mail from apps stuck in outbox, can not send or move

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mail from apps stuck in outbox, can not send or move

This is weird ... So I can send and receive email just fine on all my mail accounts but when I try and send a link from safari or a picture from the photos app it never sends. I don't hear a whoosh sound after sending and when I look in the mail app the message is just sitting there in the outbox.

Even weirder is that I can forward these messages but can not send them. I can't even move the messages since my only choices are the trash or the outbox. Even worse the outbox doesn't show up at all on my mac when i sync, so these messages are stuck in my iphone somewhere in limbo.

... anyone else have this problem or know how to solve it?

Mac Book Pro 15" / iPhone 3G (3.1.2), Mac OS X (10.6), 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Posted on Jan 28, 2010 2:59 PM

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Answer 1

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Allan Sampson

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Jan 28, 2010 3:07 PM in response to pjkix

The same occurs with all accounts, or with one account in particular?

Even weirder is that I can forward these messages but can not send them.

Forward these new messages from where? You can forward a received message or a message that was successfully sent which will be located in the account's Sent mailbox, but you can't forward a newly composed message.

Even worse the outbox doesn't show up at all on my mac when i sync, so these messages are stuck in my iphone somewhere in limbo.

Email account mailboxes and messages and the iPhone's Outbox are not included with the iTunes sync process. Server stored mailboxes with an IMAP account are kept synchronized with the server with each email client used to access the account, but the Outbox mailbox with the Mail.app on your Mac and with the iPhone's Mail application is not synced with anything.

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Answer 2

pjkix Author

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Jan 28, 2010 3:25 PM in response to Allan Sampson

I've tried changing the default account, even disabling other accounts and the same thing occurs. Also the same outbox with outgoing messages intact shows up under multiple accounts.

I can forward the unsent messages in my outbox but that is pretty much all I can do with them. So I can sorta retrieve the messages in there if I want to forward them all but really I want to fix this problem so they don't keep building up in my outbox and send like normal.

Remember, I can send and receive like normal under all my accounts, this only occurs from apps that send email. Perhaps if there were error messages or logs to go on it would be more helpful but I'm pretty baffled.

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Answer 3

Jan 28, 2010 3:36 PM in response to pjkix

As with the Mail.app on a Mac, there is a single Outbox mailbox that is shared by all accounts, which is available only if a message cannot be sent for whatever reason.

And there is no error message provided?

Which apps are you referring to that send email? I know you can select a photo to be shared via email with the selected photo placed in a new email message with the iPhone's Mail application and which is sent by the same. Is this what you mean by apps that send email and if so, which other app?

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Answer 4

pjkix Author

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Jan 28, 2010 6:55 PM in response to Allan Sampson

Ya its really weird, I get no messages what so ever. Every now and then it will look like its going to try and send and the progress bar will zip by but nothing happens.

These messages have been building up for a while now from all sorts of apps both native and 3rd party. There are photos from the photo app, links from safari, links from youtube, links from twitterific, etc. Looks as though the oldest message is from November so that might be when it started happening.

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Answer 5

Jan 28, 2010 7:05 PM in response to pjkix

I do the same and I haven't experienced this. I haven't had a message stuck in the Outbox for over 2.5 years beginning with the original iPhone.

I would try restoring your iPhone with iTunes from your iPhone's backup first. Email account settings are included with your iPhone's backup so if there is a problem with this on your iPhone and it sounds like there is, restoring from the backup will also restore the problem.

If no change after doing so, restore as a new iPhone or not from your iPhone's backup.

You can try deleting and recreating all accounts first if you haven't already done so.

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Answer 6

pjkix Author

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Jan 28, 2010 7:05 PM in response to pjkix

ok, I just disabled all but my main account and all the emails have finally sent. I'm not sure what went wrong but at least i know it is fixable and can work to pinpoint what account was causing problems at this point.

Thanks for the input though, it was actually helpful to try to explain the problem and walk through it.

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