Vanishing trick

[KARL]

Does anyone know what happens to e-mail messages which, on 'send'ing while connected to the ISP disappear from the outbox in Outlook but do not show anywhere in the sender's computer files (not 'sent', 'draft', 'deleted' or anywhere else in outlook), nor (to the best of my knowledge) do they reach the sender and there is no failed transmission message from the ISP ? Is there a conspiracy theory to cover this: Is Bill Gates a trophy hunter, is it a CIA plot ?

[darth vader]

Sorry you'll have to be more specific - Do you mean you send a message but it never arrives at it's destination nor gets returned to you undelivered? If so then you should report this to your ISP as yours isn't doing it's job - it should successfully deliver the email or return it to you. Bear in mind that sometimes messages are "queued" on a server for long periods until the recipient collects the message, or it times out and is returned. As for outlook not saving a copy in your "sent items" folder - goto "tools" and select "email options" and tick the "Save copies of messages in the sent items folder" box. And i wouldn't worry about the Bill Gates theory - SMTP was around long before he got his claws into the IT industry

[KARL]

Nearly all sent messages are logged in the "sent" folder as they should be (even when undeliverable, in which case they come back from the ISP on top of this) but once in a very rare while a message goes out from the outbox and leaves absolutely no trace anywhere - literally vanishes totally.

[darth vader]

We usually blame this sort of phenomenon on sun spots or pixxies - sorry i can't be more help other than to "de-bug" the situation which would involve software and monitoring of your machine. You could as an alternative try using Outlook express for a while and see if the problem re-occurs - at least then you can pinpoint the error to Outlook