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Over the last two years, I have been using Outlook 2013, now Office 365. I've been experiencing an ongoing issue where I receive this message "Operation cannot be performed because message has been changed" message. Typical scenarios: 1) A new email arrives in my Outlook inbox. I preview, or read the email. I attempt to delete the email. Operation cannot... message appears. I either type a new email, or reply to an email, go on to another task leaving the draft until later. When I return to the draft email, complete the email, and attempt to send the email, Operation cannot... message appears. I also cannot even save the draft, same error message. This is the worst part of this bug, as I've wasted/lost the time effort spent on the draft email.
I have run the Office repair utilities. I have tried unchecking the email cleanup boxes, and a variety of fixes recommended on these Microsoft answers communities. I've noticed sometimes when I come back to a message, it does allow me to move/delete the message. It's like there's a sync issue that needs time to resolve. However, nothing appears to work when a draft message gets hung in this loop. I have to start over with a new reply email.
Using Classic Outlook on Windows for personal email, calendar, and contact management
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Sadly, the folders aren't on the ISP's webmail.
Any other ideas? I am struggling to get my backup to import.
Thanks so much Princess Wonder Woman!
I actually did a major .pst backup three days ago - but then I caught up on 500 unread emails and created some new folders. This led me to try the INBOX thing and, hey - where did things go?
And you assumed well - I am at home, recently unemployed due in part to Covid crisis. Now, before I saw your reply I was trying to get the missing emails from my backup but it seems like maybe the backup is corrupted. It keeps saying the files aren't Outlook data files. Yet they are labelled as Outlook Data Files. And now of course I'm being offered expensive solutions when I search the issue.
I will try the webmail idea but I note that on my phone it never showed a lot of these and earlier subfolders so maybe they weren't synced to the account properly!
I'll try your suggestions now - I just read your answer. I'll be back to you with an update. Cheers!
Hello,
Hope this suggestion helps till you get a permanent recovery one. I believe in treating the immediate need/task at hand and then then troubleshooting and repairing. You didn't mention whether the email account you are having the problems with is a personal email or a work email so I'll offer my help from the personal angle. I am choosing that because if it was a work email you would probably be reaching out to your corp IT dept for help and not coming here.
That being said here's my suggestion. If it is anything like an internet email account set up in your own personal Outlook on your own computer like a Gmail or Outlook.com or Yahoo etc.... try signing in through their website interface (even on another computer maybe - just to isolate your computer out of the mix) and see if the "folder(s)" are still where you put them on that company's email server. Outlook is a secondary program (I have my Gmail set up in my own Outlook at home for my several email addresses) so the actual main original copy is still going to be on their server and you should be able to see them there and maybe even print what you need or forward it back to your in-box or move them back to your in-box and then when you fix your Outlook you'll have them there to put back where you want them in your Outlook or maybe the fix will recover back to original.
In the future I would recommend creating an archive file (.pst) and every so often back up your folders to that archive for emergencies such as this. Hope this helps - keep this updated as it is interesting......
Sincerely,
Wonder Woman
Hi Guys,
I tried this fix - putting INBOX in the root folder. I briefly lost all folders, so undid it. Now only some folders have returned and I have lost a bunch of folders including a MAJOR folder which I had only created this week. It includes documents for an important identity issue with government here. It was where I recently moved a whole lot of currently vital stuff - really serious. HELP! How do I get back the folders? Where are the emails that were held there?
Using IMAP/SMTP. Should I try 'repair account' option?
Nope. Do you have to restart?