REPOST: HELP: mail stays in outbox but does send

[K. Abit]

Using Outlook 2000 on Windows 2000 Pro. Working fine until a few days ago.
Now, all outgoing mail stays in the outbox but yet the recipients are
receiving them. So it is sending them but leaving them in the outbox.
When I watch the Outbox, I see the "sent" column quickly display the sent
date/time when it sends it, but then it quickly reverts back to a word like
"none" or "blank". Again, the recipient does receive the email but it stays
in the Outbox and never resends. They are still marked as unread in the
outbox.

WHAT I HAVE TRIED AND MORE ABOUT MY SETUP: I have read all the Microsoft
KB articles I can find and I have read the common web pages about mail
sending problems. But nowhere do I see this problem of mail actually
sending and staying in the outbox. I have no rules that would affect
outgoing mail. I have disabled virus scanning on outgoing email in Norton
Antivirus. I have closed/restarted Outlook and windows with no luck. I
have extended the server POP3 time to a long duration although that is
seemingly irrelevant because they go to the server and do send in about 2
seconds as noted above. I have run SCANPST. I have no other plug ins.
I don't know what else to do but I need to fix this soon.

I would really like to fix this without making a new PST file and setting up
the mail accounts again. Suggestions?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Using Outlook 2000 on Windows 2000 Pro. Working fine until a few
days ago. Now, all outgoing mail stays in the outbox but yet the
recipients are receiving them. So it is sending them but leaving
them in the outbox. When I watch the Outbox, I see the "sent" column
quickly display the
sent date/time when it sends it, but then it quickly reverts back to
a word like "none" or "blank". Again, the recipient does receive the
email but it stays in the Outbox and never resends. They are still
marked as unread in the outbox.

Outlook 2000 has had problems when you try to send messages while currently
viewing the Outbox. Try having some other folder open instead when sending.
Also make sure you do NOT scan outgoing messages with an antivirus scanner.

 

[K. Abit]

I've tried both but no luck with either. I only started looking at the
Outbox after the problem occurred. That problem you reference also doesn't
result in actual sending of the emails, which my machine IS doing. And
again, outgoing messages are not being scanned AND I have disabled the AV
for testing with the same results.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I've tried both but no luck with either. I only started looking at
the Outbox after the problem occurred. That problem you reference
also doesn't result in actual sending of the emails, which my machine
IS doing. And again, outgoing messages are not being scanned AND I
have disabled the AV for testing with the same results.

Increase your server timeout value on the Advanced tab of your account
properties. The failure of a message to leave the Outbox and move to the
Sent Items folder (or just get removed when the sending completes) is a sign
that the server accepting your message isn't acknowledging the reception of
the message. Enable diagnostic logging and see what's happening.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/240347/en-us

 

[K. Abit]

As noted in the original post, I have done that timeout extension. Also,
this doesn't make sense because the server responds in 2 seconds, which is
why the Outbox quickly shows the date and time of the sent message in that
status column, before it strangely and quickly changes back to something
like "none".

I will try the diagnostic logging, though. Good idea, thanks.