Email Problems

When an order is processed for Manifold System by the Online Store the serial number for that license will be sent out by email to the email address given in the order. The Online Store sends out the email right away, with no delay, operating 24 hours per day and 365 days per year.

Most locations worldwide will have received the email within a few minutes or possibly a few tens of minutes if your email client is not configured to check for new mail more frequently. Some remote locations may require longer, an hour or so. If you have not received your serial number by email from sales@manifold.net within that time span check your spam folders and then check your email system for errors.

DO THIS FIRST: Check your junk email folders and then make sure your email address is operational by sending and receiving mail back and forth with some other email address.

A QUICK SOLUTION: Use a Google gmail.com or googlemail.com email address. Gmail accounts using default Google settings that are accessed through Google's standard browser interface have no problem receiving Manifold emails. If your regular email account doesn't receive Manifold emails it is often easier just to tell Manifold to send your serial number email to a gmail account than it is to figure out exactly what is going on in the anti-spam software you are using or what your IT group or your ISP is doing to your inbound emails without telling you. Important: Use a gmail account with default settings accessed through Google's standard browser interface. If you do tricky things like adding extra filtering or reading your gmail account through Outlook or some other email account you lose the benefit of having a "known good" gmail setup.

To instruct Manifold to use a different email account simply write to sales@manifold.net from the email account you specified for the order (that way we know it is you) with a message such as "Hi, I didn't receive my serial number email. Please switch my email address of record to my gmail account [...] and resend the serial number. Thanks!" Your email address of record will then be changed from the one originally specified to the gmail account you specify. Once you tell Manifold to switch your email address to a gmail or any other account, you must thereafter use that account for all contacts regarding that licence or order, for example, tech support or any other contact.

TYPICAL PROBLEMS IN EMAIL SYSTEMS: If you want to take a stab at figuring out why your email system is rejecting Manifold emails, following is a list of possibilities to consider. Some of these (such as not remembering to check a particular inbox) might not apply to you. They are included in the list anyway to make sure it covers all the usual possibilities.

IMPORTANT: The information and advice in this page is provided as courtesy to users. Manifold does not provide free support for debugging email reception problems. If the information and advice on this page do not help, the simple, free solution is to use a web-based email account such as gmail.

You will have to have significant technical skills as well as administrative access to check all of these items. Do not assume that something which is not understood or which cannot be checked is not the problem, and do not assume that an item on the list below is OK without actually checking it. The problem is almost always an item that has not been checked. For example, do not assume your ISP is not filtering inbound emails. Actually track down someone at the ISP who really knows whether they are or are not. If you need technical or admin help to check a possibility and your IT group resists or wants Manifold to help them for free it is quicker not to argue with them but to just bypass them and use a gmail account.

Please check the following items carefully even if you are sure your email system is perfect.

