Emails in Draft Mode in Inbox

hi there...

I was just finishing the draft of an important, complex and extremely technical email. I spent 3 days  back and forth into the precision of it's concept.

  I stopped 15 minutes ago for a coffee, and when I came back to my computer it wasn't there after in inter my personal code again.

I really, really need to find this draft again.

Can you help me?

MMM

I have this same problem with send emails staying in my inbox as a draft.

MS surface Pro 3

Outlook 2016

IMAP mail account.

This is what I sent in to Community.

When I send an email a copy of it remains in the drafts as well as being transferred to the Sent items

Consequently I have multiples copies of each sent email

As far as I can tell my emails arrive at their destinations okay

Hi silverliebt (and all),

I have the exact same problem.  I believe it's a bug with the new Outlook 2013/2016 and IMAP accounts.  For nearly ten years I've been using Outlook 2007 on Windows Vista, never any problems.  About a month ago I decided to upgrade to Windows 10 (bought a retail copy on a USB drive), and Office 2016 (got a free version from my university, academic license), and it's been nothing but trouble with this problem.  I'm still using the same IMAP email accounts that I've been using for well over a decade, and the same exact configuration that I've had on Outlook 2007/Windows Vista for all those years.  Here's the problem detail:

• Reply to an email in my Inbox (IMAP folder), and proceed to type out the reply in the reading pane.
• After about 30 seconds, Outlook auto-saves a copy as "DRAFT" (in my Inbox), and the message is thus flagged as draft
• I now have a copy of the unfinished/unsent reply in my "Drafts" folder, as well as in my "Inbox". This is part of the new Outlook design, where email messages (replies, forwards) are typed right in the reading pane, not in a separate message window.  Therefore Outlook keeps the open "DRAFT" copy in the Inbox reading pane.
• I continue to type the message, and then I click "Send" when done
• The message gets sent successfully, and a copy appears in my Sent Items
• When I go back to my Inbox, my reply is open again, just as I had typed it out, and waiting for me to press "Send".  It's basically like I just typed out the reply but haven't sent it yet.
• I can click "Send" yet again, and another copy gets sent, goes to my Sent Items, but the reply is, once again, open in the inbox as a "DRAFT", awaiting for me to click "Send".
• I can go on and on re-sending, filling up my recipient's inbox full of the same reply message, but the "DRAFT" reply never goes away.

A few potentially important things to note...

• This only occurs if Outlook auto-saves the reply as a DRAFT.  If I type the reply fast enough, and hit the "Send" button before it auto-saves a draft copy, then there's no problem.
• When a DRAFT copy gets auto-saved, the DRAFT copy shows up on the IMAP server but in the Inbox folder as well as the Drafts folder, and thus I can see and access it on my other devices, such as my Win10 laptop (original message done on my Win10 desktop), my Blackberry Q10 phone, any one of my four Android tablets, and my webmail service.

I believe that is where the problem lies, when Outlook stores a copy of the draft on the IMAP server but in the Inbox.  Basically, I believe it's a programming glitch between the new Outlook design (where replies and forwards are typed right in the reading pane and drafts are kept in the Inbox). Here are the reasons behind my reasoning:

• The same exact problem occurs with Apple/Mac mail, according to what I've read online.  The solution is to disable the Mac email program from storing a copy of the draft email on the server (draft copies stored locally only).  This has the disadvantage that drafts can only be accessed on the originating computer, and are not accessible on other devices, but that's not really an issue since not many people would start typing an email, stop, and then continue on another device.  Most people would simply finish and send the email before switching devices.  Unfortunately, I could not find any option anywhere in Outlook 2016 to disable the uploading of draft emails on the IMAP server.
• With Outlook 2007, draft versions (unfinished/unsent) of emails would not appear in the Inbox on my other devices.  They would only appear after being completed and sent (and thus they would be in the "Sent Items" IMAP folder, available on the server and on all devices).
• I can therefore conclude that the uploading of unfinished/unsent ("DRAFT") emails onto the IMAP server's Inbox folder is what is causing the problem at hand.  What is likely the root cause is that there is a programming glitch, where Outlook is not properly informing the IMAP server to delete the DRAFT version from the server-side inbox folder once the email is completed and sent.

