Being mobile with my laptop and various internet connections (wi fi spots, 3G, client networks etc.) I find that sometimes my Outlook email get stuck in the Outbox and refuse to leave !
As you know whenever you send an email, it goes into your Outlook’s Outbox folder and wait there until you have an Internet connection. When you hit the Send and Receive button the email leaves your computer and it is sent.
HOWEVER, there are times when the email simply will not leave the Outbox and will not send. You try to delete it and you get some obscure email that you can not delete this as it is in the process of being sent.
So what do you do ?
Glad you asked -
1.Firstly, Open Outlook 2007, Click on File menu and Select Work Offline. This stops outlook from trying to send anything.
2. Open the Outbox folder and now you can either simply Delete the message or you can drag the message out of the Outbox and drop it into your Drafts Folder (or any other folder).
3. Click on File and deselect Work Offline (this will now put Outlook into Online mode again to receive and send messages again)
4. If you moved your email to the Drafts folder, you will then need to go to that folder, open that email, and then press the Send button again.
This should take care of this email problem and your email should flow !
thanks.
By: Alex Vorn on May 13, 2008
at 9:20 pm
I heard about not bad application-fix my outlook, can be work with damage data in Microsoft Outlook, possible it may recover corrupted contacts with are sharing it, also do something read (detect and recover) data from the selected *.pst file, work with storing emails, business and personal contacts, as well as other important information, such as appointments, tasks and notes.
By: zlatan24 on October 2, 2008
at 11:49 am
I have seen this before BUT I have a nasty one now that I can’t see in the Outbox! I think it came from trying to delete it (when it was visible) while Outlook was trying to send it. Any ideas for this one?
By: Gene on March 24, 2009
at 1:14 am
Nasty one – what you can try do isis run the outlook reset switch. NOTE: this should not do anything to your email but make a backup of them just to be safe.
the switches are listed here : http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP012185891033.aspx
the one I would try use is /resetfolders
So assuming Outlook is installed in the defualt location on a Vista machine, you would run: “c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe” /resetfolders
chekc out that link for more info and how to use the switches…
By: thetechieguy on March 24, 2009
at 6:42 am
YOU ARE THE BEST!!! You saved me $200!!! A large email had been stuck in my outbox for a week now slowing down my system!!! Aggghhh…so frustrating! Then I googled my problem and your website came up and I fixed in literally in 5 seconds!!!! Yeah!!!
By: Diana Gomez on May 14, 2009
at 2:13 am
Thanks!!! for the help. I have been 2 days trying to figure out how to get the email out of the outbox. I kind of feel stupid that I did not think of going off line. Again thanks
By: Billi jo on May 21, 2009
at 4:02 pm
It worked wonderfully, as an ISP Tech I use Google to find solutions that are quick, easy and work and this worked perfectly!
By: Rob Turner on May 27, 2009
at 10:45 pm
You ROCKS!!!!
BEST TIP EVER!!!!
Cheers from Portugal! =)
By: Jorge on October 2, 2009
at 6:31 pm
The resetfolders did’nt work but making a little change to a contact and saving it did the trick for me.
By: maarten bodegom on October 4, 2009
at 11:34 am
Thanks … simple once you know how!!
By: Liz on November 18, 2009
at 3:24 pm
Thank you! I’ve had a email stuck all day and it’s been slowing my outlook down beacuse it’s a large file. Your tip saved the day!
By: Nicole on July 14, 2010
at 10:48 pm
Thank you so much, just spent several very frustrating hours not getting work done trying to solve this proble.
The drag to another folder and then delete is an excellent tip
By: Jay on September 16, 2010
at 1:18 pm
Just called Outlook Office who told me it would cost £199 to sort out this 1 minute problem. By the beard of Zeus – Thank god for website telling me how to get rid of the email stuck in outbox. Many thanks!
By: Rich Andrews on November 16, 2010
at 11:39 am
I use Outlook 2007 in a Windows 7 Professional environment. I had just got past the pop3 issue and Yahoo plus when all of a sudden, my outgoing mail won’t send any mail. I can delete it from the outbox, problem is, it won’t send any mail I send. It brings in all the mail but will not send anything. I have tried everything…Safemode, online/offline, you name it. I don’t know what to do. Microsoft is no help. SMH.
By: jnyobe48 on June 26, 2011
at 2:16 am
so the problem is Outgoing mail.
What you need to do is confirm that SMTP setting of your service provider AND the port (found under Internet Email setting, More Setting and Advance).
Default is 25 but your service provider could have something different.
Once you have that, go back and click the button: Test Account Setting – this should both send and receive a test mail.
If it doesn’t work, then it might be your Firewall that is blocking you – switch that off for a second, quickly run the Test Account Setting and see what that does. Don’t forget to switch the Firewall back on again.
By: thetechieguy on June 26, 2011
at 4:25 pm
Thank you so much… I had to go back in and change the incoming port to 465 and outgoing to 995. I had to enable SSL and authentication. I did the test email, and it worked. Thank you! Problem solved….better than sex. Lol! I’d smoke a cigarette but I quit! Lol!
By: jnyobe48 on June 26, 2011
at 8:28 pm
Awesome !
