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How can I stop a message in my Outlook outbox that won't send?

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Summary: Once a message goes into your outbox, Outlook tries to send it. While it's trying, there's little you can do. So the trick is to force it to stop trying.

How can I stop, delete or move an email that gets stuck in my outbox? The email I have here is 24.5 MB, which is apparently too big. The problem is that it's stopping all my other emails that I want to send from going out! I use Microsoft Outlook 2003.

It's been a while, but I've experienced this myself. Your ISP rejects the email because it's too big, only to have Outlook keep trying to send the mail because it doesn't realize that the error is fatal.

There are a couple of ways to deal with this issue. Surprisingly, the most low-tech solution is what I've found to be the most effective.

Let's say your ISP has a cap of five megabytes on email message size. You start sending your 24.5 megabyte behemoth, and five megabytes in your ISP's mailer says "Nope, too big - FAIL".

Outlook doesn't realize that that's not going to get fixed and treats it like any transient error that might not happen if it tries again. So it tries again. And again. And again.

With no actual hope of success.

Meanwhile, once you realize that there's a problem, you can't do anything about it, because Outlook has the message while it's trying to send it. You can't delete or move an email that Outlook is in the process of sending.

There are two ways I've approached this problem in the past:

Get lucky - there's a small window of time between the failure and Outlook's next attempt to send it when it does not have the message locked. If you're lucky you can delete it during this time. But you must be really lucky.

"Outlook doesn't realize that that's not going to get fixed, and treats it like any transient error that might not happen if it tries again. So it tries again."

Pull the plug - not the power, but your network. Literally disconnect yourself from your network. Outlook will not be able to contact your ISPs server at all and won't even begin to try sending your message. It might take Outlook a few seconds to realize that it's off line, but once it does, you can delete or move the message. After that, reconnect to your network and get on with your lifeemail.

It's decidedly low-tech, and I can think of a few other ways to accomplish the same thing, but ultimately it's simple and fast and achieves the desired results.

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Article C2868 - December 11, 2006

Recent Comments
142 Comments

I'm hooked up to a business network and didn't want to unplug for fear of ruining company equipment, but I did find another way to accomplish this. There's a send/receive icon on the bottom right of your outlook screen(at least there is for oulook 2007). Right click and choose cancel. Then you can delete items stalling your outbox.

Posted by: emily at August 21, 2009 11:48 AM

Thank you. I first had to tell outlook to stop sending and recieving, but then it was easy to delete the message.

Posted by: Dave B. at August 28, 2009 8:42 PM

Leo, you are a genius;

I've been trying anything and everything for a week 'till finding your instructions.

Thanks

Posted by: Michelle Portela at September 11, 2009 3:55 PM

Hi,

Thanks a lot for the great help. But one small suggestion, instead or removing the cable, if we just disable the LAN under Network Connections would work..............

Posted by: Harry at September 19, 2009 5:23 PM

Well done Leo. You saved my marriage. Such a simple trick that works. We could do with a few more like you.

Posted by: Peter Frampton at September 22, 2009 6:00 PM

Thanks for the clue it's been bugging me for weeks, but I had you restart my Outlook with the network disconnected before mine would delete.

Posted by: Dave at September 26, 2009 11:51 AM

You saved the day!! I have had my outlook locked up since June because of the two emails....thank you for setting me free!!

Posted by: Laura at October 8, 2009 3:14 PM

The "lo-tech" way worked. Thanks much!

Posted by: KL at October 10, 2009 2:41 PM

From another forum, worked fine for me.

In Outlook do File-Work Offline. Close Outlook. Restart Outlook. It should
start in offline mode. Try and delete it then...

Posted by: Kenneth Korshin at November 7, 2009 6:20 AM

Thank you, I've been staring at my computer for the last 2 hrs.. I disabled the LAN and it deleted right away...

Posted by: Miki at November 18, 2009 12:41 PM

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