Outlook frozen by huge message Email DISASTER.

[Guest]

I stupidly tried to send a zip archive without checking how big it was, and
now it's stuck in my Outbox - 100 MB. Outlook of course hangs on this, eats
up all my memory. I have to crash it from Task Manager and restart. If I
could get to Tools or even Send/Receive/Disable Send-Receive there might be
hope, but there's only a millisecond between being able to do that and
Outlook freezing up from trying to send the message. My email capability is
shot. I don't want to lose my valuable archives, How can I fix this?
Hopefully without reinstalling..

 

[Roady [MVP]]

See http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/messagestuckinoutbox.htm

 

[Guest]

BTW This is Outlook 2003.
I disconnected my modem before restarting Outlook. That gave me enough time
to go to Send/Receive Settings and Disable Scheduled Send/Receive.
Then I was able to get to Tools/Options/Mail Setup/ Send-Receive/ and
uncheck "Send immediately when connected.Email Settings."
Hope this is helpful to anyone with similar problems.
However I've still got the basic problem - I was able to delete a smaller
message also blocked in the Outbox, just after the 100MB one, but I can't
seem to delete the 100MB message. It just won't delete.

So the problem has now changed to, how to delete this monster message from
my Outbox?

JB

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

BTW This is Outlook 2003.
I disconnected my modem before restarting Outlook. That gave me
enough time
to go to Send/Receive Settings and Disable Scheduled Send/Receive.
Then I was able to get to Tools/Options/Mail Setup/ Send-Receive/
and
uncheck "Send immediately when connected.Email Settings."
Hope this is helpful to anyone with similar problems.
However I've still got the basic problem - I was able to delete a
smaller
message also blocked in the Outbox, just after the 100MB one, but I
can't
seem to delete the 100MB message. It just won't delete.

So the problem has now changed to, how to delete this monster
message from
my Outbox?

Did you read Roady's message posted 10 minutes earlier?

Put Outlook in offline mode (File -> Work Offline).
Exit and reload Outlook.
Delete the item
Put Outlook in online mode.

 

[Guest]

Go to the message and use Shift+Delete and the message will disappear.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

It won't if it is locked. When the message is locked in the send/receive
process Delete and SHIFT+Delete will have the exact same results.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Roady, Rajeev, and Vanguard. Actually I didn't see Roady's message,
but I found his Outlook Howto page by Googling and searching MSKB. Great
page! Thank you! I set up a new "Emergency" PST and directed mail there,
but on restart I the Personal Folders account was locked, "server not
available."
I'm not sure why, but it may have been because I'd started the Inbox Repair
tool as well and it was asking for input, hung up. I restarted Outlook a
couple of times, and suddenly the monster message was in Emergency's Outbox,
where it deleted easily. Finally, Inbox Repair Tool finished - about 719
errors - and then I was able to go back into my main account and set delivery
back to Personal Folders.
HUGE RELIEF. The help is very much appreciated.

 

[Guest]

DAMN! Spoke too soon. I deleted the message from the new "Emergency" PST, but
it was STILL IN THE OTHER PST. It's back and I'm back to square 1.

 

[Guest]

The problem is still there. The message only appeared to be deleted - it was
apparently COPIED to the new outbox and I only deleted the copy, not the
original. The original is locked. I've run Inbox repair twice now and it's
still locked. I can't open ot or delete it. "Outlook has already begun
transmitting this message."

The only thing I haven't tried is rything but the MDBVU32.EXE tool - and
only because I CAN'T DOWNLOAD IT. Nothing happens when I download - well
Norton used to flash "new rules generated for Explorer" (though I'm using
Firefox) until I turned it off. I can't find a site that will do a download
properly.

Help!

 

[Roady [MVP]]

I checked the link; it still works properly. Where do you get stuck at
downloading it? Does it bring you to the Microsoft download site?

 

[Guest]

Hi Roady,

I finally got MDBVU32.EXE to download by disabling Norton Security, enabling
three or four scripts, and clicking the "if it doesn't download in 30 seconds
press here." It's a great tool and your instructions on HowToOutlook were
very helpful especially the White Paper.

