What's with my Outlook 2003 Outbox?

Factual Questions
1

I tried to pass on a relatively short joke (see below) via email, and both attempts ended up in my Outbox. The first time I sent it just as a regular message to about 6 people. The second time I sent it as an attachment to the same people.) I think the total message used 20 Kilobytes.

And the damned messages just sat there in my Outbox.

Looked in Outlook’s Help. Nothing. Checked my 1106-page Microsoft Outlook 2003 Inside Out tome. The index referred me to two pages where the word Outbox is mentioned, but nothing else. Not a word of explanation.

Is there a way I can increase Outlook’s capacity to send long-ish emails?

Now, for your reading pleasure, here’s the joke.

After getting all of Pope Benedict’s luggage loaded into the limo (and
he doesn’t travel light), the driver notices that the Pope is still
standing on the curb.

“Excuse me, Your Holiness,” says the driver," Would you please take your
seat so we can leave?"

“Well, to tell you the truth,” says the Pope, “they never let me drive
at the Vatican when I was a cardinal, and I’d really like to drive
today.”

Reluctantly, the driver gets in the back as the Pope climbs in behind
the wheel. The driver quickly regrets his decision when, after exiting
the airport, the Pontiff floors it, accelerating the limo to 105 mph.
(Remember, he’s a German Pope.)

“Please slow down, Your Holiness!” pleads the worried driver, but the
Pope keeps the pedal to the metal until they hear sirens.

The Pope pulls over and rolls down the window as the cop approaches, but
the cop takes one look at him, goes back to his motorcycle, and gets on
the radio.

“I need to talk to the Chief,” he says to the dispatcher. The Chief gets
on the radio and the cop tells him that he’s stopped a limo going a
hundred and five.

“So bust him,” says the Chief.

“I don’t think we want to do that, he’s really important,” said the cop.

The Chief exclaimed," All the more reason!"

"No, I mean really important,"said the cop with a bit of persistence.

The Chief then asked, “Who ya got there, the Mayor?”

Cop: “Bigger.”

Chief: " The Governor?"

Cop: “Bigger.”

Chief: “The President?”

Cop: “Bigger.”

“Well,” said the Chief, “Who is it?”

Cop: “I think it’s God!”

The Chief is even more puzzled and curious, “What makes you think it’s
God?”

Cop: “He’s got the Pope as a chauffeur.”

2

I don’t think the length has anything to do with it. I regularly send out much longer emails with O2003 and they go just fine, both with attachments and without.

Are you on a network? Are you connected to it? Are you sending with the correct account? Are you working online? Are you receiving emails and just having trouble sending? Are you having trouble sending only this email or all emails? Are you having trouble sending all attachments or just this attachment, or just this file type? Do you have some kind of blocking, or a setting checked, that prevents sending certain types of attachments?

3

missbunny asked all the right questions so I will just add that every outgoing message goes to the outbox first, while it is waiting for Outlook to send it. If you’re connected to a fast network, this normally happens so fast you might not notice. You will notice if you send a message while not connected, or have a slow connection.

While you’re busy answering those questions, hit F9 to force the send/receive to happen and see if you get any error messages.

4

The cleaning people are evicting me from my house while the two of them storm through the various rooms. So, I cannot address your questions/suggestions at the moment. Have to shut down my computer for a bit.

But when they let me back in I’ll respond - and appreciatively so.

5

With OL98 and 2000, which I’ve used, a few times I’ve wanted to edit a message after hitting the “send” button. My Outlook sends/receives in batches every three minutes, so this is pretty easy.

If I open the message in the Outbox, make changes, and then close it, the message is still in the Outbox, but it will never get sent. After making the edits, I have to hit the “send” button, not just close it. Could that be the problem?

6

Now here’s the thing that bugs me. One person to whom I sent the joke just this minute phoned. She told me she received both versions of the joke - the straight text message and the one with the attachment.

But I deleted both from the Outbox!

Can it be that a message goes into the Outbox ands stays there until it is delivered to all the addressees? And that’s why it lingered?

If you all don’t want to bother with this magilla I will understand.

7

No. Outlook sends a single outgoing email to your ISP’s SMTP server. After it is accepted by the SMTP server, Outlook doesn’t know or care what happens next. Next, the SMTP server (now behaving like a client) contacts the SMTP servers for each email address (or each domain) to send the email.

I don’t know how this works in a MS Exchange environment, but that doesn’t sound like what you’ve got.

8

Well, I guess it will be forever a mystery. I get the feeling everyone on the list got both versions. Some have sent me jokes in return.

It’s all Black Magic.

Thank you all for your inputs, and I hope you liked the Pope joke.