As such, if Gmail is not receiving any new mail, try the below troubleshooting steps to fix the problem for good.
1. Try Some Basic Repairs
Before diving into more advanced troubleshooting steps, check the Google Workspace status dashboard to ensure Gmail is operational. If Gmail servers are currently experiencing an outage or were down recently, that’s likely why you didn’t receive any new mail. In this case, you can’t do much other than asking the sender to send the mail again.
A weak or unstable internet connection can also be the reason why you aren’t receiving new emails in your Gmail account. In this case, visit an internet speed testing website to check your internet speed. If you are getting a comparatively lower speed than you should be, reach out to your ISP and ask them to fix your connection.
Sometimes a temporary bug in your Gmail account can cause various issues, including the one at hand. The best way to eliminate this bug is to log out and then back into your Gmail account. Here’s how to sign out from your Gmail account:
Open Gmail in a browser, and click on your profile icon in the top-right corner. Choose Sign out.
You are now logged out of your Gmail account. Next, restart your browser, and then open Gmail again. Enter the login credentials to log in to your Gmail account.
2. Check Your Gmail Account Storage
Gmail stores emails in your Google account’s storage. If you are a free user, you will get 15 GB of storage, which can quickly be filled if you receive lots of emails or store files on Drive. Unfortunately, when your storage is full, you will stop receiving emails.
To check your Google account storage, open your Google Drive account and look at the left-hand side of the screen to see your storage status.
If the storage is full, you can either buy storage or delete unnecessary files from your Google Drive. You can also clear the trash to free up storage space on your Gmail account if you no longer need the emails in there.
3. Check the Spam Folder in Gmail
Like most email services, Gmail sends all junk and suspicious emails to the Spam folder. It might be that Gmail is misplacing emails in this folder. Fortunately, you can move all emails present in the Spam folder back to your Inbox.
To do this, follow the below steps:
Open Gmail and click on the Spam option in the left sidebar. Locate and right-click on the email you were expecting, and choose Not spam from the context menu.
In the future, always first check the spam folder whenever you don’t see the expected email in your inbox.
4. Ensure You’ve Not Blocked the Sender
Gmail allows you to block senders so that you don’t hear from them again. Unfortunately, you might have mistakenly blocked the sender from whom you’re expecting an email. In this case, you will have to remove the sender from your block list to solve the problem.
Here’s how to do it:
Open Gmail and click on the Gear icon in the top bar. Choose See all settings. Switch to Filters and Blocked Addresses. Locate and select the sender from whom you were expecting the mail, and click the Unblock selected addresses button. Choose Unblock in the confirmation window that crops up.
After unblocking the sender, unfortunately, you’ll have to ask them to resend the email to you.
5. Disable Mail Forwarding
The mail forwarding feature of Gmail allows you to forward incoming mail to a different email address. This feature can be handy if you have switched to a different email address and want all incoming emails to be forwarded to it.
If you are not receiving emails, Gmail might be sending them to a forwarded address. To disable mail forwarding in Gmail:
Open Gmail > Gear Icon > See all settings. Switch to Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. Select Disable forwarding. Scroll down and click Save changes.
If the mail forwarding option was enabled, you will have to ask the sender to send the email again to your original address.
6. Check the File Type
Gmail security settings automatically block messages that contain malicious files and links. So, confirm with the sender that the email doesn’t contain any files that could be mistaken as malicious.
If you’re sure the file is safe for your computer, you could ask the sender to upload it to Google Drive and share the link instead.
7. Temporarily Disable Any Antivirus Programs in Use
If an email containing malicious attachments bypasses Gmail security, it will be blocked and removed by the antivirus email filtering feature. But, if you think the mail is safe and want to receive it anyway, you can disable the antivirus program temporarily.
You can usually right-click on the antivirus icon in the system tray and choose to disable it from the context menu. If you’re using Microsoft Defender as your default security program, check out our guide on disabling Defender on Windows.
After disabling the security program, ask the sender to send the mail again.
8. Clear Your Browser’s Cache
While unlikely, sometimes browsers’ corrupt cache data can be the reason you are not receiving new emails in Gmail.
To confirm this, open Gmail on another browser, and check if you receive any new emails or not. If yes, then something’s wrong with your main browser; most likely, corrupt cache data is causing the problem.
The solution, in this case, is to clear the cache data in the affected browser. Check out our guide on clearing cache on Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.
9. Contact Google Support
If you are still facing the issue, there could be something wrong with your Google account. The only thing you can do in this situation is contact Google Support and ask them for further assistance.
Fixing Gmail Not Receiving Mail Issue
If you are not receiving mail in Gmail, one of the above tips will solve the issue. You must contact the Google Support team if none of the above tips were helpful. Meanwhile, you might be interested in printing your Gmail contacts to prevent an emergency or keeping a paper record.