However, I didn't have any immediate success, and what looked like final
success wasn't. Neither Delete message nor Abort would work - I kept getting
"MAPI E cannot access" messages. Finally I selected the Outbox and ran Empty
Folder, and that seemed to work - the message went away in the tool view.
But when I jumped happily back into Outlook, there's the message, still
sitting in the Personal Folders Outbox! And now when I try to delete it, I
get "The operation cannot be performed BECAUSE THE OBJECT HAS BEEN DELETED."

I downloaded Outlook SP 3 and ran it but nothing changed. I ran the Detect
and Repair tool from within Outlook and it said it "completed setup
successfully" but nothing changed there either. If I leave the Personal
Folders PST as the default send/receive, the entire computer freezes up very
quickly with 100% CPU usage the minute I hit Send, and I have to hard crash
and reboot. If I use the Emergency PST, I can receive mail, but I can't send
anything. The messages are hung up in the Emergency Outbox. The "deleted"
message is blocking all outgoing mail, even from my IMAP accounts.

Please help me with this. By the way your "Avoid Duplicate Sent Messages"
Rule is great. Do you know how to get Sent messages to go to the Sent folder
in an IMAP account instead of the default Sent folder? Maybe that has
something to do with this, that all my sent messages, from whatever account
(I have a dozen or mer, almost all IMAP, besides my default POP) go to the
default Sent folder. I notice that although you can choose individual
accounts to Receive mail, there's only one Send All button.

Thanks, you're performing a very valuable service.

JB

 

[Guest]

I just ran the demo version of OutlookFix Pro on the Personal Folders file.
It recovered the offending message, still in the Outbox, and when I clicked
on it this popped up:

! TRwMapiMsgStore.OpenEngry failed!An attempt
was made to open an object in read.write mode but
the messagestore is opend in Read Only mode!

Does that provide a clue?

JB

 

[Guest]

Roady: I replied several times to my own last message yesterday with more
data. For more data see those. I'm replying to your last message now,
hoping to flag your attention,

Good news and bad news.

Bad first: All the folders Ibut the default ones in my Personal Folders pst
are no longer visible in Outlook This happened shortly after running the
demo version of Outlook Fix Pro (no Save available, and it was set to saved
to a new separate file by default anyway, so it shouldn't have changed
anything.) In fact I think the folders were visible after I ran it. I reset
Send/Receive permissions and made Emergency pst the default receive file a
couple of times too, and ran MDBVU32.exe a couple more times. I don't really
know what caused it. One thing I did do in Outlook Fix was set the parameter
where the pst file can't be bigger than 18 mgs - my pst, but as I said I
didn't Save.

The pst. file is still visible in the Application Data/Microsoft/Outlook
folder, and it's the same size as before (huge) so I don't think the data is
lost, but none of the many dozens of folders I've created for my mail are
showing up in the View Folders pane. Only the usual Inbox, Outbox, Sent, as
if it were a brand new account.

When I go back into Outlook Fix, 2173 emails, 40 Calendar items, 187
Contacts, 14 Tasks, and 1362 Unknown items show up in both the original and
recovered file. So the data is still there. It's just not showing up in
Outlook properly.

It's not a brand new Personal Folders file, because File/Data File
Management/Personal Folders/Open Folder (and Settings/Filename) point to the
exact same Outlook.pst file, same size.

NEW WRINKLE: Just checked the Contacts. There are TWO Contacts list. The
top one is empty, and the bottom one HOWS TASKS (all deleted, done ones) IN
WHAT SHOULD BE THE CONTACTS PANE The Current View pane changes to a Contact
list view too when this happens.
When I open Tasks, there are two Tasks lists. the top is empty and
the bottom is the same list that shows up at the bottom of Contacts. Calendar
is OK, as well as Notes and Journal, which I don't use that much.
I closed Outlook, and restarted. The double Contacts and Tasks
entries have now disappeared, The deleted Tasks now show up only in Tasks in
Archive Folders

PLEASE HELP.

Good I was finally able to delete the offending 100MB message from the
Personal Folders Outbox. This happened AFTER the bad news above had already
occured, after running MDBVU32.exe for the third or fourth time.
(IpFld->DeleteMessages[] [ON SELECTED MSGS] did it.

