Unsent messages in outbox

G

Guest

I have unsent messages in my outbox. I get an error message regarding the
POP3 or something like that. What could the problem be?
 
G

Guest

Michelle said:
I have unsent messages in my outbox. I get an error message regarding the
POP3 or something like that. What could the problem be?

have the same problem I don't think I'm opening my account properly do I
sign in with my msn account e-mail address. and follow throught as if I were
getting mail in and out through msn?
 
B

bjr

I had this problem (cannot connect to smtp...- the ISP email computer)
occur on my wife's machine yesterday when the comcast highspeed went
out for a while. I copies the contents of the message, deleted the
message in the outbox, and then had her recreate the message for
sending. Message then was sent .
 
G

Guest

When I try to delete the 1st message in the OUTBOX that seems to be holding
up the sending of subsequent messages, I get a message "Unknown error has
occurred". Then another box drops down with the message "Deleting messages"
but none get deleted.
 
G

Gary VanderMolen

Welcome to the club!

There are a few workarounds floating around, but several people
have reported severe corruption of their message store afterwards,
so I don't recommend the current crop of workarounds.

If you really can't send with Windows Mail due to the stuck message
in the Outbox, then either send that message with web mail, or else
install another email program like Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook.

Gary VanderMolen
 
G

Guest

Michelle - Did your WinMail ever send any messages at all?

If not, contacting your internet service provider (ISP) is likely needed to
get their account settings worked out. They are too arcane & specific to
discuss here. I've spent a lot of time doing that with some installations,
once it works you're good to go.

If so, then as Gary replied, there are workarounds here to fix a known
symptom for an issue that MS/Vista installations have where randomly a
message suddenly gets stuck in a WinMail box for no apparent reason. If it
is the outbox, it blocks sending more mail. You have to be a little more
than novice to implement the corrective steps though. See what you can find
in other threads around here. Search on "outbox" or "stuck".

I think Gary is referring to not recommending the threads that talk about
deleting only a certain 'MessageStor' file because there are posts pointing
out trouble & no fix is experienced with that but I'm not knowledgeable
enough. MS had me delete the whole WinMail email storage folder named 'Local
Folder' and have the system regenerate it. So far that has not caused me any
trouble & fixed my sending issue.
 
R

R. C. White, MVP

Hi, Michelle.

If you get that error message again, please copy it and post it here
verbatim. Even if it is confusing to you (and maybe to me), it will mean a
lot to the folks here who can help you. (POP3 is the current version of
Post Office Protocol, or something like that.)

Your mail server name may not be correctly entered in Tools | Accounts, on
the Server tab in Properties for your server. News servers don't always
require passwords, but Mail servers usually do, and some of them require
other security features, too, like SPA. And some mail servers will refuse
to send mail unless you are logged on to them directly, rather than through
another portal, even though they might download incoming mail for you.

If you are still having the problem, please post back with more details.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail in Vista Ultimate x64)
 
G

Guest

when i try to delete the message in the outbox i get this messare:

An unknown error has occured. (with an OK box)

If i let it sit for severan seconds, a new box comes up:

Deleting Message.

this sits there for ever, never deleting the message.

this message was sent out ok i beleave, if i go back and look at the message
it says:

Message could not be displayed
Windows Mail encountered an unexpected problem while displaying this
message. Check your computer for low memory or low disk space and try again.

this is getting annoining... please help to delete this.
thanks.
paul.............
 
S

Steve Cochran

The only clear solution to this at the moment is to go to the Windows Mail
directory (Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder) and move everything
from that directory to another directory. Then WinMail will start fresh.
You can then use File | Import | Messages and point to the directory to
which you moved the message store to recover the messages.

steve

"can't delete outbox message." <can't delete outbox
(e-mail address removed)> wrote in message
 
G

Gary VanderMolen

For now, forget about deleting that stuck message, and ignore it.
Hopefully MS will come out with a fix soon.

Gary VanderMolen
 
G

Guest

Can anyone tell me if MS and the Vista/MS Mail team is trying to resolve this
by an update? Troubled that a release should have such basic useability
issues. While hysteria about security continues, we can not send an e mail,
or count on the basics of service. Please let us all know if this is on the
horizon. Makes me long for outlook express. anyone know if that is compatible
with Vista? If I'd known this was such a problem, I'd have kept my old slow
reliable cpu.
 
R

R. C. White, MVP

Hi, Steve.

Now it has happened to ME! :>(

I've tried all the solutions that I and you and others have suggested. No
joy.

The solution in your last post (create new store folder, then import from
old) works - but too well! It imports the defective Outbox along with the
good stuff, so I'm back in the same place as before (and it took a couple of
hours to do the Import from/to my one computer). Except that now I have a
second copy of my Message Store that I can play with while my original stays
intact.

