Why my Hotmail Cannot receive Email

**Why My Hotmail Can't Receive Email: Some Common Reasons And Solutions**

When your Hotmail account fails to receive incoming emails, you might feel frustrated and unclear. There are plenty of reasons behind this situation, but most can be solved with simple troubleshooting. Continue reading for a comprehensive guide and learn why it's happening with your Hotmail and how to fix the problem.

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1. **Your Mailbox is Full or Has Reached Its Storage Limit**

One of the most common reasons why you’re not receiving emails in Hotmail is that your inbox has reached its storage limit. Hotmail offers a limited amount of storage for free accounts. When your inbox is full, new emails won’t be delivered.

**How to fix:**

- **Delete unnecessary emails**: Remove old emails, especially those with large attachments, to free up space.

- **Empty Junk and Deleted Folders**: These folders can contain enormous amounts of emails, which may occupy much space in your storage.

2. **Email Filters and Folders

Hotmail provides the feature of email filters to automatically sort incoming messages into folders. Sometimes, an email may get mistakenly sent to another folder, so it doesn't appear in your inbox.

**How to fix:**

- **Check your Spam/Junk Folder**: Sometimes legitimate emails end up here.

- **Check your Clutter Folder**: This folder sorts less important messages.

- **Review your filters and rules**: Make sure your filters are not sending important emails astray. Go to **Settings** > **Mail** > **Rules**.

3. **Blocked Senders**

If you have inadvertently blocked an email address or domain, you will not receive messages from those senders.

**How to fix:**

- **Check your Blocked Senders List**: Go to **Settings** > **Mail** > **Blocked Senders**, and check to see if you've accidentally blocked anyone.

- **Unblock senders**: If you find any blocked addresses that you want to receive emails from, unblock them.

4. **Forwarding Issues

Hotmail allows you to forward emails to another account. If forwarding has been set up incorrectly, you will not be receiving all of your emails in your Hotmail account.

**Solution:**

- **Verify your forwarding settings**: Go to **Settings** > **Mail** > **Forwarding** to make sure that emails aren't being forwarded to another account without your knowledge.

5. **Temporary Email Server Issues

Sometimes, the issue isn't on your end. Hotmail's email servers can go down or be slow, which might prevent you from receiving emails.

**How to fix:**

- **Check server status**: Head over to Microsoft's [Office Status page](https://status.office.com) to see if there is a problem with Hotmail or Outlook.

6. **Account Security Issues

In case of suspicious activity on your account, Microsoft might temporarily suspend or limit your email account to prevent receiving emails for security reasons.

**How to fix:**

- **Check your inbox for alerts**: Look for any messages from Microsoft about your account status.

- **Follow recovery instructions**: If your account is locked, follow the recovery steps provided by Microsoft.

7. **Email Size Limits**

Hotmail has a limit on the size of incoming emails. If an email exceeds the maximum size, it won't be delivered to your inbox.

**How to fix:**

- **Ask the sender to reduce the email size**: Emails over 25 MB cannot be received.

Use cloud storage: Recommend the sender to upload large attachments in a cloud service and send a link across instead.

Conclusion

In most cases, this will be resolved with a few quick checks in the inbox for storage, checking filters and blocked senders, and verifying that the account is in good standing. However, if the issue still persists, then you can seek further support from Microsoft Support.

If you're encountering receiving issues related to Hotmail (now Outlook), here are some FAQs and answers that could assist in troubleshooting:

1. How do I find out if my inbox is full?**

If your inbox is full, Hotmail won’t be able to accept new emails. Get back to your inbox and check whether it has reached the storage limit. Delete or move out old emails, where necessary.

2. How do I find missing emails in my Junk/Spam folder?**

- Open your **Junk Email** folder and see if any important emails have been mistakenly classified as spam.

- If you see are any important emails in Junk, select them, and then click **Not Junk** in order to prevent this from happening in the future.

3. How do I check if there are any filters or rules established under my account?**

- Go to **Settings** > **View all Outlook settings** > **Mail** > **Rules**.

- Be on the lookout for rules redirecting messages to different folders. Deleting/modifying any rules might fix the problem.

4. How can I fix email delivery problems caused due to server issues?**

- Sometimes Hotmail can be down for maintenance or delayed. You may want to check Microsoft's [Outlook status page](https://status.live.com/) for current service issues.

5. What do I do if I fail to receive emails on the client-side (e.g. Outlook or mobile app)?**

- Make sure that your account settings on all email clients are configured correctly.

- Make sure that your internet connection is up and active on the device.

- Attempt to check your Hotmail account on a web-based browser. See if the problem persists.