e-mail address not valid

[P.Pilcher]

Help please: Mrs P.P. is someone who refuses to attempt to understand computers - but expects hers to do everything that mine does! She is now on her third one, purchased in exasperation because her previous machines packed up. The other month, when this happened she went out and bought an all singing, all dancing Win 7 machine as recommended by the "man" at PC world and despite being told that I didn't understand Win 7 so don't expect much help from me. This of course made no difference and she still asks for help frequently. Her current problem is that no site that she accesses with Explorer 9 will accept her e-mail address when this is requested. This is a totally legitimate one ending in hotmail.com but she can only use it if she uses Explorer to access the hotmail site itself when she can send and receive her e-mails. I naturally thought that this was the fault of the site that she had accessed, but it happens on all (but the hotmail) site that she tries and the problem recurrs when she uses the latest Firefox browser which I managed to upload onto her machine. As far as I can see, her cookies are enabled and I cannot see why her machine should be trapping her e-mail address in some way UNLESS the hotmail site itself is selected, but then, on that site you enter username and password, not [email protected].

Any Ideas? I am baffled

P.P.

[Spurlash2]

...no site that she accesses with Explorer 9 will accept her e-mail address when this is requested.

Are you saying that a website that requires a username and password to log into is not recognising the log on details?

Back to basics; is your wife using the correct username and password? is the spelling correct? No extra dots where there shouldn't be?

Everything seems to point to a user input error. You could also try checking with the websites that you are using the correct login info.

[P.Pilcher]

Thanks Spurlash. A number of websites that she accesses require her to input her e-mail address - usually so that they can reply to the enquiry that she is making. On entering her e-mail address in the form [email protected] the site rejects it as an invalid address and this happens on all sites that she attempts to use. The only time she can use her e-mail address is when she accesses the hotmail site itself where she can read, write and send her e-mails. However, when she uses this site, she does not enter [email protected], but just her username itself and of course her password.
As you can imagine, entering the wrong text was the first thing that occurred to me, but surely a website will be looking for ???????@????????.com and will accept all sorts of varieties provided the @ character is there. After all, when getting insurance quotes I am always making up legitimate false telephone numbers and false e-mail addresses to fool their websites but getting me the information I want without being flooded with unnecessary contacts trying to sell me the insurance.
Is her version of explorer 9 trapping the @ although putting it on screen and sending something else out instead?
I'm still baffled!

P.P.

[Spurlash2]

Not aware of IE9 having an effect on emails.

Can I suggest that you get an alternative email address, such as Gmail, for a test purpose, and see if that works?

[FullOppositeRudder]

It does happen. I have only encountered it once, and I continue to do so on this web page (http://www.vancouver.com/contact/)

Others have tried at this site with the same message as a result: "The email you have provided is not valid". I've tried several of my other email identities - no luck. Having said that, this is the only site I've encountered with that problem, so that's no help in your situation. (The reason for my contact is to plead with them to fix their web cams which are frozen in the past).

To revert to your challenge, I presume that it's possible to see on the site that the address has been identified correctly.
Is there some weird keyboard driver/type which has somehow found its way into the event?
Could it be that the @ character might be the culprit. Or could it be that none of them will accept an @hotmail address for their own reasons?

If she can try an email address with another domain address, perhaps that will work.

I'm puzzled too...
FOR :confused:

[green granite]

I know this sounds stupid but try opening hotmail in a separate tab and copy your address from one that's been sent to you and then paste it into the appropriate box and see if it's accepted.

[Avtrician]

There are a lot of sites that wont accept hotmail addresses due to the spamming threat. They have an automatic filter that rejects them. In these cases its better to have an account with a service provider that gives an address like :- me @ home.com

[P.Pilcher]

Thanks for all your help so far everyone: I am now asking her to use the e-mail address that she has had for ages and ages through our ISP (Plus) but never used - because she likes her hotmail one, and will try the other tricks that you have recommended.

P.P.

[Ancient Observer]

SWMBO uses hotmail.com for years and has not had this problem. .........Her in-box gets lots of stuff from sites where she has used that e-mail address.

In this all singing and all dancing new pc, do you have a way of checking the key board? Any way of trying to get the keyboard to work another machine? (You don't say if it is a desktop or a laptop).

[muppetbum]

Another random thought
Her keyboard is set up correctly?
If it is set up as a US keyboard rather than uk then the @ sign will actually show as something else ( quote marks i think)

I'm sure you've actually looked and checked the @ sign is actually showing as that but as someone who uses both a us and uk keyboard sometimes this can happen

[green granite]

Possible keyboard problems is why I suggested the cut and paste idea.

[P.Pilcher]

Thanks GG and muppetbum. Her new machine is a mini tower and I have swopped the supplied ('orrible) keyboard which used the usual PS2 connection with a logitech one which uses a USB connector. No difference, however I am pretty sure that it is set up as a U.K. keyboard as shift 3 gives a £ symbol not #. (and typing this on my laptop using a U.S. marked keyboard with a U.K. keyboard driver is another interesting task!) I still have to try the recommended cut-and-paste trick

P.P.