University Computer Help Desk

Always Test After Setting Up an Email Forward

When you set up an email forward, you should always send a test email to make sure it works as expected. To verify your email forward is working properly, do the following:

1. Set up your email forward. Refer to 1113: Setting up or removing an email forward for your ULID email account.
2. Send a test email to your ilstu.edu address.
3. Log in to to the email account to which you've forwarded your ilstu.edu email.
4. Verify that you received the test message.

Test Gmail From a Different Account

According to the official Gmail support website:

“Finally, if you're sending mail to a mailing list that you subscribe to, those messages will only appear in 'Sent Mail.' This behavior also occurs when sending to an email address that automatically forwards mail back to your Gmail address. To test forwarding addresses or mailing lists, use a different email address to send your message.”

In other words, if you have forwarded your email to a gmail.com address, you should send a test message to your ilstu.edu address from something other than your Gmail account. For example, you could log in to your University email and send a test message to your ilstu.edu address, or you could use a totally different account like a Yahoo account to send the test message to your ilstu.edu address. Either way, your test email should be received in your Gmail account.

Junk Mail Settings Can Cause Problems

Some email providers, especially Hotmail, have aggressive junk mail settings turned on by default. When you forward your university email to another account, the junk mail settings for the destination account may incorrectly mark ilstu.edu email as "junk". Depending on your settings, ilstu.edu email may be moved to a Junk folder, or it may automatically delete ilstu.edu emails.

To verify that ilstu.edu email is not being incorrectly trashed or junked, do the following.

1. Log in to the account where you forwarded your university email. For example, if you forwarded your email to reggie@hotmail.com, log in to Hotmail.
2. Locate your junk mail settings. They might in "Options," "Settings," "Junk Mail Controls," "Spam Controls," "Bulk Mail Settings," or another area.
3. Once you've located your junk mail settings, check to see how they are configured. Your email account should never be configured to automatically delete junk mail. If your email account offers it, you should configure your settings to move junk mail to a Junk folder.
4. Look for an option to put ilstu.edu email on a protected list so ISU emails are never accidentally marked as junk. This may be called a "white list." Sometimes you can add a specific email address or an entire domain to a white list. If possible, add the ilstu.edu domain to your account's white list.
5. When you are done, send a test email to your ilstu.edu address. After a moment, log in to your second account (the one for which you set up the email forward). Verify that you received the test email.