Samsung Galaxy S4 Can’t Send / Receive Emails [Troubleshooting Guide]

This is a simple troubleshooting guide for your Samsung Galaxy S4 that’s unable to send or receive email (Pop3, IMAP and Corporate E-Mail) messages. It is applicable to all variants including carrier-specific models, although some settings may not be the same.

Pre-Requisites

There is a huge percentage of smartphone owners who think an email problem is simply an “email problem” if you get what I mean. That said, we want to reach out to those users to educate them that there could be an underlying cause why the problem happened in the first place. Therefore, before we go into the details of troubleshooting each email account type, we want to make sure that the owner has an Active Internet Connection.

1. Check the data coverage indicator to see if you’re receiving good signal. (This is applicable to owners using mobile data.)
2. Check to see if you have a good Wi-Fi connection. (Applicable to users connection to a WiFi network.)
3. Browse the web or launch an app that uses the internet to see if there is indeed an active connection. Otherwise, troubleshoot internet connectivity first before proceeding. We have a handful of posts that may help you do this:
   1. Samsung Galaxy S4 Can’t Detect Home Network (Ad Hoc)
   2. Galaxy S4 Asks For WiFi Password Every Time, WiFi Turns Itself Off Automatically
   3. Wi-Fi Auto Off Fix in Samsung Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4
   4. Things To Do When Samsung Galaxy S4 Receives Low (No) Signal
4. If you can connect just fine, then proceed to the troubleshooting procedures below.

Troubleshooting POP3/IMAP Accounts

Both the POP3 and IMAP email accounts are the easiest to troubleshoot because their settings are universal except for a few. Owners who are using Gmail accounts don’t actually need to know the server settings because the device (Android) would automatically search for them.

1. First and foremost, check to see if the phone was configured to receive email messages.
2. Make sure you have the correct login credentials by logging on using webmail through a browser either from your phone or your computer.
3. Once logged in, send a test message to your own email address. This would confirm you could send and receive at the same time.
4. Now logout from the webmail.
5. On your phone, enter each credential carefully (especially the username and password) when asked to. This is the case you haven’t setup your account yet.
6. If you’ve already setup your account, double check your credentials including the incoming and outgoing server settings.
7. If you’re satisfied with the settings, send a test message like you did in step 3.
8. If you still unable to send / receive messages, clear email application data for that specific account and enter them again.
9. After a second or third try and the problem persists, try to use a different email client. The K-9 Email app comes highly recommended but you could use other apps that you like.

10. Setup your account using a different email client and see if you can now send and receive email messages.

11. If you can, clear all data of the first client you tried to use, force stop the app, reboot your phone, then re-setup your account. In case the problem still persists, try to find an update for the app if there’s any.

12. If all else fail, backup everything in your device and reset it to its factory settings. Or, you could continue using the second email client you just downloaded.

Troubleshooting Corporate E-Mail Accounts

Corporate emails are a little complicated to troubleshoot considering you may not have direct access to your account’s settings or other necessary information. Nevertheless, the step-by-step guide that follows could help you.

1. Verify that your login credentials are all correct. You may contact your company’s IT department to ask for your username and password in case you’re in doubt or cannot verify your account through other means.
2. Enter your credentials carefully including the server settings for both incoming and outgoing.
3. Check to see if the sync feature is enabled for Email. Make sure proper sync settings are configured.
4. If you’ve already started sending / receiving email messages before, then a reboot might help fix the problem or you can call the IT department to ask if there are currently some server problems.
5. You can always clear all data and setup the account again if everything else fails. However, you may lose your previous emails especially when they were programmed to be downloaded to your device without leaving copies on the server. So, beware!
6. If you’ve setup the account to your computer, try to send a test message using your machine. This will confirm whether the problem is server-side or with your phone.
7. You can contact your IT department to help you with the setup, or your provider to help you troubleshoot.

Having problems with your phone?

Tell us about them by emailing us at [email protected]. Make sure to include as much details as possible so that we could understand the problem well and find the best solutions for you. If you can share a screenshot or two, that would be better.

We may not be able to respond to every email we receive but rest assured we do read them… yes, all of them even if some do look like spams.