After an interrupted send/receive attempt in Outlook express (although it may also happen in other Outlook clients), some emails (especially those with attachments) may incorrectly be held in the outbox, and will never actually be sent. In order to fix this issue, the following steps must be performed:
Note that this procedure requires deleting files from windows system folders, and as such, you must exercise caution (and impart this to the customer also) as a wrong click could leave a customer with a non-workable OS install.
- Move any emails currently "stuck" in the outbox to the Drafts folder, to make sure they are not lost.
- Close Outlook Express
- Open the Start Menu, and choose Search
- Enter .dbx in the All of part of the file name: field - make sure the root directory of the customer's Windows Install drive is selected - or just choose All Hard Drives.
- Before starting the search, click on More Advanced Options at the bottom of the search frame - and make the following selections:
- Set the Type of File field to All Files and Folders
- Place a check in the following boxes:
- Search System Folders
- Search Hidden Files and Folders
- Search Subfolders
- Finally, click Search.
The search results should bring up a file named Outbox.dbx, and delete it. Once this is done, restart Outlook Express - it will create and rebuild a new Outbox.dbx file. To ensure the fix worked correctly, get the customer to send themselves a test message; they should receive it almost instantly - just make sure the message is no longer in the Outbox.
It's possible that the customer's user account or file view settings will prevent you from finding/deleting the Outbox.dbx file:
- If they're not an Administrator account on their PC, they may not be able to access/delete the file at all. This is obviously circumvented by either logging on to the Admin account (if they're able to), or contacting whomever is able to - whether that be a Company Tech/Parent/Whatever.
- If they just can't see the files, then it's likely they need to change their Folder View options:
- Open My Computer
- Go to Tools -> Folder Options
- Click on the View tab.
- Scroll down the list and:
- Put a tick in the checkbox for Show Hidden Files and Folders
- Remove the tick in the checkbox for Hide Extensions for Known File Types.
- Click Apply -> Ok