Some details: Windows Mail has worked well for me since midway through the
Vista beta, and since I installed Vista Ultimate x64 on my AMD Athlon 64 X2
5000+ system after I upgraded it in December. Until last Thursday, 4/5/07.
Then I Replied to a message from my daughter-in-law. But there was an
unrelated glitch just as I hit the Send button and I panicked and hit the
Big Red X to exit WM in the middle of the Send operation. When I restarted
WM, everything was normal EXCEPT that my Reply was still in the Outbox,
still marked Unread. But when I tried to view the message, WM told me,
"Message could not be displayed
Windows Mail encountered an unexpected problem while displaying this
message. Check your computer for low memory or low disk space and try
again." The "low memory or low disk space" verbiage is pure boilerplate
garbage; there is plenty of memory and disk space. Surprisingly, that
message IS in my Sent Items, (and she confirms that she received it) so it
did go out, but WM got interrupted before completing its internal
bookkeeping, so it has not cleared it from my Outbox. The mistake is my
fault, I think, but WM should give me a graceful way - or at least, SOME
WAY - to correct my mistake.

That is the last email that I've been able to send from WM. Every email
I've tried to send since then has stayed in my Outbox, waiting for that
stuck message to clear. Newsgroup posts get sent normally, so I expect you
will see this one. I've been able to send email from Outlook 2007. For a
couple of days, I worried that I was also not receiving email, but
apparently my usually-active mailing lists were simply not sending me any
mail over the Easter weekend. I've contacted my ISP (Grande Communications,
headquartered here in San Marcos), both by phone and by Mail2web; the
problem is not at their end, it's here in WM on my computer. My server
settings, password, etc., are correct and work for everything except sending
email via WM.

My mail store (..\Vista) has been duplicated, as I said above (into
...\Vista2) (and both versions are set to Leave messages on server). so I
have some files to safely play with. But I don't know which ones to tackle.
So far as I can tell, my manipulations have not lost any messages, but I've
not been able to delete that stuck one, either. I've deleted the ..\Local
Folders\Outbox folder, both from Windows Explorer and from an
Administrator:Command Prompt. First I deleted the few contents of the
Outbox folder, then I deleted the entire folder. No problem with deleting
it, but when I restart WM, the Outbox has been rebuilt. I expected that,
but that stuck message is back again, and I did not expect that!

I think the Mail Team needs to take a serious look at this one. Some bits
way down in the guts of WM need to be flipped to let us delete the
undeletable message in the Outbox. You are the only person outside MS that
I can think of who might be able to figure out which bits, Steve. I hope
you have the time to do it.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail in Vista Ultimate x64)
 
S

Steve Cochran

Hi RC,

Okay, that was very helpful. Do you have any antivirus sw on the computer?

I've tried various things to duplicate it and I couldn't, your step was very
helpful.

You have a copy of OEX (check your inbox. <G>). See if you can delete it
from the outbox display in OEX. That would help to know if that's possible.
Then I could write a small routine to clear the outbox that way.

Otherwise you can reset the message store by moving its entire contents to a
different directory and then reopening WinMail.

cheers,

steve
 
R

R. C. White, MVP

Hi, Steve.

SUCCESS! ;<)

Today I tried the move-then-Import-back routine, as you instructed a couple
of messages ago. But this time, I did it right - and it worked! But it
sure took a lot longer than it should.

The step that I messed up on before was the Move. I had closed Windows Mail
and opened a Command Prompt window and used Robocopy to Move the files from
my Mail Store from the ..\Vista folder to a new ..\Vista2 folder. Today, I
closed WM and then used Windows Explorer to do the Move. I highlighted the
Vista folder, then used <Ctr.>+A to Select All its files and folders. Then
I used the mouse to drag them to my new Vista4 folder. The actual Move took
only a couple of seconds, since Explorer simply changes the pointer to the
folders, rather than actually moving them.

When I started WM again, I clicked Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store
Folder to be sure that it was still pointing to the (now-empty) Vista
folder. Then I clicked File | Import | Messages and pointed to my new
Vista4 folder. I chose to import All folders. I should have been more
selective because it took a looong time to import all my newsgroup posts.
And then I had to recreate my News accounts, resubscribe to NGs, and
re-download the posts again, anyhow. And I had to delete the ones that I
had imported. It took about an hour to Import everything, and then most of
an hour to move the folders back from Imported Folders to Local Folders.

The good news is that when the Import was finished, my Outbox was empty.
And my emails now go out normally. ;<)

Thanks again.

Now look for my latest dilemma: Signatures. That's what jammed my Outbox
in the first place - I think.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail in Vista Ultimate x64)
 
R

R. C. White, MVP

Hi, Steve.

Oh, I forgot to answer your question: No, I don't have any antivirus
running on this computer.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail in Vista Ultimate x64)
 
G

Guest

I have the same problem...trouble is I can't even find my outbox to delete
them so the same two messages have come up for a week now...Help!!! I can
send all other messages. At the time the two messages wouldn't go, I didn't
have my send email protocol entered right.
Willow
 
F

Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM

Willow said:
I have the same problem...trouble is I can't even find my outbox to delete
them so the same two messages have come up for a week now...Help!!! I can
send all other messages. At the time the two messages wouldn't go, I
didn't
have my send email protocol entered right.
Willow


I answered one of your other posts.
 
G

Guest

I open up options in windows mail, but there is no maintenance area to go
into. Where is maintenance located???
 
F

Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM

It's under the Advanced tab.
I don't know what this has to do with the messages you quoted.
 

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