Google Workspace not receiving emails: an admin's troubleshooting order

A user in your Google Workspace domain says an email never arrived. Or worse, nobody is getting anything. Google's own troubleshooting starts in the same place every time: find out whether Gmail received the message. This guide follows that order, with the exact Admin console paths at the time of writing (November 2026) and a fix for each finding.

What should you check first?

1. Check the Google Workspace Status Dashboard for a Gmail incident. Google lists a service outage as one cause of missing mail.
2. Search Email Log Search (ELS). Google's advice is: "Before you troubleshoot missing messages in Gmail, try to find messages with Email Log Search" (Google Workspace Admin Help).
3. If ELS finds nothing, check MX records and ask the sender for their bounce.
4. If ELS finds the message, follow its delivery steps to spam, quarantine, a routing rule or the user's own filters.
5. If everyone in the domain stopped receiving mail, check MX records, domain registration and account status first.

Is it one user, one sender or the whole domain?

Did Gmail receive the message?

Go to Menu > Reporting > Email Log Search in the Admin console. You need the Gmail Settings administrator privilege. Choose a date, enter the sender and recipient, and search. Google says ELS shows a message's delivery status "for up to 30 days" (Google Workspace Admin Help); older messages can be searched only in a limited way.

Then there are two outcomes:

• The message is there. Open it, click the recipient and read the delivery steps. They show whether it was delivered to the inbox, marked as spam, quarantined, bounced or dropped. Our Email Log Search guide explains every status.
• Nothing is found. Google is blunt: if it doesn't appear, "it wasn't delivered to Google's servers." Gmail can't fix what it never saw. Ask the sender to check Sent Mail and Drafts and to look for a bounce, waiting a few hours for one to arrive. Then check your MX records.

The Message-ID header is the most precise search. Ask the sender for it, or for the full headers, and paste them into the Email Header Analyzer.

Are your MX records pointing to Google?

MX records tell other mail servers where to deliver your domain's mail. Google says they must point to Google's mail servers before Gmail can receive mail for your domain.

Google's current MX record value is smtp.google.com with priority 1 (Google Workspace Admin Help). Older accounts may use the legacy records that start with aspmx, which Google says are still supported. In a zone file it looks like this (example):

example.com.   3600   IN   MX   1   smtp.google.com.

Check three things:

1. Old records are gone. Google warns: "Your email might not work correctly if you keep old or incorrect MX records." A leftover record for your previous host sends some mail to the wrong server.
2. The change has had time. Google says new MX records can take up to 72 hours to be recognized. Our guide to DNS TTL and MX propagation explains why.
3. The domain is still registered. Google lists an expired domain registration, a payment problem with the domain host, and an incomplete registration (where the host never verified your contact email) as reasons a domain host disables your domain.

Look up what the internet sees with our MX Lookup or Google's Admin Toolbox Dig tool, which Google suggests for confirming your published MX values. The DNS Setup Checker compares MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC with Google's documented values in one pass.

If you use a filtering gateway, your MX points to the gateway, not to Google, and that's correct. Then check the gateway's logs and quarantine, and confirm Gmail's inbound gateway setting lists its IPs. When you change MX on purpose, follow how to change MX records without losing email.

Is the user's account suspended, full or over a limit?

If one user receives nothing, check the account itself.

Suspended or deleted

Google says that for a suspended account, messages "aren't delivered, and bounce back to the sender". Check the user's status in Directory > Users. Licensing changes and offboarding scripts are common culprits.

Over a storage limit

By default, Workspace users are limited only by your organization's pooled storage. If you set per-user limits and a user exceeds one, Google says "users' ability to send and receive email in Gmail is impacted", and "Education customers are exempt from this restriction" (Google Workspace Admin Help). Raise the limit or have the user free space. Senders will need to resend anything that bounced.

Over the receiving limits

Google lists these receiving limits for each account (Google Workspace Admin Help):

When an account reaches a limit, new messages bounce, and the restriction typically lasts about 24 hours. Google adds that messages sent during the restricted period can't be recovered. A mail loop between two auto-forwarding accounts, or an email bombing attack, can trigger this.

Is a routing, spam or quarantine setting diverting mail?

If ELS shows the message arrived but the user can't find it, look at what happened next.

• Marked spam. ELS adds a classification, such as a DMARC failure or poor sender reputation. If the sender fails authentication, the fix is theirs; check their record with the DMARC Checker and point them to why DMARC fails. Review your own Gmail spam settings before allowing anything.
• Quarantined. A compliance or spam setting sent it to admin quarantine. Review it at admin.google.com/ac/moderation; see Google Workspace admin quarantine. Recipients are never notified.
• Rerouted or dropped by a rule. Routing rules can change recipients, add a copy or reject mail. Check Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail > Routing, and read Gmail routing rules in Google Workspace.
• Delivered, then moved by the user's filters. Have the user check Settings > See all settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses for filters with Delete it or Skip Inbox, and search Mail & Spam & Trash (Gmail Help).
• Forwarded somewhere unexpected. Google warns that if mail goes to an unfamiliar address, "someone may have unauthorized access to your account." If you find one, follow Google Workspace compromised account recovery and consider disabling automatic forwarding.

Why don't messages to an alias or Group show up?

This one fools admins every week. Google explains that when you send a message to your own alias, or to a Group you belong to, Gmail doesn't put it in your inbox; it's in Sent Mail or All Mail (Google Workspace Admin Help). The fix Google gives is to add the alias or Group as a Send mail as address. The simpler test is to send from an outside account.

Why do messages from one sender never arrive?

Google's page on not receiving email from one sender comes down to: search ELS, and if nothing's there, it's the sender's problem to investigate. Common sender-side causes:

1. Their mail fails SPF, DKIM or DMARC, so Gmail marks it as spam or rejects it with 550 5.7.26.
2. Their server or IP has poor reputation, so Gmail drops or rejects it.
3. A website contact form sends as your own domain. Google calls out forms from providers such as GoDaddy, Zendesk, Squarespace and Shopify. See website form emails going to spam.
4. The content or an attachment is blocked. Google says "Gmail blocks messages that may spread viruses, including messages that have attached executable files or certain links" (Google Workspace Admin Help).

Paste any error they send you into the SMTP Error Code Lookup.

What does the sender's bounce from Gmail tell you?

When Gmail refuses a message, the sender gets a bounce with a code and a line of text. Google publishes the full list on its Gmail SMTP errors and codes page. A few codes map directly to the causes in this guide, so ask the sender to forward the bounce before you change anything.

Codes that start with 4 are temporary. The sender's server keeps the message and retries, so it may still arrive once the cause clears. Codes that start with 5 are permanent: the message is gone, and the sender has to send it again after you fix the problem.

The text matters as much as the number. The same 550 5.2.1 can mean an inactive account or an account receiving too fast, and the fix is different for each. If the sender only says "it bounced", ask for the full message, including the line with the code. If there's no bounce and ELS has no record, the message most likely never left the sender's system, or went to a server named in an old MX record.

Next steps

• Make sure at least two admins hold the Gmail Settings privilege so someone can always run Email Log Search.
• Run an MX Lookup now and confirm only Google's records (or your gateway's) are published.
• Review per-user storage limits and alerting so a full account is caught before it bounces mail.
• If you filter mail before it reaches Gmail, check both logs when something goes missing. iBlockSpam gives each user a quarantine digest and keeps 30 days of message history per domain; see how it works with Google Workspace.
• For the user-side checklist that applies to any provider, see why am I not receiving emails.

Browse more guides on running email day to day.