message won't leave Outbox; recipient has already receivd 100 copi

[Guest]

I attempted to send 2 messages earlier this morning. Although they have never
left the Outlook outbox, the recipients of my messages have phoned me to
indicate that they have already received in excess of 100 copies of the
messages. I have scanned my system with Norton AV and I don't have a virus. I
looked at the Extend.dat file within the Outlook files, and the last
modification to the file was back in July.
I logged onto themailbox which is part of my account with my ISP, Comcast,
and although there is mail in my inbox, it has not been transferred to
Outlook.
I attempted to delete the files in my outbox but was not allowed to do so.
When I restarted Outlook, one of my reminders came on. When I tried to
dismiss it, I received an error message indicating that my .pst file was at
maximum size and the reminder could not be dismissed as a result thereof. I
am at wits end. Can anyone help?

 

[Guest]

I should have noted that when I went into the tools menu and tested my
settings, the message indicated that everything was working fine.

 

[Guest]

I am not sure why this is significant, but I observed in reading through the
other posts on this newsgroup that one of the MVPs asked if the messages in
the OUtbox were italicized. They are.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

extend.dat has nothing to do with sending... can you delete the message? did
you try turning off email scanning in Norton?

to delete it: http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/stuck_message.htm

 

[Guest]

Thanks Diane. It appears that the problem was being caused by my Outlook
bumping up against the 2 GB limit that I have read about in other posts on
this board. I deleted about 400 old messages and my OUtlook has begun to work
normally again. in fact I was allowed to delete the 2 messages in my outbox
that were causing all of the trouble.
I do have a follow up question however. One of the message boards indicated
that unless you "compact" the .pst file after you delete the old messages,
the program still sees your .pst file as 2 GB in size. I would seem to be the
exception to that rule, as my OUtlook is now working fine. Moreover, I can't
even find the compact command. The best that I can do is find "compress
contents to save disk space" which is accessed when I right click on the .pst
file and click "properties" and then click on the advanced tab. Is this the
same as "compact"? Do I even need to do it? Thanks again for your help. While
you are responding, can you briefly define for me the difference between a
..pst file and a .ost file? Thanks