Email notifications from document library do not get sent

Question

I have set up email notifications for 2 accounts in a document library. Both accounts have Full Control on that library.

After setting up the alerts, the 2 accounts recieved 2 informational emails telling them that notifications for this library were now active. The alerts are configured to fire off at any change which is made.

But no emails ever get sent.

• The immediate jobs timer job is running
• The Windows event log does not show a single error, critical error or warning.
• The SP logs do not contain any hint on a alert being fired, whether it be successfull or failing.

I am at a total loss here. Crawling through the related posts here on SE did not resolve the problem.

EDIT: I forgot to mention an important bit here. There is a custom workflow active on the list, which has the following function:

Whenever an element gets added, the permissions are altered. Only the Author/Creater/Uploader hsa the permission to see this item. PLUS the 2 accounts with full control, whos responsibility is to evalute the documents and further process them. If I add a task to send a mail directly into the workflow the email gets send almost the instant the workflow has finished processing the new list item. An E-Mail alert/notification however does not.

I would prefer to use the built in notification system, so the person responsible for this list can manage his notifications, instead of relying on me to change the workflow, if the requirements change.

05/19/14 Update

After escalating the problem last year it was handed back to me, unsolved. So I did start to dig again. As last time, the notifications itsself do not get send. If I try the same in my sandbox Site collection on the same web application it works. But, if I create a new site collection, the notifications do fail again. To Summarize: Old Site Collections - OK. New Site Collection - NOT OK

Answer 1

You can do the next steps: download - Windows 7/Vista/XP/2003/2010 compatible dummy SMTP server. Sits in the system tray and does not deliver the received messages. And check if emails sends from sharepoint to smtp server. Then if no, write console application to see that all alert properties are correct. Example of code:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("Your site url"))
{
    using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
    {
                    foreach (SPAlert alert in web.Alerts)
                    {
                        if (alert.List.Title == "Your Library Name" && alert.User.LoginName == "Your user login name")
                        {
                            Console.WriteLine("alert filter:" + alert.Filter + ", alert user email:" + alert.User.Email + ", alert DeliveryChannels: " + alert.DeliveryChannels);  // you can add all properties of alert that interesting for you 
                        }
                    }
    }
}