Glad “I made you look” in the spot that triggered the PORT and the SSL.
I am sure this will save other people a lot of hair-pulling !
By: thetechieguy on June 26, 2011
at 8:47 pm
Wowwww finally i was abble to delete the email with your help!! THANKS!
By: steph on August 4, 2011
at 9:30 pm
I use a proprietary software in my business which generates e-receipts and e-letters to my customers. Those letters are sent through Outlook 2007 but are getting stuck in my outbox and prompting error message “Cannot display the folder. ‘IDSMail OLE Server (32-bit)’ exited without properly closing your Outlook data file ‘C:\Users\AAAStorage\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst’. ‘Microsoft Office Outlook” must be restarted. If the error recurs, contact support for “IDSMail OLE Server (32-bit)’ for assistance. I must then shut down Outlook and reopen in order to initiate send/receive, but I can still only move messages from outbox to sent 3 at a time prior to shutting down. Any suggestions?
By: Penny on August 14, 2011
at 6:46 pm
as this is propriety very difficult to diagnose as the developers could have done anything.
It sounds like the software is not closing/ accessing the PST file.
Basic things to try:
1. Does it work from another computer ? install it on another machine and see what happens. If it works, then its a local computer issue
2. Have you tried reinstalling the software ?
3. Can you open the outlook.pst ? is that corrupt or readable ?
4. Do you have outlook running on that computer ? if yes – can you send normal emails with no problem ?
just some things off the top of my head…
By: thetechieguy on August 17, 2011
at 9:07 am
(received via email)
I have had a large email stuck in my out box for over a month now. It was very troublesome and could not be removed. I found your website and followed the instructions found at “Email is Stuck—an Outlook 2007 Fix.” I simply moved the email to my “drafts” file per your instructions and then deleted it from there. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!
Grace,
Doug
By: thetechieguy on November 6, 2011
at 8:51 pm
I Love you! Thanks- that was so amazingly easy.
I wish all cures would take 2 clicks!
By: Scott on February 3, 2012
at 2:42 am
Genius. I have been hassling with this Outlook problem through too many iterations of Office. I have tried everything I could think of. While you didn’t offer the ‘nuts and bolts’ cause of the is ‘stuck email outbox problem’, you offered a solution that I haven’t been able to find in over 10 years. Thanks a lot.
By: David on March 23, 2012
at 4:40 am
Perfect!! It worked. Thanks for saving me the time to rewrite the email again. I appreciate your knowledge and I appreciate you sharing it.
Thank you so much.
By: Sigal Zoldan (@SigalZoldan) on April 14, 2012
at 8:21 pm
Had this problem for over a week and …YES!, I went to Microsoft’s web site to find the solution. Did I… NO!, found it here. Liron, thanks, you did what Microsoft couldn’t. {being pushed towards APPLE products}
Liron A+
Microsoft F-
By: David on July 2, 2012
at 10:25 pm
Thanks for sharing the solution.Generally, this problem occurs when there is some connection issue with server, an anti virus application is running and prohibiting the Outlook from sending a email. Another possible cause could be the size of Outlook data files has increased or size of the email,you are trying to send is very large. To fix this problem, plz check the following measures:
1) Check your connection
2) Stop AV program from being scanning the Outlook folders
3) Keep the optimum size of email and PST files
4) If Outlook PST’s size is too large, try to split it by using some application because it may corrupt your data and you may lose your important data forever. One such popular utility is here
thanks again
Robert
By: Robert on September 8, 2012
at 2:52 am
Great tips – the Anti Virus and the PST file size certainly compete for attention.
By: thetechieguy on September 8, 2012
at 6:43 pm
The absolute number 1 reason Outlook has trouble sending / receiving in my experience is that something has caused it to crash or it didn’t close cleanly and the outlook.exe process is still running but without a window to show for it. I use CTRL+ALT+DEL and force outlook.exe closed and reopen the program and it always fixes it. THe cause of it hanging in the first place is a mystery, but in the cases I’ve seen may be due to the pst file being on a shared network drive and some kind of network problem causes a disconnection. Outlook isn’t really designed to have its pst file on a network share however I’ve seen it done on many many PCs and Outlook seems robust enough to handle it, albeit with these occasional issues.
By: rickncn on October 17, 2012
at 9:31 pm
It worked!!!! Thank you.
By: TD on November 14, 2012
at 5:07 am
[...] Email is Stuck – an Outlook 2007 Fix (29 COMMENTS) [...]
By: TheTechieGuy: 2012 year in blogging « The Techie Guy – Liron Segev on January 1, 2013
at 12:10 pm
Outbox sends some and does not send some. Work Offline/Online didn’t work but this did: 1.) Select the faulty email in Outbox; 2.) Right-click and Forward it. The icon appears in Outbox as a sealed envelope with the original addressees. 3.) Click the Send command on upper left hand corner; 4.) Click Send/Receive . The Forwarded mail sends and you can delete the unsent one. Clumsy, but it works
By: Dean on January 7, 2013
at 11:23 am
Thank you so much, that sorted my problem so quickly … you are a star!
By: Joanne on February 20, 2013
at 12:54 pm