Maybe the bad news happened because I didn't notice the IpmMDB(STORE LOGOFF)
window and just X'd out of MDBVU before I opened Outlook again? That
window popped up under another window and I didn't see it till much later. It
looked like I had exited MDBVU32.

PLEASE HELP.

Thanks
JB

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Let's take a different approach here because it is hard to keep up with what
you've all changed and tried up until now.

Create a new mail profile via Control Panel-> Mail
but don't directly reconnect your original pst-file yet.
For more details see http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/newprofile.htm

When you now start Outlook everything should be working correctly with
nothing stuck in the Outbox.
To get your original data back use File-> Open-> Outlook Data File... to
connect to the pst-file you had before. Instead of setting this pst-file as
the default move the data (via drag and drop) from the original pst-file to
the newly created empty one from the new mail profile.

Roady: I replied several times to my own last message yesterday with more
data. For more data see those. I'm replying to your last message now,
hoping to flag your attention,

Good news and bad news.

Bad first: All the folders Ibut the default ones in my Personal Folders
pst
are no longer visible in Outlook This happened shortly after running the
demo version of Outlook Fix Pro (no Save available, and it was set to
saved
to a new separate file by default anyway, so it shouldn't have changed
anything.) In fact I think the folders were visible after I ran it. I
reset
Send/Receive permissions and made Emergency pst the default receive file a
couple of times too, and ran MDBVU32.exe a couple more times. I don't
really
know what caused it. One thing I did do in Outlook Fix was set the
parameter
where the pst file can't be bigger than 18 mgs - my pst, but as I said I
didn't Save.

The pst. file is still visible in the Application Data/Microsoft/Outlook
folder, and it's the same size as before (huge) so I don't think the data
is
lost, but none of the many dozens of folders I've created for my mail are
showing up in the View Folders pane. Only the usual Inbox, Outbox, Sent,
as
if it were a brand new account.

When I go back into Outlook Fix, 2173 emails, 40 Calendar items, 187
Contacts, 14 Tasks, and 1362 Unknown items show up in both the original
and
recovered file. So the data is still there. It's just not showing up in
Outlook properly.

It's not a brand new Personal Folders file, because File/Data File
Management/Personal Folders/Open Folder (and Settings/Filename) point to
the
exact same Outlook.pst file, same size.

NEW WRINKLE: Just checked the Contacts. There are TWO Contacts list. The
top one is empty, and the bottom one HOWS TASKS (all deleted, done ones)
IN
WHAT SHOULD BE THE CONTACTS PANE The Current View pane changes to a
Contact
list view too when this happens.
When I open Tasks, there are two Tasks lists. the top is empty and
the bottom is the same list that shows up at the bottom of Contacts.
Calendar
is OK, as well as Notes and Journal, which I don't use that much.
I closed Outlook, and restarted. The double Contacts and Tasks
entries have now disappeared, The deleted Tasks now show up only in Tasks
in
Archive Folders

PLEASE HELP.

Good I was finally able to delete the offending 100MB message from
the
Personal Folders Outbox. This happened AFTER the bad news above had
already
occured, after running MDBVU32.exe for the third or fourth time.
(IpFld->DeleteMessages[] [ON SELECTED MSGS] did it.

Maybe the bad news happened because I didn't notice the IpmMDB(STORE
LOGOFF)
window and just X'd out of MDBVU before I opened Outlook again? That
window popped up under another window and I didn't see it till much later.
It
looked like I had exited MDBVU32.

PLEASE HELP.

Thanks
JB
---------------------------------------

I checked the link; it still works properly. Where do you get stuck at
downloading it? Does it bring you to the Microsoft download site?

 

[Guest]

Thanks Roady.

I set up a new profile, but I wasn't sure what you meant by "don't directly
connect your original pst file yet." I didn't want to risk messing with the
old .pst improperly, so I didn't even set up an email account for the new
profile. I figured I'd try getting the data from the old .pst first, and I
set up the email capability later.

So when I opened Outlook, again I deferred the account setup - confirming
"no email capability, will not be able to send or receive email."

