Tips & Tricks

Is Your E-mail Stuck?

If this hasn't already happened to you, it probably will (it's happening a lot, judging by all the questions I've been getting lately).

You have a piece of e-mail ready to go out, you try to send it, and it won't go. All you get is an error message during every send cycle. The e-mail seems like it's "stuck" in your outbox.

Sometimes it can get even worse (especially with Outlook / Outlook Express). You may have a piece of e-mail come in that causes your computer or e-mail client to lock up when you select (click) it.

What can you do?

The first thing to try is going to the e-mail in question and deleting it. If it's in your outbox, go to your outbox, highlight the e-mail, and hit your Delete key.

What if that piece of e-mail is causing your e-mail program to lock up? Well, don't worry, there's still hope.

Most of the time those lockups are due to something in the e-mail itself. It could be a bad script, corrupt sound, errant piece of coding, or any number of other problems. When you click the e-mail, it automatically opens in the preview pane and locks things up before you can get to the Delete key.

The solution is to temporarily close that preview pane, then select and delete the e-mail. I've never seen that little trick not work.

So, how do you close the preview pane? Easy! (instructions below are for Outlook Express)

1. Click the View menu, Layout.

2. Uncheck the "Preview Pane" checkbox (check out all the other options too :-).

Hit OK and you should be able to go in and get rid of that problematic e-mail. Once it's history, just follow the steps above, but this time check the preview pane box.

Back to normal again!

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