Windows Mail 6.0 on Vista Home Basic

[kenward42]

I cannot get my old emails to delete. I always get the following message: "an unknown error has occurred", whenever I attempt to delete multiple emails. Do any of you know how I can resolve this problem?

 

[richc46]

How are you trying to delete.
Do you put your cursor on the first to delete and then hold shift and markall the others?
Then hit delete?
If not how are you attempting?
Did it ever work?
If so what have you changed to cause this problem?
Is it POP3 or IMAP?

 

[Shadowjk]

you may want to try configuring your mail server again just to be sure for that error can occur if you have an error in the config or the password is denied

Hope This Helps,
Josh

 

[Lorien]

Hi kenward42,

Welcome to Vista Forums!

So are you saying it will delete the e-mails (using the process Richard essentially described above except for the multiple selection part) if you select them individually, but as soon as you select more than one, it will not delete them? That's most unusual.

By "old e-mails" do you mean older than a specific date or do you mean any date beyond a certain point or do you mean e-mails in a specific folder or account that's different from those that aren't old?

Have you tried to actually open any of these e-mails? Are you able to do so and read them? Can you forward one of them to yourself and receive it? In other words, are they working except for the fact that you can't delete them?

Try creating a folder called "old e-mails" and then cut the e-mails you want to delete (assuming you don't get the same error message) and paste them into this new folder. When done, try to delete the entire folder and see if that works.

If not, in Windows Explorer, go to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail\Local Folders\ <folder name>\ ... and sort it by date (by clicking on the date header). Then select those older than you want to save and click on delete (if you aren't trying to do all beyond a certain date then this won't work as you can't identify the emails here since they are named by codes and not with the email subject). This should delete the actual messages. Once done, return to Windows Mail and refresh the screen and hopefully the ones you want deleted will be gone. You will have to do this folder-by-folder.

I hope this helps. If not, please let us know anything new you learn during the attempts that might provide a clue as to the cause.

Good luck!

 

[kenward42]

How are you trying to delete.
Do you put your cursor on the first to delete and then hold shift and markall the others?
Then hit delete?
If not how are you attempting?
Did it ever work? If so what have you changed to cause this problem?
Is it POP3 or IMAP?

It doesn't seem to matter how I attempt to delete emails. If I go to the top of a page in the inbox, highlight the first email and hold down delete, one email may delete, then I get the error message. If and hit delete, I immediately get the error message. It does appear that if I highlight a whole page on the inbox that sometimes the body of the email message my be deleted, but the "From & To, and date remain. This is on my laptop, which I only use when we are on a trip.
I have no idea when the problem started. When I last used it in February 2010, it worked fine, and since I rarely use the computer I have no idea what may have been done that caused the problem.

 

[richc46]

The email client is probably corrupted. Have you tried to download the new version. Windows Live Mail 2011?