Force remove a message stuck in an Outlook outbox

2008-09-25 02:04 PM | 4 comments

I'm writing these instructions up for posterity, since this is now the second time this incident has happened and I wanted to preserve the instructions for the MDBVU32 tool. The first time, it was a bad read receipt causing an annoying popup for every sent message; an outstanding client can't send or receive any messages. (Original instructions are at howto-outlook.com.)

This situation can occur on most versions of Outlook and requires a repair utility from Microsoft to fix. To avoid completely trashing the mailstore, grab a copy of MDBVU32 (the Microsoft Exchange Server Information Store Viewer) from Microsoft or from here.

Start the utility, then click OK to the first dialog. Then,

Click MDB > OpenMessageStore, select the item with the "D" next to it for the default PST file.

The message will be in either MDB > Open Root Folder or MDB > Open IPM Outbox.

Select the stuck message in the middle column and select lpMDB->AbortSubmit(), then Call Function.

Select OK, then log out by MDB > Store Logoff > OK > OK

Close the application by Session > Session Logoff, then close any remaining windows.

Comments

peter thompson on 2009-03-31 04:39 AM (#)

email stuck

peter thompson on 2009-03-31 04:42 AM (#)

astro on 2009-04-21 06:23 AM (#)

Tried this on file that accidentally sent without checking the size (15M), and I get the error - MAPI_E_UNABLE_TO_ABORT

Any suggestions?

pom on 2009-06-21 03:39 PM (#)

i love you and want to have your babies : ) thank you sooooo much xxx

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