Outlook 2003 messages w/ large attachments

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sam
  • Start date Start date
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Sam

I have a couple of users that use POP3 mail and when they
send a msg with a large attachment, the msg is sent
multiple times and the msg never moves to the sent box.
What could be the issue? I have had them make sure that
they are not set to automatically send and recieve so
there should not be an issue of the msg being sent again
before it is sent the first time. I have also had them
disable any virus scan of outgoing e-mail to see if this
is an issue and neither of these seems to resolve the
issue. Anyone else had this one? Oh, all updates have
been installed, to XP Pro and to Office 2003.
 
How big is the attachment? Have you checked with your ISP to see if it
exceeds their limits? The recipient's ISP to see if it does the same there?
 
gamerzinfo said:
I am having the same issue. Did you get it resolved?
Click to expand...

The two usual causes of this is 1) a timeout in the connection between the
SMTP client and server occurring while the message is still being
transmitted or 2) a send/receive interval that is set so low that the
message transmission from one send/receive isn't finished by the time the
next send/receive takes place.

The two best solutions are to 1) Increase the send/receive interval
(Tools>Options>Mail Setup>Send/Receive) and the server timeout value (on the
Advanced tab of the account properties pages) and 2) disable any mail
scanning, especially outbound scanning, by anti-virus or anti-SPAM programs.
 
The two usual causes of this is 1) a timeout in the connection between the
SMTP client and server occurring while the message is still being
transmitted or 2) a send/receive interval that is set so low that the
message transmission from one send/receive isn't finished by the time the
next send/receive takes place.

The two best solutions are to 1) Increase the send/receive interval
(Tools>Options>Mail Setup>Send/Receive) and the server timeout value (on the
Advanced tab of the account properties pages) and 2) disable any mail
scanning, especially outbound scanning, by anti-virus or anti-SPAM programs.
Click to expand...

I used to think this as well, but it didn't make sense based on the code,
which I kept going through trying to figure out how this could happen -
Outlook should never start sending a message that is already in the process
of being sent. Some MVPs said that this sometimes happens when A/V
programs scan outgoing mail. Thinking about it for a while, it occured to
me that the following scenario might explain what is going on:

1) Outlook sends the message via SMTP, but the A/V program, acting as a
proxy, receives the message and starts processing it.

2) The A/V program (for whatever reason) takes longer than Outlook's
timeout interval (default of 1 minute) to process the message, so Outlook
drops the connection. It has never received the "OK" response for the
"DATA" command, so it requeues the message for sending later.

3) The A/V program finishes processing the message, tries to send the "OK"
response to Outlook, but there is no longer a connection. The A/V program
sends the message to the ISP's server anyway.

4) Repeat, starting at (1).

This explains why increasing the timeout can help (it gives the A/V program
more time to process the message before Outlook gives up), but the real
solution is to turn off outgoing message scanning by the A/V program.

[Actually, the *real* solution is for A/V programs to do Internet protocols
better, but that's not something a user has control over...]
 
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