Someone sent me an email with a 4.4MB attachment and as I am sitting in the bush with a dodgy GPRS connection MS Outlook has frozen saying (Not Responding) which means that I can't do anything until one day the attachment has downloaded.

If I go into my ISP site and delete the email will that free up Outlook or will it just freeze up forever. Or will it release if I do nothing and wait until I get somewhere in a few days time with a bit of bandwidth and Outlook finishes whatever is holding it up.

Or is there some way to delete the bad email from the outlook data base?

Anybody know what to do.

At the moment my download speed is something like 1MB per 2 hours so even this site takes patience with plenty of dropped connections etc.

I've had the same problem in the past, I fixed it by using my ISPs webmail (email through your browser) to delete the offending mail, it's only of use if your ISP supports it though.

try www.mail2web.com you can log into your email, and delete emails from the server without actually downloading them. sounds dodgy giving this website all you email passwords and stuff, i know, but its approved by IBM to their staff to use. this was in the days when everyone only had dialup at home...

Thanks for the feedback guys , went into ISP and deleted email - didn't help - then noticed in task bar that there were three Avast icons active in Outlook so disconnected from internet, closed Outlook, shut down Avast, re-opened Outlook and hey presto - no hangup. Then deleted offending email - restarted Avast and alls well.

Get rid of Avast --- download and install free av http://www.free-av.com/