Outlook won’t download mail from one account (2003)

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My firm’s email was recently transferred to another ISP. Since then, I have had problems downloading my email. I have set up Outlook correctly so far as I know, following all the instructions I was given regarding POP3 servers, etc. I can download headers from my account, but attempts to download the message text result in this error message:

!Task ‘ – Receiving’ reported error (0x800CCC0F): ‘The connection to the server was interrupted. If this problem continues, contact your service administrator or Internet service provider (ISP). The server responded: +OK 308 octets’

Other accounts (I have a few), hosted by other ISPs work fine. Also, as a test I set up the troublesome email account on another machine running Outlook 2000, and everything worked fine. I have also deleted and reinstalled the email account several times. No joy.

Help!

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Replies

Microsoft indicate this problem has 3 possible causes
1/ e-mail server settings
2/ firewall configuration
3/ Norton anti-virus

Check MSKB 813514 and Symantec support

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Dear Tony,

Many thanks for this. I have reviewed the sources you suggested. As far as I can see, this is not a timeout issue or the like, and I have no third-party firewall set up. The problem seems to be Norton. When I turn off email virus checking, all is well with this account.

Needless to say, this is not a pleasant conclusion. I need virus checking. It also raises a several questions: Why this account? Why after a change in email host?

Norton offers no solution for Outlook 2003/Norton 2003 (I am running NAV Pro 10.0.1.13).

Any thoughts?

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> I need virus checking.

As you may know, the Norton product includes several different types of virus checking. The type that causes this problem is the POP3 scanning. However, most malware is in the form of an attachment, and Outlook either blocks the executable attachments or writes them to a temp folder as the first step in opening them. When writing them to a temp folder, Norton’s standard AutoProtect will kick in and scan the file. So you should be mostly protected with the POP3 scanning off. Not sure if that’s sufficient consolation, but at least for this one account, maybe you could live without it temporarily.

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I think this may be what I have to do for the time being, and I feel better about it after your explanation regarding attachments. But I am uncomfortable with using a stopgap solution for the longer term. Can you suggest an alternative anti-viral package that does work as it’s supposed to? I must say I am amazed and disappointed that one of the major anti-virus packages fails to mesh smoothly with the dominant email client. But then maybe I’m naive.

Thanks very much.

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Have you tried uninstalling and then reinstalling NAV? Often something as simple as this will rectify the problem.

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Well, the problem’s gone away. No idea why. I downloaded updates to NAV, but that didn’t seem to be the fix , since nothing improved the first few times I ran Outlook. I turned email checking off and on a few times. And that didn’t seem to work. Then I used webmail to view my email, but I’d done that before without any change. Finally, I downloaded email with webmail running and mirabile dictu, it worked. I’ve got utterly no clue what’s going on. One more bit of weirdness, the email account that caused problems showed up on my lists of email accounts (i.e., in the Send dialogue), but was not numbered. Now it’s numbered. I’m totally lost.

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Ah – the wierd and wonderful magical world of self destructing and self-healing software! Certainly an aggravating and perplexing problem isn’t it, but as long as everything is OK now, that’s great. If you ever find what caused this problem in the first place and what corrected it, please post back.

Reply | Quote

Ah – the wierd and wonderful magical world of self destructing and self-healing software! Certainly an aggravating and perplexing problem isn’t it, but as long as everything is OK now, that’s great. If you ever find what caused this problem in the first place and what corrected it, please post back.

Reply | Quote

Well, the problem’s gone away. No idea why. I downloaded updates to NAV, but that didn’t seem to be the fix , since nothing improved the first few times I ran Outlook. I turned email checking off and on a few times. And that didn’t seem to work. Then I used webmail to view my email, but I’d done that before without any change. Finally, I downloaded email with webmail running and mirabile dictu, it worked. I’ve got utterly no clue what’s going on. One more bit of weirdness, the email account that caused problems showed up on my lists of email accounts (i.e., in the Send dialogue), but was not numbered. Now it’s numbered. I’m totally lost.

Reply | Quote

Have you tried uninstalling and then reinstalling NAV? Often something as simple as this will rectify the problem.

Reply | Quote

I think this may be what I have to do for the time being, and I feel better about it after your explanation regarding attachments. But I am uncomfortable with using a stopgap solution for the longer term. Can you suggest an alternative anti-viral package that does work as it’s supposed to? I must say I am amazed and disappointed that one of the major anti-virus packages fails to mesh smoothly with the dominant email client. But then maybe I’m naive.

Thanks very much.

Reply | Quote

> I need virus checking.

As you may know, the Norton product includes several different types of virus checking. The type that causes this problem is the POP3 scanning. However, most malware is in the form of an attachment, and Outlook either blocks the executable attachments or writes them to a temp folder as the first step in opening them. When writing them to a temp folder, Norton’s standard AutoProtect will kick in and scan the file. So you should be mostly protected with the POP3 scanning off. Not sure if that’s sufficient consolation, but at least for this one account, maybe you could live without it temporarily.

Reply | Quote

Dear Tony,

Many thanks for this. I have reviewed the sources you suggested. As far as I can see, this is not a timeout issue or the like, and I have no third-party firewall set up. The problem seems to be Norton. When I turn off email virus checking, all is well with this account.

Needless to say, this is not a pleasant conclusion. I need virus checking. It also raises a several questions: Why this account? Why after a change in email host?

Norton offers no solution for Outlook 2003/Norton 2003 (I am running NAV Pro 10.0.1.13).

Any thoughts?

Reply | Quote

Microsoft indicate this problem has 3 possible causes
1/ e-mail server settings
2/ firewall configuration
3/ Norton anti-virus

Check MSKB 813514 and Symantec support

Reply | Quote