How to kill an Email Lost in cyberspace

[webgirl]

My friend sent to herself a very large file which is stuck somewhere in cyberspace.

It does not appear in the Outbox in Outlook Express, but shows the icon "Sending Mail" at the bottom of the screen. It has not appeared in her Inbox when viewed via her webmail login. She is on a slow dialup connection.

We can't delete something we can't see.

Does anyone know any way to kill this email?

[Vercades]

Welcome Webgirl

On slower ISP's it'll normally take a few minutes or hours to even get a file into your ISP's server depending on the size 1mb would take hours sometimes if you're not a computer wiz.

What could've happen is half of it was sent but, after canceling it there is no data left and fragmented info is usually deleted as far as I know... even if someone found it the email would appear all wierd and fullove numbers I guess I don't know exactly this is what I speculate.... maybe someone else has a second opinion.

[webgirl]

Thanks for your comments. My friend sent herself an email with 60MB of files attached (she thinks!). I nearly died when I found out! What was she thinking! I have suggested she just leave Outlook running and it may eventually clear itself. Closing down and turning of the computer has no effect.

[Vercades]

LOL, one things fer sure that email ain't gettin sent anytime soon. :michaelan

I believe OE picks up where it left off the second it's restarted, All I know to tell your friend is try and find the task bar in OE and cancel the email, after that it should stop.

I'm no pro at this so sorry if I confuse yeah even more. :laugh:

[webgirl]

Thanks for your note. I have not found a way in Outlook to kill this email. It's never going to go or be received but Outlook chokes on it. I will have another look when next at her place unless it magically does eventually give up trying. I will monitor the situation.

Anyone else got any good ideas I'd be pleased to hear them.

Basically I want to get Outlook working again, I dont care about the email and where it is, it was not confidential and it can stay lost!

Webgirl

[renegade600]

60 megs??? I am surprised the mail server is accepting it. Most will not accept attachments larger than a couple of megs. Sometimes you can contact the owner of the mail server and they can put a stop to it for you.

[oink]

Just guessing here: Go to C:\Documents and Settings\"Your User Name"\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{7560D112-7B71-405B-AAA3-ECB249B04407}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

See if Outbox.dbx is humongous.

If it is, copy the file and name the copy something like Outbox.dbx

Then, overwrite Outbox.dbx with a good copy from another computer with the same version of outlook express and which is having no problems and has a clean outbox.

[webgirl]

As suggested I copied a clean outbox.dbx file onto my friend's computer and deleted the old outbox file which was 205MB in size. When starting Outlook again, this has resolved the problem, emails can now be sent and received correctly.

Thank you for your help. I would never have thought of this solution.

You guys are awesome! This will be one of my "must view" websites from now on.

Webgirl

[oink]

Glad it worked. I've had to do something similar to Pegasus Mail a couple of times.