Sending multiple large emails 'accidentally'

[Stephanie]

On two separate occasions I have had email recipients tell me that they are
getting the same (very large) email from me multiple times. One recipient
received a 7MB email from me over 130 times. Another recipient received a
5MB email from me over 11 times. I also use a wireless internet card with
limited usage which is more than enough for my normal activities but when
these emails get sent multiple times, I go over the plan's limits.

How can I see if there are messages that are getting "hung-up" in Outlook
and even more important, how do I stop them? I sometimes see a status
message in the lower right bar that says 'sending 1 of 2 messages'. This
will continue to be displayed but when I look in my outbox, there are no
messages.

I read a previous post with the recommendation to unistall and reinstall the
anitvirus software so that it does not scan outgoing messages. I will do
that but wondered if there is a way to monitor this issue and stop it before
it transmits 100MB of data again?

I use Outlook 2003 sp3 (Office 2003 Professional Edition)

Thanks for your help!

 

[DL]

Monitor, not really, usually a large mail would be as a result of you
inserting an attachment, eg photos, and as such you should know the size you
are inserting.
I dont have 2003 set up with any accounts right now, but I seem to recollect
you can set options on the mail accounts to set a size limit

 

[Stephanie]

Sorry for the confusing question. I know the size of the emails I send and
intend to send them, once. Outlook 'hangs up" and will send the same email
over and over to the same recipient. I am trying to find out how to know
when it hangs up and how to stop the multiple emails that Outlook keeps
sending.

Thanks!

 

[DL]

Thats usually the result of haveing intergrated AV
As you have allready learnt, uninstall any AV, reboot, reinstall AV
*without* the OL intergration.
Also ensure your polling (auto send/receive) is not set for less than 10
mins
You cannot know when a mail is hanging, other than by observing the
synchronising mail icon in the task bar, or when exiting OL seeing the
notification that there is unsent mail

 

[Stephanie]

My auto send/receive is at 1 minute. I will increase that as well as
re-install the AV and see what happens.

Thanks!

 

[DL]

Less than 10 min will cause resource problems

My auto send/receive is at 1 minute. I will increase that as well as
re-install the AV and see what happens.

Thanks!

 

[Cedders]

On two separate occasions I have had email recipients tell me that they are
getting the same (very large) email from me multiple times.  One recipient
received a 7MB email from me over 130 times.  Another recipient received a
5MB email from me over 11 times.  I also use a wireless internet card with
limited usage which is more than enough for my normal activities but when
these emails get sent multiple times, I go over the plan's limits.  

This is usually a problem when an email program tries to send to
another program, maybe the ISP's mail server or an antivirus, and
after it's sent the message body, the receiving program doesn't
acknowledge as it should (with a 250 code), and the connection just
gets dropped. The sending program doesn't know it's been sent so
tries again. For that reason, it might possibly help if you go to
accounts > advanced and increase the server timeouts to, say 10
minutes.

ISTR Outlook 2003 also tries to send large messages to servers even
when they exceed an announced message size limit (often about 10MB or
10000000 bytes). (You can actually see the size limit by running
"telnet smtp.whateveryourhostis.example.org 25" and then "ehlo host" -
Outlook may ignore this information and so waste your bandwidth.)

I read a previous post with the recommendation to unistall and reinstall the
anitvirus software so that it does not scan outgoing messages.  I will do
that but wondered if there is a way to monitor this issue and stop it before
it transmits 100MB of data again?

It shouldn't be necessary to uninstall the software just to turn off
scanning of outgoing messages. Most AV control panels include an
option for this, e.g.
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/docid/2001082921552806

Turning AV scanning off is the first thing I would try, as even if it
doesn't solve the problem, it simplifies it.

To monitor monthly network usage you could use a free Windows tool
like NetMeter ( http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/ ).

HTH

CK