Would My Email Be Lost If I Abandoned It in the Sending in Progress?

Abandoned email deliveries don't have to result in a lost message.

Abandoning email during the “Sending in Progress” phase of delivery will likely result in the email being lost, unless your email application is designed to prevent these types of occurrences. Most email applications do not safeguard against aborted email transmissions that commonly occur during application malfunctions and high volumes of network traffic. Employing a few preventive measures can help you avoid these types of emailing problems.

Applications

Online email applications, such as Yahoo and Gmail, do not automatically save aborted outgoing email transmissions. However, some applications that are installed directly to a computer’s hard drive, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, retain aborted email messages directly to the application’s drafts folder or in its original window. Adjusting the application’s settings determines which of these actions is taken if you abort the email transmission before it is successfully transmitted. If using an online email application, copying the email’s contents before clicking “Send” retains the contents in the computer’s clipboard memory should the message fail to transmit. This practice enables you to paste the message contents and attempt delivery in another email message.

Cache

Some Web browser applications retain Web page contents in a memory cache for instant access by pressing the application’s “Back” arrow, which comes in handy if you abandon an email delivery while it’s in the process of sending. If your browser offers this feature, then you have access to the failed delivery’s message. Applications that offer this feature recognize each page viewed, including email message templates, as individual Web pages and store them automatically in the cache. Even if your browser offers this feature, however, some online email applications automatically deactivate this feature for security purposes.

Causes

Slow delivery of an outgoing message, which frequently is the reason for abandoning email delivery during the sending process, can be caused by an assortment of reasons, including network traffic and the computer’s processing power. As your Internet service provider’s bandwidth nears or reaches its capacity, you are likely to experience slow computer performance, including email delivery. Your computer’s processor can also affect your email delivery processor, especially if it uses RAM technology. Your computer’s RAM can become full, which leads to sluggish computer performance. Turning the computer off empties the RAM and can lead to faster processing when the machine is restarted.

Considerations

Getting into the practice of saving your email messages as drafts before attempting to send them can help you avoid the frustration that comes with losing emails that are abandoned during the sending process. Typing your email message into a word processing document, such as Microsoft Word, and then pasting it into an email template is another viable option for dealing with those rare occasions where you lose an abandoned email’s contents.

References

• Webopedia: RAM