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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.
I have this problem as well. Easiest way i find to fix it is:
With the email open go to drafts and delete it.
Then go back to the email and hit send.
Maybe try it on something unimportant first but works everytime for me.
Great advice - I followed the steps and it worked well to clean up a long-standing (and frustrating) problem. thanks!
Nice workaround but it's a workaround that should not be required. The root cause needs to found and fixed.
DebBEC's advice refers to the issue involving getting the message "can't do it..." when trying to send an email under various situations, and I'm assuming many people discovered the method to "fix" the Microsoft bug by manipulating drafts in their own invented way.
That is not the issue the other "ridiculously complex and artificial..." malarkies are trying to "fix." Those so-called malarkies are trying to fix the Microsoft bug that won't let them MOVE A MESSAGE TO A FOLDER TO GET IT OUT OF THEIR INBOX. If you have a simple, non-complex solution to that problem we are all waiting to hear it, because our INBOXES are growing exponentially (not really exponentially, but I thought I'd use that function to get across my frustration). Please don't insult people who are just trying to help.
This seems to have solved my identical problem - I was getting the same Error message in various scenarios including when a new message was generated but I had left it open for several minutes, replies to an existing message again when left open for several minutes.
Put INBOX in Root Folder Path, type the "INBOX".
what is going on with the code it seems to be a timing issue.
Thanks