But ONLY the new account shows up in Folder List now. I went to File/Data
File Management as you suggested. The .pst for this account is now listed as
Outlook(1).pst . When I Open Folder to the list of .pst's I also see a file
named Outlook.pst - but the size is now drastically reduced to 1,009 KB.
The old Outlook.pst has apparently been converted to Outlook.BAK (1,072,369
KB) - but I can't open this file. Windows says it needs to know what program
created it. I would choose Outlook, but I'm hestitant to to try to open it
before talking to you. (Should I choose Outlook, or rename it PST first?)

To be safe, I made a copy of this BAK file in a new subfolder within
Microsoft/Outlook.

Please walk me through what I should do, now step by step.

Thank you so much for your patience.
JB

 

[Guest]

Hi Roady.
Note this is my SECOND reply, written just after the last one and building
on it. To summarize that first reply:

1. I opened the new profile without setting up the account for email at all.
2. I misread your instructions and opened File/Data File Management instead
of File/Open/Outlook Data File.
3. I found that the old .pst had been renamed Outlook .BAK.
4. I saved the .BAK file in a new subfolder
5. I replied asking for further instructions.

I just renamed the .BAK file Oct-Outlook.pst and opened it per your original
instructions with File/Open/Outlook Data File. ALL the data - contacts,
emails, all of it - is recovered! THANK YOU!

There are now TWO "Personal Folders" entries in the Folder list.
One - Outlook(1).pst - is empty, and the other one, the renamed one,-
Outlook/oldpst/Oct-Outlook.pst - is the original huge file.

What 's the best way now to set up the proper for email and have everything
work properly, including access to all my IMAP accounts? I'd like to get
rid of the new empty Personal Folders file of course. Does it make any
difference to have the old file in a subfolder? I should really know all
this by heart by now, but obviously there are some big gaps in my
understanding, particularly re: archives and working with pst. I should have
gotten certified a long time ago, but there never seemed to be time or money
for it. Your site and help is incredibly helpful. Lots of good karma
building up for you.

JB
PS. Does ".pst" stand for "Personal Store" and ".ost" for "Offline Store"?
--------------------

Let's take a different approach here because it is hard to keep up with what
you've all changed and tried up until now.

Create a new mail profile via Control Panel-> Mail
but don't directly reconnect your original pst-file yet.
For more details see http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/newprofile.htm

When you now start Outlook everything should be working correctly with
nothing stuck in the Outbox.
To get your original data back use File-> Open-> Outlook Data File... to
connect to the pst-file you had before. Instead of setting this pst-file as
the default move the data (via drag and drop) from the original pst-file to
the newly created empty one from the new mail profile.

Roady: I replied several times to my own last message yesterday with more
data. For more data see those. I'm replying to your last message now,
hoping to flag your attention,

Good news and bad news.

Bad first: All the folders Ibut the default ones in my Personal Folders
pst
are no longer visible in Outlook This happened shortly after running the
demo version of Outlook Fix Pro (no Save available, and it was set to
saved
to a new separate file by default anyway, so it shouldn't have changed
anything.) In fact I think the folders were visible after I ran it. I
reset
Send/Receive permissions and made Emergency pst the default receive file a
couple of times too, and ran MDBVU32.exe a couple more times. I don't
really
know what caused it. One thing I did do in Outlook Fix was set the
parameter
where the pst file can't be bigger than 18 mgs - my pst, but as I said I
didn't Save.

The pst. file is still visible in the Application Data/Microsoft/Outlook
folder, and it's the same size as before (huge) so I don't think the data
is
lost, but none of the many dozens of folders I've created for my mail are
showing up in the View Folders pane. Only the usual Inbox, Outbox, Sent,
as
if it were a brand new account.

When I go back into Outlook Fix, 2173 emails, 40 Calendar items, 187
Contacts, 14 Tasks, and 1362 Unknown items show up in both the original
and
recovered file. So the data is still there. It's just not showing up in
Outlook properly.

It's not a brand new Personal Folders file, because File/Data File
Management/Personal Folders/Open Folder (and Settings/Filename) point to
the
exact same Outlook.pst file, same size.

