Outlook Express Problem

[dryfly]

Maybe some of you techy types can save my sanity!! (And it is already in the brink! )

 

Background

Been using OE6 for a few years. I send and rec dozens of emails daily. Send lots of emails with PDF, Word doc and jpg attachments. Generally things have gone well. The odd glitch with this and that ... usually "operator error."

 

The problem

Today I sent an email with two jpgs and one PDF attachment. An "error sending" box popped up and the message was still in the "outbox" and not in the "sent items" box. It turns out that the message was indeed sent and since it was still in the "outbox" it kept sending and sending.

 

Searching the internet, I determined that this is documented by others. See here.

 

The general solution is to first delete any remaining emails in the outbox, close OE and then do a search for "outbox.dbx" folder (now empty) and delete it. There are several references to it being corrupted. Upon restarting OE, it automatically makes a new outbox folder. GREAT! It all worked again. Well not exactly. I can send emails with no attachments and it is fine, but the moment I attach any type of file (large or small ... PDF, jpg, Word.doc ... no matter), the email hangs in the outbox and the error message pops up (BTW the error message box is blank). If the attachment is a small doc file (say a 10KB doc file which sends in a second) the recipient (my wife's computer for the tests) gets several copies of the email and this continues until I manually delete the email in the outbox folder. Ugh!

 

So I went around a few times and deleted the "outbox.dbx" folder and it all works fine until I send an attachment. (I've been sending attachments for years...nothing unusual with the current attachments.)

 

I read somewhere about reinstalling OE .. which I will never do. If I change it won't be OE. I'd really just like to fix this. I MUST fix this.

 

I might be interested in using something other than an MS email system. Fine, BUT I have over 10,000 emails in assorted folders. Ugh (Again! ) I don't think OE folders can be exported to Thunderbird. Any one know if that is possible?

Your suggestions are appreciated.

 

Thanks!

Clive

[cheeler]

http://email.about.com/od/mozillathunderbi...Thunderbird.htm

 

I don't know if OE is still supported by MS, but since it is from the IE6 era, I wouldn't expect it to be, so changing programs might be a good idea. MS replaced it with Windows Live mail, which works on XP.

[dryfly]

Cheeler,

 

Thanks for this. Great news. I think this encouragement will make me switch.

 

As it turns out this problem "went away" after many hours and much embarrassment. A techy friend wrote last night, "I think it is not at your end I think it is at your providers end. This issue will most likely clear up in a day or 2. " He was correct.

 

I retested last last night (after wasting many hours), and it was fine again. Retested this morning with many of the same attachments as used yesterday and all good.

 

I will have a spare day next week and may be able to jump over. I MUST clean up the folder before doing so..that will take a few hours...have 10,832 emails in many folders. 90 percent can be deleted.

 

Thanks again for the link. (I searched and could not find anything this good.)

 

Clive

[TerryH]

Clive, the problem wasn't just with your email that had an attachment. After I sent you a reply, and mentioned the multiple copies of the first email, and you replied (without an attachment), I started getting multiple copies of the second email. Terry

[flytyer101]

Mine wont send any thing right now !