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Check the Status of E-Mail Messages Sent With Database Mail

Applies to: SQL Server Azure SQL Managed Instance

This article describes how to check the status of the e-mail message sent using Database Mail in SQL Server by using Transact-SQL.

  • Database Mail keeps copies of outgoing e-mail messages and displays them in the sysmail_allitems, sysmail_sentitems, sysmail_unsentitems, sysmail_faileditems views of the msdb database.
  • The Database Mail external program logs activity and displays the log through the Windows Application Event Log and the sysmail_event_log view in the msdb database.
  • E-mail messages have one of four possible statuses: sent, unsent, retrying, and failed.

To check the status of an e-mail message, run a query against the msdb.dbo.sysmail_event_log system view.

Use Transact-SQL to view the status of the e-mail sent using Database Mail

  • Select from the sysmail_allitems table, specifying the messages of interest by mailitem_id or sent_status.

  • To check the status returned from the external program for the e-mail messages, join sysmail_allitems to sysmail_event_log view on the mailitem_id column.

    By default, the external program does not log information about messages that were successfully sent. To log all messages, set the logging level to verbose using the Configure System Parameters page of the Database Mail Configuration Wizard.

The following example lists information about any e-mail messages sent to danw that the external program could not send successfully. The statement lists the subject, the date and time that the external program failed to send the message, and the error message from the Database Mail log.

USE msdb ;  
GO  

-- Show the subject, the time that the mail item row was last  
-- modified, and the log information.  
-- Join sysmail_faileditems to sysmail_event_log   
-- on the mailitem_id column.  
-- In the WHERE clause list items where danw was in the recipients,  
-- copy_recipients, or blind_copy_recipients.  
-- These are the items that would have been sent  
-- to danw.  

SELECT items.subject,  
    items.last_mod_date  
    ,l.description 
FROM dbo.sysmail_faileditems AS items  
INNER JOIN dbo.sysmail_event_log AS l  
    ON items.mailitem_id = l.mailitem_id  
WHERE items.recipients LIKE '%danw%'    
    OR items.copy_recipients LIKE '%danw%'   
    OR items.blind_copy_recipients LIKE '%danw%';
GO

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