URL: This article is intended to assist users in solving database corruption cases in Outlook 2011/Outlook 2016 for Mac when connected to an Exchange mailbox. Sometimes Mac users report that Outlook 2011 /Outlook 2016 for Mac is not syncing properly (or syncing quite slowly, freezing frequently) with Exchange. The problem usually is not a connectivity issue between the mail client and the mail server, but rather a local Outlook database corruption. Keep your mail sorted into folders In many cases, Outlook does work properly with folders as large as 10.000 items and more, but decreasing the folder size can improve the performance drastically, and generally this is the first troubleshooting step to be done in a case of slow/freezing Outlook client.
You can force Outlook to resolve the names by pressing Alt+K on your keyboard. In Outlook 2007 and older, you can disable autoresolution in Tools, Options, E-mail Options, Advanced E-mail Options, Automatic name checking. When this is turned off, Outlook will still resolve the names, but not immediately.
You can move the items using client. Read the following Microsoft Office articles for more information:. Keep the number of subfolders in Inbox and Sent Items to minimum Instead, it is preferable to create new folders on top level. The same level as Inbox and Sent Items are for better performance. Move folders and multiple items in OWA Moving big folders or a lot of items at once in desktop Outlook client takes significant time to synchronize with the server. Moving a lot of items can often cause disruption in the mailbox if the connection fails for a moment, for example, due to high network usage or your computer’s CPU load. On the other hand, changes made in occur directly on the server and thus happen instantaneously. Clear affected folder's cache in case of content mismatch If you see that Outlook 2011/Outlook 2016 for Mac and folders don't match, you may want to reload the cache to fix the issue. Read the Knowledge Base for more information.
Re-create the Microsoft Office Identity If the Outlook 2011 client becomes slow and unresponsive, or stops syncing completely, while Outlook Web App and/or other clients work fine, it is most likely an indicator of corrupted Outlook database. In this case, it is recommended to rebuild, or remove, and re-create the Microsoft Office identity or Outlook Profile on Outlook 2016 for Mac. If you do not have any other mailboxes in your Outlook profile, we recommend removing and re-creating the identity. Please read the following articles and for more information.
The article explains how you can quickly remove or resend emails that are stuck in your Outbox. The solutions work on all systems and all versions of Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2016. An email message may become stuck in Outlook because of different reasons. You can find the detailed information about the causes and remedies in this article: But no matter what the reason is, you need to get a stuck e-mail out of the Outbox somehow. In fact, there are several ways you can remove a hanging message and we are going to cover them from simplest to more complex.
How to resend a message stuck in the Outbox A very simple two-step method that you should try first. Drag the stuck message from the Outlook Outbox to any other folder, e.g. Switch to the Drafts folder, open the message and click the Send button. The message will be sent. Before moving a stuck message to the Drafts folder, go to the Sent Items folder and check if the message was actually sent.
If it was, delete the message from the Outbox since there is no need to perform the steps above. How to remove a stuck email from the Outbox A quick and easy way to delete a hanging message. If the message has been hanging in your Outbox for a while and you don't actually want to sent it anymore, follow the below steps to delete it. Go to the Outbox and double click a stuck message to open it. Close the message. Right-click the message and choose Delete from the context menu.
Set Outlook to work offline and then remove a stuck message A general solution that works in most cases. If the previous method did not work for you, e.g. If you are continuously getting ' Outlook has already begun transmitting this message', then you will have to invest a couple more minutes and go through the below steps. Tip: Before you proceed, make sure you have given Outlook enough time to complete sending. For example, if you are a sending an email with heavy attachments, the process may take up to 10 - 15 minutes or even longer, depending on your Internet bandwidth. So, you may be thinking the message is stuck while Outlook is doing its best to transmit it.
Set Outlook to Work Offline. In Outlook 2010, 2013 and 2016, go to the Send/Receive tab, Preferences group and click ' Work Offline'. In Outlook 2007, 2003 and lower, click File Work Offline. Close Outlook. Open the Windows Task Manager. You can do this by right clicking the taskbar and choosing ' Start Task Manager' from the pop-up menu or by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + ESC. Then switch to the Processes tab and verify that no outlook.exe process is there.
If there is one, select it and click End Process. Start Outlook again.
Go to the Outbox and open a hanging message. Now you can either delete the stuck message or move it to the Drafts folder and remove the attachment if it is too big in size and this is the root of the problem. Then you can try to send the message again. Bring Outlook back on-line by clicking the ' Work Offline' button. Click Send/Receive and see if the message is gone. Create a new.pst file and then delete a stuck email A more complex way, use it as the last resort if none of the above methods worked a treat. Create a new.pst file.
In Outlook 2010, 2013 and 2016, you do this via File Account Settings Account Settings Data Files Add. In Outlook 2007, 2003 and older, go to File New Outlook Data File Name your new.pst file, e.g.
' New PST' and click OK. Make the newly created.pst file the default one. In the ' Accounting Settings' window, select it and click the ' Set as Default' button. Outlook will show the ' Mail Delivery Location' dialog asking you if you really want to change the Default Outlook Data file. Click OK to confirm your choice.
