Mail Admin is the mail server’s own console. Open it from Tools, under Email.
It has three tabs, and it opens on the first one.
Message Trace
Where a message actually went.
- Pick a Mailbox.
- Optionally filter by Sender.
- Pick a Time window: Last 24 hours, Last 48 hours or Last 7 days.
- Select Run Mail Trace.
Results show Date (UTC), Sender, Recipient, Subject and Status.
The Status column is the answer to most email tickets. A message that never arrived either was not sent, was delivered somewhere the user is not looking, was rejected by the server, or was stopped before it got there. The trace tells you which.
Two things about the time window: start narrow and widen. If the trace comes back empty you get No messages in this window. Try a wider time range. And read the recent lines, not the old ones. When a problem started yesterday, yesterday’s failures are the evidence and the older delivered lines are noise.
Mailbox Admin
The mailbox’s own settings. Select a mailbox and choose View mailbox.
It shows the Primary mailbox, its Status, the Mailbox status, whether the Online Archive is Enabled or Disabled, and the Retention policy.
Status and Mailbox status are two different fields and they catch two different problems.
Status is about capacity. The one to watch for is Prohibit Send/Receive (over quota). A full mailbox stops accepting mail, which looks to the user like messages vanishing. The action for it is Enable online archive.
Mailbox status is about whether the mailbox is switched on at all, shown as Enabled or Disabled. A disabled mailbox is the answer to a user who receives nothing whatsoever. The action for it is Enable mailbox.
For a full mailbox the console also suggests the immediate step, which is not a server change: For immediate relief, ask the user to empty Deleted Items & Junk over chat. Archiving is the longer-term fix, emptying the folders is what gets them working now.
Inbox Rules
The rules configured on somebody’s mailbox. Select a mailbox and choose View rules.
Each rule shows its Condition and its Action, which is either Move to a folder or Forward to an address. Each can be turned on or off with Enable and Disable.
Rules explain a lot of “my email disappeared” tickets: a rule moving mail into a folder the user never opens.
A forwarding rule to an outside address is a different matter entirely. That is a symptom of a compromised account, not a misconfiguration. Disabling the rule leaves the attacker’s access in place, and the mail they already took is still gone. The correct first action is to escalate to the Security Team so credentials can be reset and the access investigated. See Escalate a ticket to another team.
The other console
Quarantine and blocked senders are not here. They live in Mail Security, which is a separate tool on purpose: working out which console holds the answer is part of the diagnosis. See Release quarantined mail in Mail Security.