When sending email through Outlook 2003 the messages stay in the Outbox and only send when I click the “Send/Receive” button. This is a recent occurrence as previously the email messages were sent immediately. Interestingly, this only seems to happen at my house because when I was staying at a hotel in my travels this problem did not occur.

This is certainly an interesting problem, since it does not occur when you are using a different internet connection. As such, it seems that the problem may be related to internet connectivity rather than the Outlook program. However, we need to double-check whether this is the case before working on this assumption. As such, I suggest that you try your computer on another internet connection so we can confirm whether the problem continues on the other connection. Since you took your computer to a hotel I assume that you are using a laptop, so hopefully connecting the computer into a friend’s internet connection should not present a major hassle.

If the problem does not occur when using the other internet connection then we have confirmed the issue is with your home internet connection. The next steps to diagnose and resolve the problem will largely depend on how you connect to the internet. If you connect to the internet by using a utility on your computer to establish the internet connection (like on dial-up internet or when using a broadband service such as Transact) then make sure you are establishing your internet connection before attempting to send any email. It is likely that Outlook is not detecting an internet connection and holds the messages in the Outbox. Then, as you click the “Send/Receive” button Outlook requests the operating system establish the internet connection to send the email messages, if this has not been done already.

The other possibility is that you are using a broadband internet connection with a router which connects to the internet on behalf of other devices on your home network. This scenario is more difficult to diagnose, as the internet connection should always be active and ready to accept data. In this case I am unsure how to proceed, but it may be worthwhile working through the software setting changes we can make within Outlook which I will outline below in case any of those resolve the issue.

Should you have worked through the above procedures without resolve, or you find that changing internet connections does not solve the problem (and the fact it worked correctly in the hotel was a fluke rather than a clue) we need to look at the settings and configuration within Outlook as a step towards resolving the problem. Open Outlook and then go to the “Tools” menu > “Options” and click the “Mail Setup” tab. Make sure that “Send immediately when connected” is ticked. This will tell Outlook to immediately send email messages when it has a connection to your mail server (in other words, when there is an active connection to the internet).

Should that setting already be configured, or does not fix the problem, some users have reported this behaviour can occur when Microsoft Word is used as the email editor within Outlook. Go back into the “Tools” menu > “Options” and click the “Mail Format” tab. Untick the box “Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages”. Click OK and then restart Outlook. Try composing an email to see whether it sends the message immediately. Be aware, by not using Word as your email editor you will be losing the features which Word offers to compose email messages. That said, if it resolves the issue this may be an acceptable trade-off. However, if this does not fix the problem then you should re-enable the editor to regain the features you have lost through disabling the feature.

Another procedure you can attempt is to increase the server timeout setting. This specifies the amount of time Outlook will wait for the mail server to respond before ceasing the send attempt on the message. If the mail server is slow to respond over your internet link then it may be timing-out. In Outlook, go to the “Tools” menu > “Options” and click the “Mail Setup” tab then the “E-mail Accounts” button. In the next window, click the “General” tab and select your email account then click the “Change” button. In the Change E-mail Account window that appears click the “More settings” button. The Internet E-mail Settings window will appear. Click the “Advanced” tab. Increase the Server Timeout setting to 5 minutes. Click OK to save and close the window, click “Next” and then “Finish” to close the following window, “Close” to close the next window and then OK to close the main options window. Restart Outlook and check whether the problem continues.