Sometimes, we notice that an email we sent a few hours ago still exists in the outbox. It wasn’t sent at all. When this happens, try the following tricks to fix the messages that unknowingly get stuck in the Outlook outbox. The first thing you should try is to close and then restart the Microsoft Outlook client and see if the email goes away. If not, then some of these tips will help you.
Send emails stuck in Outlook Outbox
If you want to send emails that are stuck in Outlook Outbox, follow these solutions:
- Email was never ready for sending
- Check attachment size
To learn more about these solutions, continue reading.
1] Email was never ready for sending
Emails you send might get stuck in the Outlook outbox for several reasons. For example, you might have opened and closed the email while it was in your outbox instead of opening and then sending it.
This action can change the status of the email and therefore, restrict it from sending across. Also, the email properties such as ‘To’ and ‘subject’ change from a configured font to a regular font and the sent status is changed to ‘None’.
To send the email, double-click it, and hit the ‘Send’ button.
2] Check attachment size
An email can get stuck in the Outlook outbox if, it has a large attachment added. Outlook allows 20MB. Under such circumstances, the email provider may block the email with an attachment larger than the size they specify.
For general email performance, it is not recommended that you do not send an email larger than the 2MB size. So, when you try to send the email and double-click it, you get an error message saying-
Sorry, we are having trouble opening this item, this could be temporary but if you see it again, you might want to restart Outlook. Outlook has already begun transmitting this message’.
This happens when Outlook tries sending the email to Outbox. So, when you double-click the email, you can’t open or delete it. To fix this, you’ll need to disconnect your Outlook from the email server. This will stop it from trying to send your email and thus, showing the error. So, to do this:
- Go to Outlook Preferences
- Drag the email to Drafts
- Save the attachment to a network location
Go to Outlook Preferences
Go to the ‘Send/Receive’ tab and choose the ‘Work Offline’ button from the ‘Preferences’ section.
Now, when you double-click the email and still get an error message, do the following.
Read: Email is stuck in the Outbox of Gmail.
Drag the email to Drafts
Close Outlook, Sign out of Windows, Sign back into Windows and start Outlook.
Now, click and hold the email, and drag it to ‘Drafts’.
Go back to the ‘Send/Receive’ tab and click the ‘Work Offline’ button.
Read: Emails stuck in Outbox of Mail app on Windows.
Save the attachment to a network location
Click the ‘Drafts’ folder and double-click the email you saved earlier.
Right-click the attachment and choose the ‘Save As’ option.
Save the attachment to a network location and copy the path of the file in the network location.
Go back to the email and select the ‘Paste’ tab. This will paste the path of the file in the email message body.
Here, right-click the attachment again and choose the ‘Remove’ option to delete it from the email.
When done, hit ‘Send’.
This way, you can fix messages that are stuck in the Outbox and send them across.
Why are my Outlook emails not being sent?
Outlook emails are not being sent because of three main reasons. If you edited the email even after putting it in Outbox, it won’t be sent automatically. Secondly, if you have attached a big file as an attachment, it could not be sent or might take some time to upload the file. Thirdly, if you have some network-related issues, you cannot send emails.
TIP: Use this Registry fix if Outlook Email is stuck in Outbox until you manually send it.
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