Re: Email stuck in Outbox

"JC" wrote in message news:iau4k3ljgqch4r8bmm72feg1bgkcr3eu56@xxxxxxxxxx
Hi,

About 3 days ago I had a couple of emails stuck in the outbox. I was
able to receive emails ok and send other emails but these two emails
were stuck in the outbox and refused to be sent. I shut down Outlook
2003, re-booted Win Xp (all updates installed) and re-started Outlook
but nothing changed.

The error was 0x8004210B - timed out waiting for response from SMTP
server.

It took a while to find the cause - apparently a mail server due to
receive one of the emails was down and, since it wouldn't receive mail,
all emails with an email address on that server would not be sent.

Note that it wasn't my ISPs mail server that was down - it was another
mail server in another country.

The problem email address was a Cc: so I deleted the problem address and
both emails then were sent ok.

It would appear that an email is ONLY sent if all mail servers that are
to receive the email are up and operational - if one is down it stays in
the outbox presumably until the server is brought back on line again.

I would have preferred that the email be sent out to those mail servers
that were operational and an error message sent to me saying that the
following email could not be delivered to <address> because the server
was not on line.
--

Cheers . . . JC


Sorry, but Outlook is only an e-mail *client*. It has no information if the target mail hosts are reachable, responsive, and will accept your e-mail that is sent to them. Your sending mail server handles that, not you in your local e-mail client. The only status of which Outlook has direct knowledge is whether or not YOUR mail server accepted your outbound e-mail.

When you send e-mail to an SMTP mail host, just ONE copy of your message gets sent to it, not one for each recipient. From the recipients listed in your To, Cc, and Bcc *fields* (displayed in your e-mail client), your e-mail client then compiles a list of RCPT-TO commands that it sends to the mail host. For N recipients total, there will be N RCPT-TO commands sent to your mail host. That is following by just one DATA command from your e-mail client that contains the content of your message that is received by your mail host. All your e-mail client does it give the list of recipients and a copy of your message to your mail host. During YOUR mail session with your sending mail host, your mail hasn't been sent anywhere yet other between you and your own mail host. It has not been sent out to anyone yet, so the mail host doesn't send back any status regarding its delivery since it hasn't been attempted to be delivered yet. After you *end* your mail session with you mail host is when your mail host then attempts delivery because it now has the list of recipients and a copy of your message to them. You no longer have a session with your mail host when your mail host is doing the actual delivery attempts.

So, to how many recipients were specified in your e-mail? Maybe you hit your e-mail provider's anti-spam quota. Deleting some of the recipients got it under that anti-spam quota.

Did you try disabling your anti-virus software's scanning of your outbound e-mails? Interrogation by the anti-virus software generates a delay from when your e-mail client tells the mail server when it will start sending your e-mail to when the e-mail actually arrives at the mail server, and anti-virus software can interfere by increasing this delay too much (i.e., the mail server timesout waiting for the mail it was told was going to be sent but which was overly delayed by your anti-virus program). The bigger the e-mail, the longer it takes for your anti-virus program to interrogate it before handing it off to the mail server.

.

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