CynthiaBCary

My husband's laptop was recently stolen and we purchased a Dell Vostro 1500 with Windows XP Professional SP2. I purchased and installed MS Office 2003 and also downloaded and installed SP3. I had a backup of his old system and copied his PST file to the new laptop and did the necessary setup and he receives/sends emails without problems -- normally.

Randomly, though, the send/receive button in Outlook 2003 doesn't seem to work. Normally, if I hit the send/receive button on the top bar, I quickly see the picture of 2 folders on the bottom right of the screen and the words "send/receive status xx%" -- even if I don't have any messages to send or receive. I can rehit send/receive multiple times and see an indication that the send/receive is being attempted. BUT then, randomly, hitting the send/receive does nothing -- there is no indication that a send/receive is being attempted. When this is happening, I have composed a new "test" messsage that is then automatically sent as it should be. Restarting the computer seems to solve the problem -- but we are getting tired of having to do this.

I installed Norton Internet Security this morning and did a complete scan without finding any problems. The send/receive problem occurred prior to installing NIS and is still occuring (randomly).

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated -- my husband is ready to ditch this system although I tell him I do not think it is a hardware problem.

Thanks for any suggestions or advice.

CynthiaB

simpswr

Look in Tools . . Options . . Click on the Mail Setup tab . . then the Send/Receive box . . either uncheck the line Schedule an Automatic Send Receive . . . or change the time to what you want

CynthiaBCary

My understanding is that the Schedule relates to Outlook checking for messages at the chosen interval (I have it set for 5 minutes) -- but hitting the send/receive forces a check for messages inbetween the 5 minutes. For example, today, I called my husband to tell him to check for an email I had just sent to him -- he should be able to hit the send/receive button and get my email immediately without waiting till the 5 minutes is up for the scheduled chedk. I want Outlook to do both -- check every 5 minutes but allow us to force an immediate send/receive also. Isn't it supposed to work that way? (It works that way on my computer that has the same setup.)

simpswr

Sorry . . I am not understanding the problem I guess . . are you saying that when you press Send Receive it does not check for mail . . are you sure that there is mail there?

CynthiaBCary

Correct, when I hit send/receive it does not check for mail -- there may or may not be mail to be delivered. (For example, when I called my husband today to tell him to check for the email I had just sent him, he hit send/receive and nothing happened. He did this several times and still nothing and no indication that the send/receive was being processed.) On my computer, same setup with OS and Office, I can see an indication on the bottom of my screen that the send/receive is occuring -- even if I don't have any emails to receive or send.

I'm not sure this is always the case, but my husband said today when I called him, he opened Outlook and it did not do the normal send/receive upon opening -- so that is why he tried to hit the send/receive button. Typically, every time we open Outlook (his computer and mine), we can see that a send/receive is being performed to check for new messages.

Hope this helps. Thanks for any other ideas to fix this!

idgat

No doubt the problem has been resolved by now, but coming across this issue through a Google search - and being in the same position myself - I thought I'd just post a solution for future reference.

In my case it was multiple instances of Outlook still running, of which I knew nothing. It just appeared to me that one session of Outlook was running, and the Send/Receive option was not working.

Ctrl+Alt+Del to show the Task Manager -> then to Processes, showed that 5 unclosed sessions of Outlook were still running (click on the column heading "Image Name" to sort the running processes in alpha order).

I had to manually close ("End Process") each of the instances of Outlook (despite Microsoft's warning message of doom and gloom for each closure), and then re-open Outlook -> Send/Receive worked like a charm.

I'd come across this happening before and causing other problems - seems Outlook not closing between sessions is not an unknown problem.

SkyShroud

idgat -
That was a very simple, and effective, solution. Double thumbs up!
I began experiencing the issue yesterday, with my work laptop. The bottom line is that the notebook went into hibernation mode, and did not completely shut off Outlook during the process.... thereby leaving 2 instances running when I opened Outlook this morning.

Thank you for the post.

mlagrange

Same problem; I was completely stumped, and this worked like a charm.

Thanks!

Mark
Houston, Texas

BlueDrop

Same here too....

THANKS idgat !

It is amazing how often we forget to try the simplest things....I completely over thought the problem

BlueDrop