You mentioned sending yourself a test e-mail which presumably meant
you sent from your e-mail account to your e-mail account so the SMTP
mail host to which you connect would've simply routed your test e-mail
internally into your mailbox. However, you really didn't mention if
you actually got that internally routed test e-mail into your Inbox
when using the webmail interface (to both send the test e-mail and
then to see if it got received).
If the internal routing for your test e-mail worked then next check
sending the test e-mail using their webmail interface to your work
accounts. If the test e-mail is not received at your work account
(and some other domain to make sure you aren't hitting a blacklist at
your company's mail host), the problem is with your e-mail provider,
not with Outlook. It is possible that you or your mail host is
blacklisted because of spam that originated from there. However, if
an e-mail is rejected because it is considered to originate from a
spam source, the rejecting receiving mail host should send back an
NDR (non-delivery report). However, if it is a Hotmail account that
you are using (you never mentioned where is your home account),
Hotmail has problems where inbound e-mails just vaporize.
If you are using Hotmail, inbound e-mails may disappear. The sender
doesn't get an NDR (and, in your case, a receiving mail host sending
an NDR to your sending mail host that sends back its own NDR will get
ignored by the originating mail host that first sent the NDR). Check
if your e-mail address is correct in the From header (look in the
E-mail Address field in the account you defined in Outlook). A
misconfigured mail host might accept an e-mail but later find it is
undeliverable but the mail session is over so the mail host cannot
guarantee it delivers its NDR to the correct sender. All it has to
go on is the return-path headers, like From, and those have values
that the sender specified. So a misconfigured mail host that sends
an NDR after the mail session is over might be trying to send back an
NDR to the From address but which is incorrect. E-mails that
vaporize when sending into the Hotmail domain don't send back an NDR
to the sender and they never arrive in the recipient's Hotmail
mailbox. Postmasters have been bitching about this Hotmail problem
for years.
Some receiving mail hosts demand that the sending mail host have an MX
record at the domain claimed by the sending mail host. That is, the
sending mail host connects to the receiving mail host but before
accepting the mail session the receiving mail host will query the
nameserver at the domain for the sending mail host. It expects an MX
record be entered in that nameserver regarding what hosts are allowed
to be mail hosts at that domain. This eliminates getting e-mails
from mail hosts that are not authorized on that domain to send
e-mails, like from infected users running mailer trojans or users
that setup their own mail service (which probably violates the terms
of service by the ISP regarding the operation of servers on a
personal Internet account). However, if there is no MX record at the
domain's nameserver for the sending mail host, the receiving mail
host should reject the connection which means the sending mail host
should notify the sender that the delivery failed because of the
rejection. However, again, if you're using Hotmail, NDRs sometimes
vaporize there.
Since you are posting through Microsoft's webnews interface which lies
in its headers about the poster, I cannot see from which domain you
are posting. You will need to find out what is the SMTP mail host at
your e-mail provider. Not necessarily the one to which you connect
but their boundary MX host, the one that connects to the other
outside receiving SMTP mail hosts. To find out if you or the
boundary mail host for your e-mail provider are being blacklisted,
you can look in some of the public blacklists at:
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
http://www.robtex.com/rbl/
However, even if not listed in a public blacklist, it is possible that
you or your mail host are on a blacklist at the domain to which you
are sending your test e-mails. It is highly unlikely that you can get
confirmation from someone that you are on their private blacklist.
If e-mails aren't getting delivered to your work account when sent
using the webmail interface at your e-mail provider then try sending
your test e-mail to a different domain, like to a freebie account
elsewhere. There may be a problem with e-mails delivered from your
e-mail provider's domain to your work account. For example, I have a
buddy that works at Unisys. If I send him e-mails from my Yahoo
account, he never receives them and I never get back an NDR. My
Yahoo-originated e-mails simply vaporize when delivered to Unisys'
mail hosts (and Yahoo has shown the logs that show Unisys' mail host
accepted the e-mail that they delivered successfully there). Unisys
is blacklisting Yahoo-sourced e-mails but not sending back NDRs.
Same might happen at your work account so try sending the test e-mail
to somewhere else (i.e., not to work and not to your account from
which you are sending).
