Microsoft Outlook Stuck Outbox

Hello,

Have you ever had a problem with your Microsoft Outlook outbox getting stuck? A stuck outbox can happen for a couple reasons. A common problem is that you are trying to send an e-mail that is too big for your ISP to accept from you, or that the virus scanner on your PC is checking the outgoing e-mail and causing it to hang while trying to send. Here are some troubleshooting steps that you can follow to try and fix the problem.

• Update your virus scanner. Please make sure that your virus scanner program is upgraded to the latest version of the software, and that it has downloaded the latest virus definitions files.
• Are there any messages in the outbox? Delete them.

Try increasing the Server Timeouts setting of the email account. The default setting is 1 minute. To change this setting:

• 1. Start Outlook
• 2. Click Tools -> E-mail Accounts
• 3. Select View or change existing e-mail accounts and Click Next.
• 4. Double Click your email account
• 5. Click More Settings…
• 6. On Advanced tab, change Server Timeouts from 1 minute to 5 minutes

Do you have more than one account set up in Microsoft Outlook?

To use the default delivery account to send e-mail, follow these steps:

• On the Tools menu, point to Send and Receive.
• Click to select the account at the bottom of the list. This is the default account, assuming you restarted Outlook after setting it as the default.

To specify a different account as the default e-mail delivery account:

• On the Tools menu, click Services.
• On the Delivery tab, click to select the account you wish to be the default delivery account.
• Click the Arrow to the right to move the selected account to the top of the list and click OK.
• Quit and restart Outlook.

If all of the above do not fix the problem please try these steps:

• If it is not already running, start Microsoft Outlook.
• Select Work Offline from the File menu. *
• Close and restart Microsoft Outlook. Closing Outlook with the Task Manager and restarting may be necessary.
• Go to your outbox folder and either move or delete the stuck e-mail.
• If you receive an error about not being able to work with the message please repeat the previous 2 steps for restarting and moving/deleting the message until they work. It may take a couple of restarts to work.
• When you are done, uncheck the Work Offline option under the File menu.

* If your version of Microsoft Outlook does not support Work Offline mode, please replace this step with these directions for running Microsoft Outlook in Cached Mode.