• Your spam filter put the email in a junk email folder or in a deleted folder. Check your junk email folders and your deleted email folders.
• A nonexistent email address (typographical error or otherwise invalid email address) was supplied with your order. Please double-check the email address you provide for your order to be sure it is the email address you are using and has been correctly entered.
• There is a problem with the email address and it is not working correctly. Visit Bing or Google and search for "how to test an email address" or "test email address" or similar. That will give you many links for email testers and verifiers that will send you a message to test your email address. TEST THE EMAIL ADDRESS that you gave for your Manifold order. If it doesn't work, fix it.
• You have set an automatic response, such as an "Out of Office" response while away on vacation, and have forgotten to turn it off, so your system is not accepting emails.
• You have forgotten to check the inbox for the email address you supplied. Tech tip: If your Outlook application is set up to check multiple addresses, make sure the address you provided is one that is being checked for inbound mail.
• You accidentally deleted the email without realizing it contained your serial number. Tech tip: Take a look in your Deleted Items folder to see if it is there.
• Your mailbox is over quota and so your ISP is rejecting inbound emails.
• You have not used the email address provided to Manifold for a long time and so your email provider has suspended it as inactive.
• The domain has expired or has been suspended, or the nameserver providing DNS resolution to your MX record (mail service) for some other reason is no longer providing domain name resolution.
• The DNS record for your domain's MX record is incorrectly set. Double-check for typos. If you administer your own email system and you are sure there is no possibility you have made an error, have someone else triple-check it for you.
• The email address supplied to Manifold has been forwarded to a different email address and the forwarding is not working.
• You have changed your email system recently and it is not working (relaying not permitted, etc.) in the new configuration.
• You have created a new email address just for business dealings with Manifold and it is not working. Tech tip: Don't use a previously-unused email address that's not been verified to work. Manifold won't spam you or share your email address with anyone else.
• You or your ISP have installed anti-spam technology that is too aggressive and is blocking the emails being sent to you by Manifold. Check any "spam" or "bulk mail" folders into which your spam filter may be placing emails prior to deletion.
• Your or your ISP have installed a virus or other filter that is too aggressive and is blocking Manifold emails because it thinks they contain scripts or executables (they don't).
• The organization you work for or which handles your email is filtering the emails before they get to you. This can be very touchy since not all companies or other organizations tell their users that they are looking at their emails, even if it is just something automatic being done to avoid spam or malware.
• You use Outlook and have applied some mail-handling rules that are deleting inbound messages from Manifold or moving them to a folder that you do not view.
• You or your ISP have installed a "blacklist" filter that blocks emails originating from IP addresses used by Manifold email servers or email servers run by Manifold's ISP if such IP addresses are reported by a centralized listing organization to be spam servers. [Note that such filters are pointless since spammers routinely forge the origin of their spam to make it look like it comes from legitimate IP addresses.]
• Your email system utilizes a relay, remailer or other intermediary that can take a long time to forward emails and has not yet done so.
• Your email system or some provider involved in that email system has blocked all emails originating in mainland China or Hong Kong or from domains or other services hosted by our service partners in mainland China or Hong Kong. Manifold is a Chinese company and sends email from China.
• You have placed "manifold.net" as a domain on your anti-spam whitelist but have not allowed email from other domains used by our email servers, such as "manifoldsoftwarelimited.com" or from dedicated IP addresses.
• You or your ISP have installed spam-blocking technology that requires the sender to reply to a confirmation email or to visit some web site and enter a code. The Online Store and other Manifold servers that send out serial number emails are machines that cannot respond to return emails requiring confirmation.
• Someone else, such as a centralized IT bureaucracy, runs your email system and is being completely uncooperative about telling you what they are doing to prevent you from getting legitimate email. Tech tip: get your own free web-based email account, such as gmail or googlemail, and use that to bypass the IT department.
• Very important: Don't assume that just because you receive some email from Manifold that a spam filter is not the problem. Modern anti-spam software will usually examine the content of a message and will sometimes decide that one message is spam while allowing a different message to pass. In addition, just because you receive a reply from sales@manifold.net does not mean your spam filter might not reject messages coming from a different email address, such as that of the key server.
• You did not provide an email address when you acquired your Manifold license. This happens occasionally when purchasing groups neglect to provide an email address on a purchase order. If so, Manifold is waiting to hear from you to learn what email address you wish to use.
• You acquired your license from a third party, such as a reseller or previous licensee. In that case, you must contact that third party for any questions about serial numbers as Manifold is not part of your business deal with that third party. Note that Manifold does not enter into any agency or reseller agreements or "authorize" any dealers, so if you acquired a Manifold license from some third party that third party is in no way an agent or representative of Manifold.

Dealing with Email Problems

Everyone on the planet is totally annoyed about spam so it is natural that people want to use anti-spam technology to help get rid of it. Unfortunately, no anti-spam technology is perfect so you may have to exercise some manual supervision over your anti-spam strategy to make sure it does not filter out legitimate emails from Manifold that you want to receive.

If one of the problems above is in play, that can lead to a very frustrating experience with communications. For example, a customer sometimes without realizing it will have massive spam filters in place that prevent any communications from Manifold getting through. The customer does not receive the serial number email and then when the customer writes to sales@manifold.net to complain, he or she does not get any reply. The customer sends repeated emails, each of which gets angrier and angrier. The problem, of course, is that if the customer has some spam filter that rejects emails from Manifold then no matter how often Manifold replies the customer will not get those replies. Sales can write back a hundred times and yet the customer sees none of the replies because his or her own spam filter is rejecting Manifold emails.

The most rapid solution to the above problem is for the customer to use some temporary, web-based, free email address from hotmail.com, yahoo.com or Google's gmail to correspond with Manifold. The long term solution is to find and eliminate whatever is the problem that prevents you from receiving emails sent to you from Manifold.

Very important: If as a solution to problems with your regular email account you use some temporary, web-based, free email address from hotmail.com, yahoo.com or Google's gmail, do NOT use your regular email system to fetch messages from that free email address with delivery of mail to your regular email inbox. Instead, use a browser to login directly to your free email address to read your email. For example, if you use a gmail address open a browser to visit the Google gmail site to read your mail. This is important because if you fetch messages from gmail using your regular email system then whatever problem causes your regular email system to block or reject Manifold emails might do the same with messages fetched from gmail.

Very important: Manifold cannot help you resolve email difficulties. Do not ask your email administrator to contact Manifold for advice or assistance. Have them read this page. If that does not help, use some temporary, web-based, free email address from hotmail.com, yahoo.com or Google's gmail to correspond with Manifold.

Questions?

Please contact us at sales@manifold.net. We would like you to be happy with your licensing of Manifold products, so please do not hesitate to ask any questions before placing an order.

Suggestions to improve Manifold are always welcome. Please see the Suggestions page for tips on making effective suggestions.