Lastly, I should also note that this problem is intermittent.  Sometimes drafts get cleared when I send the message, sometimes I get this problem (where the draft gets "stuck" despite sending the message repeatedly).

Anyway, I apologize for this post being so long and detailed, and for all the bolding.  I just wanted to make sure that my point is clear, since I'm pretty confident that this is the root of the software bug with the new Outlook design and IMAP protocol.  Basically, I'm hoping that someone at Microsoft will read this and Microsoft will finally start working on this bug.

Cheers all.

If you find a fix for the drafts left in the inbox, please email me the fix to *** Email address is removed for privacy ***.

thanks and good luck.

I have the same problem - and a workaround which removed the "Draft" tag.

Simply email it on.

The destination email address can be a private email address you own, so you can delete it on arrival.

The original, incoming email has now lost its "Draft" tag.

The long, carefully worked out analysis above is probably the explanation;

I use both normal Outlook client and OWA, so two access methods.

I have the same problem : about 1/3 of my daily emails get transformed into drafts. This is a major pain. I can "reply" to these draft mail items, but the standard email header (sender, recipients, date stamp) does not get added, nor does my signature. 

The biggest problem is that the time stamp of the item gets updated (to the current time) following any modification : when a flag is set, when the item is categorized and of course, when "replying" and saving ("reply" does not create a new item, it just opens the existing one.

A typical scenario:

• Email comes in at 1:30pm
• Email is in my inbox, unread, but is seen by Outlook as a draft
• I click reply (neither my signature nor the msg header get added)
• A new email is not created ; instead, the "inbox draft" is simply opened
• I type stuff and save the message at 1:40pm
• The inbox email time stamp is now changed to 1:40pm ; I have forever lost track of the fact that the message was sent to me at 1:30pm.

What an ugly mess... The problem started happening after upgrading to Outlook 2013. Since then I have completely reinstalled Windows 10 from scratch and downgraded to Outlook 2010, but to no avail (I've tried creating a new Outlook profile as well). Funny thing is that my Android Outlook App works fine, so do other Android mail readers, but Chrome OWA does not (the items get clearly marked as drafts).

I've tried disabling all add-ins, creating a new profile, etc, but no dice.

As mentioned in the previous, I can forward the item to myself (by changing the sender) and replying to that message.

I am also experiencing the issue. However, it is only happening with my POP account.

My configuration is:

Exchange 2013

Windows 7 Enterprise

Outlook 2016 

1 Exchange account setup

1 POP Account setup

Only the messages received from the POP account are showing up in draft mode. This started about 60 days ago or so for me.

I've disabled all non-essential add ins like GoTo Meeting and One Note, PDF add-ins, etc.  Only 3 are active. 

NASCA

Exchange for Outlook

Kaspersky 

UPDATE:

I removed the POP account, re-added, but used a new Outlook data file just to see what would happen.

All my messages from the server came back in, and delightfully, they are not in DRAFT mode. 

Hope that helps someone in their troubleshooting on the DRAFT mode issue.

Interestingly, after removing the add-ins mentioned earlier, and removing the POP account and re-adding, the dreaded "the function cannot be performed because the message has changed" message has also gone away. 

I have the same problem with 2 directive users and me.

I started with this bug/problem today and my others users the last week.

I have

Win 10 with all updates

Outlook 2016

Exchange acount

Other user has

Win 7

Office 2016

And the third user has

Win 7

Office 2010

we have all the windows updates installed.

I have my account configured in other lap with Win 7 and Office 2013 without updates in the las 2 months and has the same problem.

Somebody found the solution?

We neves had this problem until the last week.

regards