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Help – I tried to send a giant attachment and it’s stuck in the Outbox!

“I tried to send a large attachment to a friend and now the e-mail is stuck in my Outbox! I’ve been trying to delete it and I can’t because Outlook says it’s still trying to send it. Help!”

This is a fairly common issue that we’ve heard a lot of users report through the blog, so we wanted to write a quick post and explain the easiest way to get out of this situation.

E-mail messages can get stuck in the Outbox for a few different reasons, but the most common case happens when the e-mails are very large (megabyte-wise) due to their attachments. You may even see errors like “Outlook is transmitting the message” when trying to delete them from the Outbox.

So if you’ve got an e-mail stuck in your Outbox and you can’t re-open it, try this:

  1. Go the File menu, then choose Work Offline in order to stop Outlook from trying to send all mails:

    clip_image002
  2. Switch to the Outbox.
  3. You now have two options:

    a. Move the message: you can drag-and-drop or use the Edit: Move to Folder menu item to move the e-mail to your drafts folder. This will allow you to re-open the offending e-mail and slim it down by removing the large attachments before attempting to resend it.
  4. b. Delete the message: this will immediately remove the message from the Outbox and put it in Deleted Items.

  5. Go to the File menu, deselect Work Offline to start sending and receiving mail again.

Instead of sending a large attachment, consider putting the file on a local network share or a SharePoint site inside your company and then sending a link around:

clip_image004

clip_image006

For details on how to add a link, see: Use hyperlinks in Outlook items and/or Add links containing spaces to an e-mail message.

If you’re sending it to users outside your company or are just sharing files with friends, you can use Windows Live SkyDrive as a cool and convenient way to store and send large files around.

Hope that helps get you unstuck!

Michael Affronti
Outlook Program Manager

Posted: Thursday, May 01, 2008 4:36 PM by outblog

Comments

Larry said:

That did not help. Outlook replys "Outlook has already started sending message". I am not able to touch the message in any way.

# May 5, 2008 12:08 AM

Milly Staples - MVP Outlook said:

This method works but one step has been left out.

After selecting File->Work Offline, you must completely close Outlook (use task manager to ensure that it is closed) and then reopen Outlook.  You can then delete the errant email or open it and remove the attachment.  Be sure to uncheck File->Work Offline when done.

# May 5, 2008 7:05 PM

Rajinder Dhariwal said:

I have had a similar problem also, and what i found was that my virus checker was causing the problem. When i deselected from my virus application to check out going emails for viruses, the outgoing large email had no problem when sending it.  I do use a pop server service, and it has a limit on size also, as long as i stay under that size, my large emails sizes go through without any problem, as before i used to have issues even with large emails.

# May 8, 2008 3:29 PM
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