Problems Confirming Email for Forums Alerts

Question

Some users in the past have reported email validation issues when clicking the link on the 'confirmation emails'. I have a couple of questions or things I want to validate.

There was a problem confirming this email for Forums Alerts delivery.

This can be caused if the user is not authenticated with the same LiveID which was used when accessing the forums. In some cases, users have an active session authenticated with a different set of credentials. This can cause the validation page to fail. A few hints or things to try if users get this error:

• Sign Out of live id, close the browser and then click the link.
• If that doesn't work, try dumping your cache (history and cookies), closing your browser and then clicking the link.

The goal using the above is to force your browser to not be signed in, so the validation link asks you to. Then, when asked, provide the same live id and password you would normally use when using the forums.

Note: emails from our alerts system (confirmation and thread alerts) come from [e-mail].  If you are not getting emails ensure your ISP isn't blocking them or that your email client is not deleting them as spam or junk (check your junk folders).

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Community Forum

Answer 1

Thanks for your useful info, i ever met the problom, now, i got the answer at last! Thanks again!

Answer 2

I'm having problems with the email link sent to me in IE8.  It works fine in Firefox 4.  The links in IE8 appears to try and loop back to the live.com log in screen, but since I already logged in, it redirects me to the link, and back and forth until live.com produces and error message.  Firefox worked with no issues.  I also had a problem signing in using IE8 on the forum page.  When I press log in, I'm prompted with the live.com log in but then when it sends me back to the site, and it shows I'm not logged in.  I cleared my cache and cookies and it had no affect on the issue.

If you are having issues with IE8 and the forums you might try a different browser.

Thanks!

Answer 3

MALFORMED FORUM ALERT CONFIRMATION EMAIL

The email I received to confirm my email address for Forum Alerts does not display correctly when viewed within Outlook 2007 configured to view email in plain text only.

The line with the confirmation link is actually one very long line:

Please click on the following link to confirm the Forum Alerts email:http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/user/validate/-UCilGL6mDe0dGj6UPaUucHr9JboU00z959ZYTBVp70=

When viewed in its original native HTML format, the confirmation link is indeed a clickable hyperlink.

When the "View all email in plain text" security option is enabled, there is no hyperlink to click. This is because there is no space between the string "...email:" and "http://...".

This is not an Outlook issue. This is a Forum Alert Email Confirmation message text configuration issue. There should be a newline after the ':' (colon) following the word "email" so that the hyperlink that immediately follows is is always on a line by itself.

Yes I know I can copy & paste it. That's what I did. But that's not the point. The point is if you'd simply make one teensy weensy change (please?), it'd make for a much nicer user experience for those of us who have their security set higher than others. (reading HTML email is too risky IMO)

Thanks for listening.

 

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"Fish" (David B. Trout)

Answer 4

I received today the [Forums] Email Confirmation.

The link to be clicked is wrong!

On the text appairs the correct address but in the real link a '.' is missing!!

Text:

email:http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/user/validate/rhbf4inb4LAPctONWNTQ8FZGXhCfZDf09B4N54CLDhA=

the link is: http://social.msdnmicrosoft.com/Forums/user/validate/rhbf4inb4LAPctONWNTQ8FZGXhCfZDf09B4N54CLDhA=

This address is a fake site !!

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SteMMo

Answer 5

Please forward the email that was 'fake' or broken to fissues  at microsoft.com.  Thanks

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Community Forums Program Manager

Answer 6

Hi Brent ,

since past few days I am not getting alerts for the threads I am replying to .I have to manually enable that .Many a times even manually enabling does not help ...

Any help is greatly appreciated .

 

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Abhay Chaudhary OCP 9i, MCTS/MCITP (SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2005 BI) ms-abhay.blogspot.com/

Answer 7

Ditto. I'm not getting alert emails except for the forum summary (daily) which I don't use.

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__________________________________________________________________
William Vaughn
Author, Mentor, Trainer, MVP
Beta V Corporation
William Vaughn's blog

“Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition)”

“The Owl Wrangler” a fantasy fiction novel

Please click the Mark as Answer button if a post solves your problem!

Answer 8

Okay, I found that the usual behavior of always defaulting to "Alert Me" was not working. Once I manually turn on the alerts they seem to be coming.

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__________________________________________________________________
William Vaughn
Author, Mentor, Trainer, MVP
Beta V Corporation
William Vaughn's blog

“Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition)”

“The Owl Wrangler” a fantasy fiction novel

Please click the Mark as Answer button if a post solves your problem!

Answer 9

Yes , So we still have to do it manually and sometimes people might forget that ...the default behaviour is to have that option automatically checked which is still not working ....

