Quick Solution for Not Receiving External Emails Outlook 2016/ 2013

After installing Exchange 2016, many users reported that the Exchange Server not receiving external emails. In such situation, users are able to send and receive all the emails locally without any issue but Exchange 2016 server will not receive emails from the external email address and create problem while mail is received by the sender.

Let’s look at a real scenario from one of the forums:

“Hi, I have just installed 2016 Exchange server 3 days ago. I am able to send mail to both internal and external mailboxes but I cannot receive external emails at all.  Can anyone please help me?”

Possible causes for Exchange 2016 not receiving external email issue

• Abrupt shut down of PC while Outlook is in use
• Forced reboot of system

Note: If Exchange server is not receiving external email is due to synchronization issue, then know how to fix sync issues in Outlook 2013 or 2016 and extract all Outlook items in a secure manner.

Quick Solution: In order to resolve the above mentioned problem, the initial step is to check the issues occurring with emails that are received. You can easily check it by sending a test mail from any of your random external email accounts to the internal email account. Then, go to Exchange Management Console (EMC) and choose Toolbox. Now, click twice on Message Tracking option which will prompt you a login window. Complete the login process and follow the below explained steps:

• Search for mails which you have received from
• Choose the user
• Type the email address from where the test mail was generated
• Click OK button

Once you received the search results, double-click on it to get the details. If the delivery report shows a failed message, then follow the next instructions:

• Navigate to Start menu and select services.msc, then hit Enter key.
• Under the Services window, find the Microsoft Exchange Transport and right-click on it to select Restart.
• After service is restarted, you need to repeat the external mail test process to fix the issue

Troubleshooting tips to fix Exchange Server not receiving external emails

1. At first set the local DNS server in external DNS lookups: You can find it under services settings and then place the local DNS server IP for external DNS lookups.

2. Restart: Both MS Exchange transport and Front end services need to be restarted.

3. Host file modification: Open the host file of Exchange server 2013 or 2016 and enter below mentioned entries:

• 10.10.10.100         mailserver
• 10.10.10.100         mailserver.yourdomain.com

Hopefully, the above explained methods will help you to resolve the Exchange server not receiving external emails in both Exchange 2016 and 2013 versions. Otherwise, make use of Remo Outlook Repair tool that effectively fixes all types of issues and recovers all Outlook data with utmost ease.