the world or country. I expect data gets queued and balanced to a degree since cyberlines only have so much capacity (bandwidth capability). The larger the file, the more packets there are to make their own various ways to the destination. I wouldn't think this could account for a delay of that length of time though! ...a number of hours maybe with all being well. However, a glitch anywhere in the system could result in a packet not arriving. If that happened, the e-mail could not be reassembled for download.

Maybe in this case, somebody somewhere in the world mended a long-standing fault in a bit of equipment that your e-mail (or part of it) had got stuck in. It might have been sitting on some distant dead storage disk for all that time, with an engineer waiting for the bits to arrive . Just trying to say that it may not have been our ISP's mail server at fault. ...Or perhaps a techie, at our ISP or elsewhere, opened a virtual cyber-cupboard door and said to his mate "Corr! I didn't know this lot of e-mails had got stuck in here". A wire got put in the right place and data went on its merry way.

Telly, what if the late arrival email has a sent day of say 3 March 2005 and the sender said the mail was sent in December? If that were thc case, wouldn't the mail that was just recently received have the sent date as a December 2004 one, as opposed to a March 2005 one?

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Agnes (JTJ)

A friend of my mother's sent my mom something on January 12. My mom did not receive it until April 12, with a January 12 timestamp. She had the same question, why did it sit in cyberspace for three months? Personally, I think it is odd for that to happen, and I had told her that it was not a normal thing.

So then Dave, if it the mail was supposed to be sent in December of 2004, regardless of when it arrived at it said destination, it would still have the original date that it was sent?

Thought that is what would happen.


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Agnes (JTJ)

I've had a few myself like this, most recently last month. It would definitely have a date stamp on it from the time it was sent.

Thanks SG!



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Agnes (JTJ)

What I expected was it had hung about in my outbox for months before being sent, which would have caused the current timestamp, as some larger attachments don't agree with certain ISPs and get bounced back only to go through at a later date from my end. But as it had not only left the outbox, but had long since been deleted from sent items, then it couldn't have been held up at my end, otherwise I'd have it as a sent item from last week, which I haven't. I just think I've managed to create a new fault on the internet, that sort of thing doesn't surprise me really...

Could be that you thought you sent it in December and realised that it never was sent and decided to sent it anyway. Sometimes these things happen. But, if it had indeed been sent in December of 2004, regardless of if it arrived to the receipent in March, April, May or even September of 2005, it would still show the original date sent as December 2004, not the date that it finally arrived.



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Agnes (JTJ)

I can't explain the timestamp part but if you really get into how data get transmitted around the Internet is does get very deep and involved. Maybe there is a reason for it somewhere. I wonder if it just us Brits using the same ISP's mail servers who experience this trouble. If so, would any anomaly be that surprising? They do seem to get alot of e-mail problems.

At the risk of being facetious, I'd just like to say that this reminds of something that happened to friend of mine in the U.S. A correctly addressed and correctly stamped internal, *snail mail* letter took just over three months to reach her. When it arrived the postmarks revealed that during those three months the letter had gone via _Cuba_ of all unlikely places! That really takes some beating!