Restart Outlook and you will see that your original.pst file shows up as an additional set of folders. Now you can easily remove the stuck email message from that secondary Outbox. Set the original.pst file as the default delivery location again (see step 2 above). Restart Outlook. I hope at least one of the above techniques has worked for you.
If you still have a message stuck in your Outbox, don't hesitate to leave a comment and we will try to make it send. Trying to help my 94 yr old father with his hanging email from long distance. He tried to send a video he had saved from his phone to his computer. I have given him all the instructions of the three methods all to no avail. He cannot get or receive emails. The third method was difficult in 2007 as I see is mentioned in another post. When you go to select the new.pst file it doesnt show in list to set as default.
Any suggestions? None of the ways to delete has worked.
Uninstall program and reinstall? Same thing happened to me. It was a large attachment and Outlook already started to send it. I couldn't drag it, delete it, open it or resend it.
I closed Outlook, used the task manager to close Outlook, tried exiting without sending, rebooted my machine, but nothing worked! Finally I clicked on the dropdown box on the task bar where it says 'Send/Receive' with the little folders icon. There is a selection to 'Cancel Send.' I clicked on that, then went to the Outbox and finally was able to delete the message. I have an odder problem.
I created a simple email in outlook 2007. I copied a number of email addresses (maybe 50) from an earlier email onto the 'bcc' line.
I tried to send it, but Outlook just churns for a long time and will not send. I tried to close Outlook and it gives the message 'do you want to exit without sending?' Well, it won't finish the task, so I closed it. The email addresses look like this, which is what I feel the problem might be: '[email protected]' (all underlined) I have had a similar situation happen in the past and found that rogue file in my Outbox. However, this one is NO WHERE to be found. It's not in the Outbox, nor in the Sent folder. I cannot find it anywhere to edit/delete it.
Please help, as this is hindering my ability to send other emails. Thx, in advance.
Dragging to, and sending from, Drafts worked for me. Over the years this problem has cropped up from time to time in various versions of Outlook. It only affects responses to meeting requests. The response appears in the Outbox, in italics, as usual. Instead of sending, the message changes to normal font style and then just sits there forever. I've never found a solution to this problem until I found your post, so thank you very much for saving my sanity! I didn't try the Work Offline trick.
Just dragging the message to Drafts, opening it and hitting Send worked first time. I'm using Outlook 2016 under Windows 10, but I've run into this problem from time to time at least as far back as Outlook 2003. Svetlana Thank you, thank you, thank you!
So many of the other 'solutions' offered for this problem involved reinstalling Outlook, deleting and resetting up accounts, removing the Outlook Connector and reconnecting, all of which always seemed to me to like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We users who report problems can of course provide unhelpful or misleading information to the helpers, but there seems to be a presumption amongst some of the helpers that the issue is a user issue not an Outlook issue, but a careful reading of the 'ticket' often indicates that it is not all emails that are failing to send, just one or two. One of the problems in reporting the issue of course is that Outlook does not always provide a useful error message. The most common messages I saw was 'The. Server cannot be reached/found' which was patently untrue as other emails which used the same server were being sent, so clearly the server could be found. Outlook was unwittingly 'lying'. Oh that the developers at MS could teach Outlook to distinguish between these cases.
But you started with the simplest possible approach to the problem: treat the unsent item as a draft again. How wonderfully that worked. It was even simpler than an approach I had taken which was to start again, and copy the content of the stuck item into a new email. And your approach works. Kind regards. Hi I have 18 read receipts stuck in the outbox.
Im using Outlook 2016 on Windows 10. I have downloaded Outlook spy and tried to delete these. It shows only Partial Deletion!! The issue appears to be on the mails server which is not accessible.
Please give me a solution. My mail takes forever to send. NOTE: if I send an email then go to the outbox and double click on the outgoing mail. Nothing really happens. I close and shutdown Outlook and restart and then quickly go to the outbox and double click on the outgoing mail and it SENDS!
This is my time consuming current work around but I still have 18 items sending! I had the same issue with Outlook for Mac 2016 - with 3 large 35MB email stuck in the outbox which was blocking me sending anything. The outbox is also not visible in Mac until you send yourself a test message offline (which in itself is strange).
Even when I finally got into the messages - they would not delete. I put the Outlook for Mac into offline used Mac Activity Monitor to end all processes for Outlook.
I then restarted outlook, sent another test email to myself to see the outbox and then could delete the messages. Strangely, I had to press delete message 3 times before it deleted. Maybe there was just a stunning time delay. This was driving me crazing and blocking my Wi-FI network as outlook tried to send the item, so I am so glad to have found this feed:-).
Had the stuck email also, but figured it out - finally. Tried all methods, including mfcmapi, except the one above, creating a temporary.pst file to make the original one secondary. For me, the reason it was 'stuck' was that I had deleted the account after clicking 'send'. I had been doing a test. Forgot to delete the message, and it didn't go out, so it was left hanging. Finally figured out that I lacked permissions because I had deleted the account from Outlook. Put it back in temporarily, went offline before it downloaded the world, deleted the 'stuck' message, then deleted the account from Outlook again.
There could be others who have this issue after changing email providers (or for other reasons), so I thought I would list it as a potential fix for anyone else that ends up in the same boat I was in.