When the receipt doesn't come

Receiving a delivery or read receipt can mean only one thing. But not receiving them can mean a lot of things.

First, it doesn't mean your message wasn't delivered, opened or read.

It just means that your requests weren't fulfilled.

For example, many email servers have anti-spam filters that block them from sending delivery receipts.

So, it is possible that you could receive confirmation that an email was read, but not delivered.

However, there are many more reasons for not receiving a read receipt. Here are some of them: First, when a recipient sees your request, they choose No.

Now, why would someone not want to send you a read receipt?

It could be a privacy issue, maybe they find read receipts annoying, or maybe they want to make a point. Whatever their reasons, you need to be sensitive to how your request for a read receipt will be taken, given the context of your message.

Other reasons may have more to do with configuration than attitude.

For example, a read receipt won't be sent, if a recipient reads the email in the reading pane.

To trigger a read receipt, the message must be marked as read, which occurs when they switch to another message, or actually open the message.

Also, read receipts might be blocked by Outlook.

To choose how Outlook deals with read receipts, click the FILE tab and Options.

Select Mail and go down to the Tracking area.

Here the recipient can choose to Never send a receipt, Always send a receipt or to Ask each time whether to send a read receipt.

Finally, not all email programs support read receipts.

The Outlook Web App does support them. However, a recipient can open the message and read it without even noticing the link to send a receipt.

So, there are many good reasons for not getting a receipt.

Senders also have options for how to deal with them.

Click Options, click Mail, and go down to Tracking.

You can select these check boxes to automatically attach delivery and read receipts to all the outgoing emails.

However, keep in mind that doing so could not only overload your inbox with receipts, but irritate recipients you email frequently.

If you do choose these options, you can select this check box to automatically move receipt email to a different folder after the tracking information is updated, such as Deleted Items.

So, given the variety of server configurations, email apps, and user attitudes, delivery and read receipts will never be able to give you perfect results.

But they can be very useful tools.

For more information, check out the links in the Course Summary.