Summary: Occasionally Outlook Express may try to send a message repeatedly. We'll look into a couple of causes, and solutions, to sending multiple copies.
There is something strange going on with my Outlook Express version 6. When I send an Email with an attachment it's sent something like 40 times! Of course, while sending that mail I notice on my screen nothing at all about this curious fact. It seems to me - but I certainly do not know why or how - that probably my Outlook Express duplicates that mail and delivers it 40 times! I checked my configuration but I see nothing strange with that. Can you tell me what is the problem and how to solve this?
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I did a little research, and I'm finding a couple of common causes.
The good news here is that either should be easy to fix.
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The situation here is that your email program, Outlook Express in this case, is repeatedly sending a message over and over.
There are two common causes.
Anti-malware Tools
The most common cause of repeated sends that can be traced back to your actual mail program is probably anti-malware tools that are trying to scan outgoing email, or otherwise interfere with the proper operation of the mail program. It's a common cause of repeated (or failed) downloads of email, and when the feature is enabled to scan sent mail, it can interfere there as well.
Depending on the type of interference, the email program responds by saying "well, that didn't work, I'll try to send it again" - and again, and again.
The solution here is pretty simple: locate that feature in your anti-malware or security suite, and turn it off. You may need to close and restart your email program, or even reboot your machine for the change to take effect.
Outlook Express Mailbox Limits
Outlook Express apparently has a 2 gigabyte file size limit for its mailboxes.
Normally, that doesn't affect most people, but I've definitely seen reports of it doing exactly what you've described when the Sent Items folder approaches 2 gigabytes. Smaller emails might make it out for a while, but a larger attachment might be enough to exceed that size limit, and thus cause the problem.
My recommendation is to create a new folder - call it what you will; perhaps something like "SentArchive", and move all the messages in your Sent Items folder to the Sent Archive folder. That should a) retain all your sent messages should you need to refer to them, and b) empty the Sent Items folder so that this problem doesn't happen again.
Related:
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How can I stop a message in my Outlook outbox that won't send? 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.
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Where's the Sent Items folder in Outlook Express? The Sent Items folder isn't always visible in Outlook Express. We'll look at the options to make the Sent Items folder visible, and make sure that Sent Items are getting placed there.
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Can I stop or 'un-send' an email I sent by mistake? Once you hit that "send" button, there is no way to stop your email from being sent, even if it's to the wrong person.
Article C3909 - November 4, 2009
I had a friend with this problem with an older version of Outlook Express. The solution was similar to Leo's second explanation above, but very different. She had somehow accidentally checked a box in her email account preferences that would automatically break up the email into separate messages of less than x size, where x defaulted to a fairly low number. The default number being set up back in the day when most people's emails were restricted by the POTS ISP to a small size. She only had this problem when she tried to send a photo or several photos which exceeded the x size limit. Once I figured this out she unchecked the box and all was well.
Posted by: Bosque Bill at November 10, 2009 8:45 AMI've had this and similar problems with Outlook Express over the years.
Posted by: Jim Huffman at November 10, 2009 2:30 PMI've found and fixed most errors in Outlook Express by trial, using different options in creating an email, and error, sending the email to my self.
Your self addressed email will show what you did right and what you did wrong.
Switch to Thunderbird. Problem solved.
Posted by: Alex Netherton at November 10, 2009 2:59 PMI have had this type of problem in Outlook (I don't use Outlook Express, but a similar thing could happen). It can occur when I send an email to a list of recipients.
Let's say that I am sending to a list of ten people. All goes well until it is sending to the tenth and last person. Due to a problem AT THEIR END, the email is rejected. My email program says "well, that didn't work, I'll try to send it again". Instead of just sending it again to only the tenth person, it starts over and resends to the whole list. This process continues until the email finally gets through to the tenth person or the mail process gives up (usually the latter). Thus the first nine on the list get a heap of copies of the same email, and the tenth person may not get it at all.
This can be very embarrassing when you fill up several people's inboxes with multiple copies of the same email!
Posted by: Lynn Hancock at November 10, 2009 3:03 PMHA! Lynn's comment explains why sometimes I receive identical copies of the exact same email from the exact same sender only moments apart. Thank you.
Posted by: Mike at November 12, 2009 1:07 PM