How do I resolve the Outlook error 0x80042112: The following e-mail messages on the mail server cannot be downloaded...?

Question

Outlook email receiving was working fine previously, but now this error message is appearing.

Task '[e-mail] - Receiving' reported error (0x80042112) : 'The following e-mail messages on the mail server cannot be downloaded. Contact your Internet service provider (ISP) or mail administrator if you continue to receive this error.

Unfortunately it doesn't provide much information on what the cause is. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Can you log into your mail server's web interface and see exactly what message is causing the problem? Most mail services have a web mail utility in addition to the standard pop/imap services. Then you can just delete the offending message and good to go.

Answer 2

From a Google search it appears that it's an Outlook issue, rather than a server one. Some possible causes:

• Your virus scanning software is detecting an infected message and then blocking it before Outlook can fully download it (see here). Can you temporarily disable it?
• Sometimes overly-large messages can cause this issue. Could you possibly retrieve the large messages via webmail, or another application?
• Possibly some corruption in your Outlook PST file (see here)

This page suggests that if the points above don't help, that you can try removing the account from Outlook. Full steps are on that page.

Answer 3

just a few thoughts, since the email "cannot be downloaded" from the server, I dont think PSTs are in play yet here. OST corruption would be more likely but that could be sidestepped with a new profile creation.

you can confirm the size of the offending email from the web mail portal to check if size is the problem.

you could also test the email download from another machine that has/hasn't antivirus just to confirm that if it's really the AV that is mucking around with Outlook.

additional thought - any add-ins active on the outlook?

Answer 4

I had basically the same problem. Was able to reproduce it anytime I sent myself a test file containing large attachments. I used a test email with four attachments totaling 7.8MB. Turning off all Outlooks add-ins (all supplied by microsoft) solved the problem. Looking at their names I didn't see why I needed any of them. Did not go to the trouble to find out which one was causing the trouble. Had there been any non-microsoft add-ins I would have tried turning them off first.