How to Check a Wall Receptacle

Turn off the circuit breaker to the wall receptacle. The circuit breaker is in your home's electrical panel box. Sometimes the wall or room circuit breaker is identified on the paper schematic on the inside door panel, and sometimes it is written beside the circuit breaker. If the receptacle is also operated by a wall switch, turn the wall switch to the "off" position.

Adjust the scale on your multimeter to read AC volts. Adjust the settings to read up to 200 volts, if you have a manually adjusting multimeter. Most digital multimeter are now self-ranging, eliminating the need to adjust the voltage range.

Plug the black probe lead into your "Comm" port on the multimeter and the red probe lead to the "V," or volts, port. Depending on your multimeter, the ports for connecting the probe leads are on the front bottom or bottom edge of the unit.

Hold the probes on the plastic portion with your fingers, and insert one probe into each of the outlet slots. This is perfectly safe as long as you only hold the probes by their plastic coverings. Do not, under any circumstances, touch the metal portions of the probes when inserting or removing them from the receptacle. The reading on the multimeter should be between zero and less than one volt.

Remove the screw securing the receptacle cover with a flat-head screwdriver. Pull the cover away from the wall. Find the terminal screws on each side of the receptacle. Touch one probe to each of the terminal screws. If the power is truly off, the scale will return a zero value.