How do I send a reply to a PM?

[silvestrione]

I presume I'm missing something obvious here, but I've tried to reply several times to a PM, and there is no evidence that it has gone anywhere (e.g. 'Sent Items' obstinately continues to say '0 items'!).

[jean]

I think that unless you explicitly save your reply, you will never see it again even if the intended recipient gets it.

[Dave2002]

You may not like my solution (partial at least), but if you cc yourself you'll at least see that the message was sent, and is at least readable, having travelled the internet, and been through servers etc. This does not guarantee that the intended recipient will bother to open it and read it, of course, nor that his/her system will collect the pm. I use this technique for regular email as well. Once you have satisfied yourself that things are as you want them to have been, you can delete your own copy from your own pmbox.

This is a very useful technique sometimes, if emails or pms are particularly important, as it avoids you having to wait for ever for a response which was never actually sent properly.

[french frank]

Sorry - only just seen this

I presume I'm missing something obvious here, but I've tried to reply several times to a PM, and there is no evidence that it has gone anywhere (e.g. 'Sent Items' obstinately continues to say '0 items'!).

jean is right. You need to Save your Sent Messages

Go to Settings top right of this page (next to Log Out)

Under My Settings in l-h sidebar, scroll down to General Settings. In the r-h pane, scroll down to Private Messaging, and scrolling below that: click the radio button for Save a copy in my Sent Messages by default.

[Dave2002]

The only snag with the "Save in Sent Messages" method is that messages will be saved even if no copies wend their way across the internet. There really isn't a 100% guaranteed method of knowing that the original message arrives in the recipient's inbox, or that it is read by them, if they don't reply. You'll find out if they do reply, but otherwise you won't.

[french frank]

The only snag with the "Save in Sent Messages" method is that messages will be saved even if no copies wend their way across the internet. There really isn't a 100% guaranteed method of knowing that the original message arrives in the recipient's inbox, or that it is read by them, if they don't reply. You'll find out if they do reply, but otherwise you won't.

I confess this has never risen as a problem. Message tracking is enabled. Why not just request a receipt when you send each message? Just above the Save Sent copies: 'Request a read receipt for this message'. Under message tracking you can check the time it was sent and the time it was read (if it has been). I'm not sure that sending an email copy to yourself will guarantee that the message arrives in someone else's Inbox. And you can't make people read or reply. Some people don't seem to use PMs at all, and probably get quite used to seeing their Notifications link permanently lit up