Outlook Send and Receive Issues

Whenever you have problems sending or receiving mail with Microsoft Outlook, there are basic troubleshooting steps to take.

I will cover both Outlook crashes as well as Outlook send/receive errors.

Note: If you are getting send/receive errors instead of crashes, see the guide; Send/Receive errors

If Outlook crashes when you try to send and/or receive, here are the first steps you should take:

Disable virus scanner integration

This is really where you need to start. If you still have a virus scanner installed which integrates itself with Outlook, disable this integration and try again. Turning off your virus scanner will not disable its integration components, what this means is that turning off your antivirus will not stop it from interfering with Outlook. Check the documentation of your virus scanner carefully to see how to properly disable its mail integration. It may be as simple as disabling the email scanning service, or it may be more complicated than that.
You can also opt to uninstall your virus scanner completely to make sure it cannot interfere while testing. Be cautious though, some brands of antivirus do not uninstall as gracefully as others (Symantec/Norton is an excellent example and requires a utility that you need to download from their website to complete the uninstall). Afterwards you can install it again without the mail scanning features or use Microsoft Security Essentials instead.
Contrary to common beliefs, you are still fully protected if your virus scanner does not integrate with Outlook. The real time scanner will catch everything it's updated for so please make sure that your application is kept up to date at all times. Also see; Disable virus scanner integration?

Reset send/receive settings

Outlook keeps the send/receive settings in an srs-file. If this file ends up corrupted, the send/receive will crash. To reset your send/receive settings, all you have to do is renaming the srs-file to .old when Outlook is closed. You can find the file in the following location;

• Windows 7 and Windows Vista
  C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook\
• Windows XP
  C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\

Note 1: The file is called <profilename>.srs where <profilename> stands for the name of your Outlook Mail Profile. By default this is called Outlook so the file would then be called outlook.srs and you would rename it to outlook.old or outlook.srs_old.
Note 2: Resetting the srs-file won't delete any mail accounts you've configured in Outlook. It only resets information such as how often Outlook checks the server for new mail.
Note 3: You must enable the view in Windows Explorer so that you can a) see file extensions for known file types, and b) Show hidden files and folders. Tools > Folder Options > View.

NOTE: As of March 2014, I will no longer support Windows XP as it has been end-of-lifed by Microsoft, and in March they will no longer release updates, hotfixes, security patches, etc. for this old operating system.

Pst-file corruption and size

If your pst-file is corrupted, then writing new data to it could crash Outlook as well. To scan your pst-file for errors you can use the Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe).
If the pst-file is reaching the 2GB (usually around 1.6 - 1.8 GB) and you are using an ANSI formatted pst-file, you are reaching the limit of the pst-file. You must then start with a new pst-file. If you are in ANSI format and are using Outlook 2003 or later, you can convert your pst-file to a Unicode formatted pst-file.

Corrupt message on mail server

If the message on your mail server to be downloaded is not what Outlook expected, depending on the message corruption, Outlook could crash. To fix this, simply logon to your mailbox via the web interface provided by your ISP or company and take a look at the messages that still need to be downloaded. If the send/receive crash is caused by a corrupt message, it often is not hard to detect which message it is; often it is caused by a spam message.
Delete the corrupt message from the web based mailbox and try the send/receive function in Outlook again.
Note: Some web mailboxes require you to delete the message twice to really get rid of it. For instance, if your ISP is using H-Sphere Horde Mail, look for the “Purge Deleted” option.

Recreate the mail profile

If Outlook still crashes when you send/receive, the issue might be your actual mail profile. To verify this, you can recreate your mail profile.

Further troubleshooting

Still nothing? Further details about your crash and Outlook environment is needed. Look in the Event Viewer to locate Outlook’s error log. Then post this crash log including additional information about your environment (such as version of Outlook, version of Windows and type of mail account) in one of the Outlook Forums.

Microsoft Outlook PST Backup to Network

For home users, backing up your Microsoft PST (personal folders) is not an issue. Backing up Outlook for a home user was covered in this blog: Outlook Data Backups

What people may not have read, at the bottom, and it may not have been clear enough is there is a solution for those users who are on a network.

I'll make it simple and to the point:



Microsoft has never supported the use of a PST from a networked drive, and with good reason.

Outlook requires constant read/write access to the PST. The slightest interruption will cause corruption or issues with Outlook.

What you're doing is not supported.

What I've done for my users is written a very simple script that they can execute when they close Outlook that copies their PST file(s) to their personal drive on the network:

COPY %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Outlook\*.pst u:data\outlook /y 

NOTE: This batch file backs up the PST to the user's U drive, which is clearly written. It can be any drive/folder you wish, you just have to change what I have written: u:data/outlook. The rest of the batch file stays the same, including the /y at the end. If your user does this at least weekly, they should suffer little in the way of major data loss in the event of corruption, hard drive crash, etc. 

Save the script as a batch file on the C drive. Make a shortcut. Change the icon to the MSN butterfly. Rename it to OUTLOOK BACKUP. My users love this. 

If you don't have a policy set against the use of the Windows Scheduler, you can implement that to automatically back up the PST file to the desired location on the network.  

Good luck! As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.