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Abhay Chaudhary OCP 9i, MCTS/MCITP (SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2005 BI) ms-abhay.blogspot.com/

Answer 10

And even though "Alert Me" is checked, the thread is not marked as "Alert Me" until I do it manually. It's busted.

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__________________________________________________________________
William Vaughn
Author, Mentor, Trainer, MVP
Beta V Corporation
William Vaughn's blog

“Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition)”

“The Owl Wrangler” a fantasy fiction novel

Please click the Mark as Answer button if a post solves your problem!

Answer 11

And even though "Alert Me" is checked, the thread is not marked as "Alert Me" until I do it manually. It's busted.

 

 

Yes, see http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/reportabug/thread/653f2e96-8679-431f-a32b-f5b93a762b42  Should be fixed thursday pm pacific time.

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Community Forums Program Manager

Answer 12

It's not fixed yet.

Answer 13

sorry to say but the problem still exists

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Regards Ronny
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Visit my Blog or follow me on Twitter

Answer 14

Seems fixed for many others of us. Can you give me an example url Nano and Ronnypot?

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Community Forums Program Manager

Answer 15

It is for all threads I reply on, even this thread here, I need to tick the Alert me manual it doesn't activate Alert me automatic after posting a reply

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Regards Ronny
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Visit my Blog or follow me on Twitter

Answer 16

This didn't set as autoreply- http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprohardware/thread/ba94eadb-f568-4b2e-af17-0c7ae127339e

I have reconfirmed my email 4 times since June and it still looks unconfirmed in my settings.

Answer 17

I find the auto alert working now, 7\16.

Nice job on the forum changes.  

Answer 18

For me it also started working again, just found out this morning.

Only thing is when you post a reply to a new thread, you scroll to the top of the post and see the "Alert me" is still there but when you go backup to the forum group it does have add the alert.

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Regards Ronny
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Visit my Blog or follow me on Twitter

Answer 19

I no problem when i use yahoo mail.

Thanks

Answer 20

I've resent the confirmation email several times but I am not receiving it.  I would be very surprised if my ISP were blocking emails from [e-mail], and I've checked junk and spam folders as well as deleted folders but nothing is there.  I've verified I am receiving mail to the registered email address.  In another thread I saw others reporting they were not receiving verification emails, have any others reported problems receiving the confirmation email to enable alerts?

Thank you!

Answer 21

The Alerts are not working reliably now. You may or may not receive alerts. Better to manually check your threads in the forum.

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For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Becker's Law


My blog

Answer 22

Hi Rhvsaroni and Naomi,

Forum engineering team just announced that All including Alert mail, Activity and Recognition Points so on should be updated and work as expected 2 hours ago at 6:16 PM (PDT).

And we tested alert mail that works perfectly.

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Visual Studio Cloud Services

Answer 23

Are you saying that the Recognition Points and Activities are going to be updated very soon (and all missing points added)?

In anticipation...

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For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Becker's Law


My blog

Answer 24

Sure, it's "From now on".

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Pan Zhang Customer Support Visual Studio Cloud Services

Answer 25

What do you mean by 'From now on'? Do you mean that the activity is not going to be missed from now on? What about the lost activity? Is it going to be restored or not?

Thanks again.

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For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Becker's Law


My blog

Answer 26

Checking the details of this announcement with engineering team.

and Voted your reply as helpful, +5 from 166248 to 166253 here and proposed as answer.

let's monitor if this problem still persists moving forward.

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Pan Zhang Customer Support Visual Studio Cloud Services

Answer 27

Hi Naomi,

This means that we found and fix the issue and all posts will be now correctly processed with Activity, Points and Mails if required.

We are currently investigating the posibilities to restore the lost activity, but do not have a solution yet.

Thank you for understanding!

-Mara

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Forums Test Team

Answer 28

I do hope that you find a way to restore lost activity also. It will be a pity if you will not be able to restore what was lost.

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For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Becker's Law


My blog

Answer 29

Thank you Pan, I was able to resend the confirmation email and I did receive it, I appreciate your and the engineering team's attention to this  matter!

Answer 30

This does have to do with how you are signed in. I have multiple live id's. One is for my business as a consultant, and reflects my actual business. But I usually do long-term work for clients, and get a live id for myself using the email account the client provides me.

In this case, I requested the e-mail verification using the client based account. However, when I clicked on the link, my default browser that went to the site, was actually signed in under my personal account.

Once I logged in using my client id in my default browser, everything worked.

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Steven Archibald Sr. Consultant “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Answer 31

I am getting the error "There was a problem confirming this email for Forums Alerts delivery" when I try to Validate and I have tried all possible ways as suggested above like deleting history,cache,cookies from browser but nothing worked out still I am facing the issue. Any suggestion.