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.
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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.
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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.
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:
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Ask Leo! - Can I stop or 'un-send' an email I sent by mistake?
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Ask Leo! - Where's the Sent Items folder in Outlook Express?
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Ask Leo! - What can I do about Outlook's huge PST?
Article C2868 - December 11, 2006
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 AMThank 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 PMLeo, 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 PMHi,
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 PMWell 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 PMThanks 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 AMYou 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 PMThe "lo-tech" way worked. Thanks much!
Posted by: KL at October 10, 2009 2:41 PMFrom another forum, worked fine for me.
In Outlook do File-Work Offline. Close Outlook. Restart Outlook. It should
Posted by: Kenneth Korshin at November 7, 2009 6:20 AMstart in offline mode. Try and delete it then...
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