Troubleshooting steps for SharePoint Alerts not Working

Hi Guys,

Found a very helpful article on "Troubleshooting SharePoint Alerts not working" issue.

This Microsoft Technet article has very detailed troubleshooting steps to start with.This can also be very helpful in Interviews as this a very common question in most of the interviews.

Please find the URL below. Also mentioned the detailed steps below ,in case the URL doesn't work.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/13771.troubleshooting-steps-for-sharepoint-alert-email-does-not-go-out.aspx

• Check Alert Settings:

11)      Go to Central Admin àManage Web ApplicationsàGeneral Settings-àClick the drop down of General Settings and select General Settings.

22)      Under Alerts section, check if alerts are ON or OFF.

33)      If already enabled, turn it OFF and then ON.

44)      Click OK.

• Test Connectivity with SMTP server:

11)      Test the connectivity to the SMTP server by using command prompt.

22)      Telnet <SMTP Server Name> 25 (25 is default port for Outgoing mail server).

33)      Check if sender email address and recipient email addresses are correct.

44)      Try sending a Test Mail.

• Check Timer Jobs are running:

11)       Central Administration > Monitoring > Review Job Definitions.

22)       Check whether the "Immediate Alerts" job is enabled for your web application.

33)      check these properties:
                   job-immediate-alerts
                   job-daily-alerts
                   job-weekly-alerts

• Check if the problem is for some users and not all. Then we need to check if those users have subscribed for alerts.

11)      If the issue is for single user, we can try deleting the user and add again.

22)      In order to receive alerts users must have at least read permission on the list.

Run this SQL query to the content db < Select * from Timerlock> this will give us the name of the server which is locking the content database and since when. In order to get rid of that lock
Go to the server that is Locking the content DB and restart the Windows Timer service in that server.