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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.

Related:

Article 10993 | Posted December 11, 2006

Recent Comments
83 Comments

Great tip. Another easy way is to click File > Work offline. Then, you can delete the message.

Posted by: InDiSent at July 30, 2008 6:06 AM

THANK YOU!!!! The information about deleting a huge file that could not be sent worked. Option 2, to disconnect from the server, did the job and I deleted it completely from everything!!! YAY...it's literally been 2 weeks that the message has been in my outbox trying to send.

Posted by: Leilani Cariazo at August 12, 2008 12:54 PM

Thanks, the low tech remedy worked well. I just had to add one more step. I disconnected the LAN connection, tried to delete file which it would not, closed Outlook, restarted Outlook and then was able to delete the file. Reconnected LAN and now my wife is happy.

THANKS FOR THE HELP

Posted by: Doug Bishop at August 13, 2008 3:13 PM

Awesome...... I was ready to beat the crap out of my PC until I came across your website...

You're the man......

Posted by: Tina at August 19, 2008 8:33 AM

I had this problem some time ago and your solution worked fine.
Not long ago I had a similar problem with a photo that turned out too large to send.
I use Norton antivirus and internet protection so
I was able to simply click on the button in norton to blockall internet access. Waited a few minutes then after deleting the message file, clicked to allow internet access again and everything was back to normal.
Thanks for the page when I needed it the first time.

Posted by: Rich A at August 22, 2008 5:45 PM

THANK YOU! What a quick and easy fix to what would have likely taken me hours to figure out if not for this wonderful site.

Posted by: Linda at September 3, 2008 3:29 PM

Going through this hassel is great if you get a file stuck but that is fixing the sympton not the problem. How can I change the settings so Outlook will allow larger files to be sent? I can send the same files on the same computer using Yahoo email without a problem. Thanks!

It's not Outlook that's preventing it - it doesn't care. It's typically the ISP or mail service that you're attempting to use that disallows emails over a certain size.

-Leo

Posted by: Jeph at September 17, 2008 11:02 AM

Pulled the plug and was able to delete it. Many thanks. Aloha, Bob

Posted by: Bob at September 23, 2008 2:54 PM

Mine will not go away either. Since it was in the process of sending it is now stuck in limbo. I used the Work Offline option. I also tried using mbdvu32.exe to delete the message, again it was locked.

Posted by: Dan at October 3, 2008 12:37 PM

Thank you all for you valuable help.
I was stuck in the middle when i tried to send a zip folder which was 24MB. I forgot that its too large to send thru outlook.
Then ur help really helped. I disconnected LAN, shutdown outlook, open outlook, delete the file and then my problem was resolved.

Posted by: Monty at October 5, 2008 11:26 PM

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