NEW WRINKLE: Just checked the Contacts. There are TWO Contacts list. The
top one is empty, and the bottom one HOWS TASKS (all deleted, done ones)
IN
WHAT SHOULD BE THE CONTACTS PANE The Current View pane changes to a
Contact
list view too when this happens.
When I open Tasks, there are two Tasks lists. the top is empty and
the bottom is the same list that shows up at the bottom of Contacts.
Calendar
is OK, as well as Notes and Journal, which I don't use that much.
I closed Outlook, and restarted. The double Contacts and Tasks
entries have now disappeared, The deleted Tasks now show up only in Tasks
in
Archive Folders

PLEASE HELP.

Good I was finally able to delete the offending 100MB message from
the
Personal Folders Outbox. This happened AFTER the bad news above had
already
occured, after running MDBVU32.exe for the third or fourth time.
(IpFld->DeleteMessages[] [ON SELECTED MSGS] did it.

Maybe the bad news happened because I didn't notice the IpmMDB(STORE
LOGOFF)
window and just X'd out of MDBVU before I opened Outlook again? That
window popped up under another window and I didn't see it till much later.
It
looked like I had exited MDBVU32.

PLEASE HELP.

Thanks
JB
---------------------------------------

I checked the link; it still works properly. Where do you get stuck at
downloading it? Does it bring you to the Microsoft download site?



-----

The problem is still there. The message only appeared to be deleted -
it
was
apparently COPIED to the new outbox and I only deleted the copy, not
the
original. The original is locked. I've run Inbox repair twice now and
it's
still locked. I can't open ot or delete it. "Outlook has already begun
transmitting this message."

The only thing I haven't tried is rything but the MDBVU32.EXE tool -
and
only because I CAN'T DOWNLOAD IT. Nothing happens when I download -
well
Norton used to flash "new rules generated for Explorer" (though I'm
using
Firefox) until I turned it off. I can't find a site that will do a
download
properly.

Help!

 

[Guest]

Latest update (third reply to your last post)

1. Created new profile but didn't assign email capability.
2. Opened copy of original PST, from renamed Outlook.BAK file, as new Data
File. This has all the data in it.
3. Set this as default send receive folder.
4. BUT OUTLOOK HANGS AGAIN - BECAUSE THE OFFENDING 1OO MB MESSAGE HAS NOW
REAPPEARED IN THE RENAMED .PST! (from the ,BAK file, see earlier replies
today.

Thus I'm back to square one again. Will try to get this out of the file with
MDBVU32 again.

Please advise any other ideas.
Thanks.
JB

 

[F. H. Muffman]

Latest update (third reply to your last post)

1. Created new profile but didn't assign email capability.
2. Opened copy of original PST, from renamed Outlook.BAK file, as new Data
File. This has all the data in it.
3. Set this as default send receive folder.
4. BUT OUTLOOK HANGS AGAIN - BECAUSE THE OFFENDING 1OO MB MESSAGE HAS NOW
REAPPEARED IN THE RENAMED .PST! (from the ,BAK file, see earlier replies
today.

Thus I'm back to square one again. Will try to get this out of the file
with
MDBVU32 again.

So, I don't have any of the rest of the thread handy, so let me ask a couple
questions...

1) Before you do step 3... what happens if you try to delete the item in
the Outbox?
2) If you can't get mdbvu32 to work... Just copy everything (except the
outbox, obviously) from the old pst to a new pst and get back to life.

 

[Guest]

VERY LATEST UPDATE.

ALL SEEMS RESOLVED NOW.

Tried using MDBVU32.EXE to delete the newly popped-up message. Didn't seem
to work, but when I reopened Outlook with the .pst as an additional file in
Folder List - not default- I was able to delete the message. It moved to
Deleted Messages and I was able to delete it permanently IN OUTLOOK. I'm
keeping the brand new Personal Folders PST as default, and will use the huge
old one as an an active archive.
Please tell me how to keep archived folders from being deleted automatically
after a certain period of time. I think that can be done, but how? I want
to keep my archived messages forever.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, F.H. I was finally able to delete it permanently. MDBVU32 didn't
seem to work but I was able to delete it permanently in Outlook when the
folder wasn't set up as default send/receive. I'm keeping the old folder as
an archive now - it was huge.
JB