The heartbreak of having an email delivery failure is comparable to the heartbreak found in Hollywood dramas with sad endings. Add to that the fact that these “error messages” are not communicative, and you have a frustrating situation. While every email hosting server will have somewhat different messages and codes for its errors, this guide will provide the explanations for some of the most common mail delivery failure messages.

Delivery error—sometimes numbered 550 or 554. This is the most common error. It indicates that the email address in question does not exist, and therefore, no mail can be delivered to it. This error usually occurs because of a spelling error in the name of the recipient, a missing number or symbol, or some other mistake in typing the address. Just check the address and try again.

Unknown host—generally doesn’t have a reference number. This message indicates that 1) the domain name entered at the end of the email address was spelled incorrectly, 2) the domain name no longer exists, or 3) the domain name’s DNS settings have been set up incorrectly. Check the full email address for accuracy. If this doesn’t resolve the issue, contact the recipient to validate that the email domain name is current and correctly configured.

Mail not accepted—sometimes numbered 550 or 554. This indicates that the recipient’s account has been set up to restrict your email address, restrict anyone from your domain name, or restrict anyone but an approved group of people from sending messages to that email address. These settings will need to be altered to allow your message to arrive.

Service unavailable—sometimes numbered 550 or left unnumbered. This message generally indicates that the recipient’s email host is either not accepting email due to temporary volume issues or maintenance. Wait a few hours and try sending the message again.

Sender address rejected—sometimes numbered 550 or 554. This dreadful message means that your address has been declared a spam address by the email hosting group that the recipient uses. The best approach is to contact the email host directly and ask to have your name and address removed from the blacklist.

Inbox full—sometimes numbered 552 or left without a code. This error message indicates that the recipient has either reached the limit for the number of emails received during an allotted time frame or no longer has any inbox storage space remaining. The recipient will simply need to free up space so you can send the message.

Message exceeds maximum file size—sometimes numbered 552. This means that your attached files are larger than the maximum allowed by the email server. Send the email without the attachment, reduce the attachment size, or use an external file transfer service that works with your email.

There are many other email error messages that may come your way, and they can be harder to decipher than Mayan hieroglyphs. If you encounter a number or message not listed here, one good approach to researching the issue is to look for a help file provided by the recipient’s email service provider.

Gmail is one of the best webmail solutions available today, and it has been adding tons of features through Gmail Labs and other means. However, one of the most wanted thing missing in Gmail was Rich Text or HTML Signatures which would allowed users to add HTML text or images to their email signatures.

If you have been missing that feature, here is something to cheer about. Gmail has officially announced that users will be able to add Rich Text/HTML Signatures to their outgoing messages. To change your Gmail signature to use Rich Text, just visit the settings page and scroll down till you see the Signature option.

You can use the Rich text editor to insert images, hyperlinks, quotes and also format it to your liking. Once you have set your new signature just save your settings and the signature will be appended to your outgoing emails. You can also set different signatures for different accounts you have set up with Gmail.

There are many reasons why a person might be afraid to send a normal email message to someone. The person sending the email could:

• lose a friendship
• anger a family member
• lose a job
• get sued
• get arrested
• get hurt or killed

There’s also another reason.

It might be fun! How would you like to send an email that looks like it came from the President, Tax Office or Police? The possibilities for mischief are endless.

Whatever the reason, there are many resources available to those who need to send an anonymous email. The easiest methods are online services. Below I’ll list the top three for you.

send-email.org simple plain text

anonymouse.org simple plain text

deadfake.com html (rich text)

I checked these services for safety using SiteAdvisor.

These email sites are easy to use. You’ll only need to fill out:

1. From: (make something up)
2. To: (who is this email for?)
3. Subject: (what’s the email about?)
4. Message: (give them the bad news)

Typically, no attachments are allowed and you’ll have to fill out a captcha form to keep the spammers from using these services.

See also: Send Anonymous Tweets With ShhTwitter

Now you’re either ready to save the world, a friendship or get a good laugh. Let me know if you have your own special way to send out secret email, by adding your comment below.

We receive tons of email daily which makes it really hard to make sense of those clutter. It is so easy to miss an important note or get to it when it is too late.

The following tips will help you better manage your important email for you to always be able to handle it properly.

First let’s define how we can automatically identify all important mail:

• By sender’s email address, e.g. boss@yourjob.com. With many email services and clients, you are able to use a wildcard (*) to filter all incoming mail from some domain, e.g. *@yourjob.com filter will include all your work incoming mail;
• By the keyword (usually in the subject). You can arrange to use some key phrases with your business partners or boss for you to easier identify urgent mail from them, e.g. "Important!" or "Needs response now!"

1. Create a label / folder to organize all important email. If you are on Gmail, you can create a label (called TO-DO for example) and the create a filter to label all the important messages as TO-DO. Here are the Gmail filter settings to get this done:

For MS Outlook, you can create a folder and file any email sent with high importance in the Quick, the house is burning downfolder (for more MS Outlook tips refer to this post on getting organized with customized Microsoft Outlook rules

2. Automatically star all the important email or flag it for follow-up. If you are using Gmail, it has a handy option to automatically star all mail that conforms to your search setting:

3. Set up an SMS alert of new urgent email. This one is an awesome tip, yet not widely known. Most of mobile carriers offer free Email To SMS gateways which can be found here. All you need is to create a filter to forward all your mail with the set criteria to your personal email, e.g. [your 10-digit phone number here]@message.alltel.com

4. Filter out unimportant mail. Really, this needs to be #1. In order not to miss urgent mail, you will need to get rid of all clutter: social media updates, automatic updates, etc – everything you still read (so no way to unsubscribe) but don’t really need in your inbox. Create a filter and add Skip the inbox, Mark as read, and Apply a label(I have SOCIAL label foe all that stuff):

5. Send an auto response containing other ways to get into contact with you urgently (including cell phone, IMs, etc). (For Gmail users) Use this post as guidelines: they did an awesome job explaining the process, so no reason to explain it again.

The guest post is by Ann Smarty, a search and social media blogger. If you love guest blogging as much as Ann, join MyBlogGuest.com, the community of guest bloggers to promote your site and brand. Want to guest post for us? Read our Guest Post guidelines to find out how you can submit guest posts to us.