In diagnosing certain email problems, email headers are useful for providing additional information in relation to the email message. These can determine delivery times and the route that mail was relayed from the computer it was sent from right through to delivery.
Sometimes our support team will request that you provide email headers so we can diagnose and advise. If you wish to interpret headers for yourself, there are two online tools useful for this:
G Suite Toolbox (Google) MessageHeader
MX Toolbox Email Header Analyser
To see how to access the email headers, please visit our knowledge base guides.
An example of headers are included below
Return-Path: <support@letshost.ie>
Delivered-To: user@example.com
Received: from lh10.dnsireland.com
by lh10.dnsireland.com with LMTP id wBA4HwxpmlueeQoAfZEuIw
for <user@example.com>; Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:41:32 +0100
Return-path: <support@letshost.ie>
Envelope-to: user@example.com
Delivery-date: Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:41:32 +0100
Received: from [78.137.164.41] (port=45078 helo=lh6mail.dnsireland.com)
by lh10.dnsireland.com with esmtps (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256)
(Exim 4.91)
(envelope-from <support@letshost.ie>)
id 1g0Rs3-002sau-9W
for user@example.com; Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:41:32 +0100
Received: from lhsuppod by lh6mail.dnsireland.com with local (Exim 4.91)
(envelope-from <support@letshost.ie>)
id 1g0Rs2-0005DJ-6D
for user@example.com; Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:41:22 +0100
To: user@example.com
Subject: Understanding E-Mail Headers
Message-ID: <5fca83217b5106a67bbe3ca5e1f58408@www.letshostsupport.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:41:22 +0100
From: LetsHost Support <support@letshost.ie>
Reply-To: support@letshost.ie
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=”_=_swiftmailer_v4_1536846082cbb00f6d5828d3edba1fbe140958d564_=_”
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9
X-Spam-Score: -28
X-Spam-Bar: —
X-Ham-Report: Spam detection software, running on the system “lh10.dnsireland.com”,
has NOT identified this incoming email as spam. The original
message has been attached to this so you can view it or label
similar future email.
Please note that with mail headers these can be forged throughout relay. Generally these can pinpoint issues with delivery and how they are handled. The most common headers are included below for reference.
- From – Displays who the email is from, however please note that this can be forged
- Subject – This is the topic of the email content that the sender has assigned
- Date – The date/time when the email was sent
- To – The address to which the email is addressed
- Return-Path – The email address for return mail. Similar to Reply-to which indicates where software should send a reply when you choose to reply to the message
- Envelope-to – The mailbox to which this was sent
- Delivery-date – The date/time that the email arrives in the mailbox
- Received – Indicates where and what points the message was relayed through. Often used to determine if there was a delay at any of these points
- X-Spam-Status – If yes, then this is marked as spam. This may be used either by SpamAssassin which is included by default, our spam filter service, or by software running on your own computer (e.g. McAfee Anti-Spam)
If you require further information/assistance on this, please submit a ticket and a member of the team will be happy to assist further.