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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.
Dear People;
Here's my workaround for when I receive a message, and in some mysterious way changed the message I do the following:
1) Right-click message and change message back to "Unread".
2) Do a "Send/Receive" all folders.
3) Do a drag and drop to folder.
From Bruce Mundy
Dear People;
Here's my workaround for when I receive a message, and in some mysterious way changed the message I do the following:
1) Right-click message and change message back to "Unread".
2) Do a "Send/Receive" all folders.
3) Do a drag and drop to folder.
Bruce, that sounds like it might work. But I must now confess I am tired of this. After following this thread and experimenting for several years (WITHOUT MICROSOFT ONCE CHIMING IN) I have since abandoned working in Outlook, instead writing, reading and saving emails direct in my service providers native Web Client (Comcast and GMail). I keep Outlook around for doing email searches and when I want to edit SUBJECT lines should I want future search clarity (which I do not do much). Otherwise it is just as easy to work in the Web platforms, If it were not for needing Excel, I would dump Microsoft altogether for personal home use. I am looking into a replacement for spreadsheets.
Hi Guys,
Tghis has been happening to me a lot and I fell upon an easy fix. Go to the DRAFT, delete it and a new draft will be created WITH THE CHANGES YOU HAVE MADE and you are good to send.
It worked for me.
Cheers,
Bali Steve
I cannot thank you enough for providing the solution to "message has been changed ....." problem. Your simple solution WORKED! Woohoo! Many thanks, George. 10 Stars. - M Naylor
This works perfectly and is simple enough as this error does not take place all the time.