I e-mailed my final to my professor.  He says that he never received
in.  In order to get credit for it, I have to prove that I sent it to
him on the due date.  How do I track this sent e-mail?

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Clarification of Question by talk2much84-ga on 22 Mar 2004 19:36 PST

I use hotmail.  I have not talked to the ISP people on campus but I
was told that they are all students who do not have any background in
computers so they probably will not be much help.

Hi,

What an unlucky thing to have happened to your final! I bet one of the
Google researcher will have an answer for you. Many of them are
computer gurus.

In the meantime, what e-mail application do you use? For example,
Eudora, Outlook, Apple's new e-mail app, a web-based one (Yahoo or
Hotmail, to name just two)? I use Eudora Pro, and could prove
something was sent, but that might not work with another application.
If no one answers you, I'll put my Eudora-based idea here.

Oh, and another quick thought: Have you asked your ISP's tech people
for help? Since you mentioned a final, I'm guessing you have a campus
ISP. Have you visited them?

G'luck,
dtc

From my experience with hotmail, outgoing mail is not saved by
default. You would have had to click the box to save mail to outbox to
save a copy. I haven't used hotmail in a while, but unless it has
changed your final is gone without a trace.

Hi,

I've never used Hotmail, but I do have a throw-away account with
Yahoo. If I send an e-mail from the Yahoo account and I choose to keep
the outgoing mail in a sent folder, I can open it later. If so, I can
choose to read this sent e-mail with full header info. It might look
like this:

Received:  from [xxx.xx.xx.225] by web14404.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP;
Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:24:13 PST
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:24:13 -0800 (PST)
From: "me" <My_Made_Up_Yahoo_E-mail_Addy@yahoo.com> 
Subject:  Deleted e-mail's subject
To:  whomever@somewhereISP.co.uk
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Length:  754


If you still have the e-mail you sent to the professor, can you look
at it with full headers and then print that? If so, you could do two
things. One, you could take it to the professor and say that you did
send the e-mail. Two, you could go to your campus's ISP and ask for
help. I mean go in person; don't simply call. I know you said that
you've heard it's staffed by students, but if you go there in person
maybe one would be helpful. If you don't get help from a student, ask
to speak to one of the professionals on staff. I would guess that
there has to be one.

With my Eudora Pro, I get a message ID number, which, if I recall
correctly, can be used to track e-mail if something goes wrong. (Maybe
a computer expert can correct me if I'm wrong about this.) My outgoing
message IDs look like this:
Message-Id: <v04xxxxx0bc3caxxxx234@[xxx.153.xxx.45]>

G'luck,
dtc