Error message "'Your mailbox is temporarily unavailable because another email message is being delivered to it or another mail application is accessing it"

Hi,

Before we proceed, we require more information to assist you further.

1. How exactly are you accessing your Email account? Is it through a web browser, Microsoft Office or any other Mail Client?

2. What is the type of Email account you are using? Is it Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail or any other domain?

3. Are you using a custom domain/Exchange Server?

4. Since when are you facing this issue?

Reply to us with the information to assist you further.

Thank you.

I had this error message on 5th Dec 2016 and have managed to repair it myself, having tried using Microsoft's repair kits etc. It was scary, but here is what I did, cutting out the bits which simply got me nowhere.

I started on the MS support page

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Outlook-not-responding-stuck-at-Processing-stopped-working-freezes-or-hangs-5c313d04-64af-4441-82d2-44e5a43eee5a?ui=en-US&rs=en-GB&ad=GB

Having worked my way through the suggestions I arrived at Step 5 - Repair your Outlook data files.

This seemed logical as my 'hang' seemed to be being caused by Outlook having problems in downloading e-mail from my server. The link at step 5 takes you here

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Repair-Outlook-Data-Files-pst-and-ost-64842a0a-658a-4324-acc6-ef0a6e3567cd

Now, I didn't know if I was trying to repair a file - but if it was a .pst file, I am so unclear about what it could be and where it could be that I chose the option 'Re-create an offline Outlook Data File (.ost)'. When taking the action suggested it looked simplest and least risky, but I was concerned when I reached the very last bullet point -

4. In the file explorer window, right-click the Exchange data file and then click Delete. The next time you start Outlook, a new .ost file is created for the account.

My problem was that when a solution suggests that you delete a folder, what happens should the solution not work and you have a bigger problem to fix. And sure enough, having deleted the folder, and when I tried to re-start Outlook, the program wouldn't even open! However, rather than panicking, I simply went to my 'Recycle Bin', found the deleted folder and re-instated it. Then, and without first being tempted to open Outlook and check if it was working again, I re-started Windows. When I opened Outlook, voila!, it was working properly again.

Now, this may have worked for reasons only down to my PC configuration - I boot from a SSD - Drive C - but keep data etc on a standard HDD - Drive E. When I couldn't open Outlook, as mentioned above, it suggested a problem in reading files from my E drive, which are the data folders, whereas the system program would be run from my C drive. I also run Office 2016 Professional on Windows 10. I'm a (retired) home user and my e-mail/ISP is BT.

If you want to give this a try, I wish you well. I understand why you may not trust to try this, and I did get seriously worried at one point myself, but basically I just followed the Microsoft actions to the point where it seemed to fail and I couldn't open Outlook, restored the deleted folder and Bob's your uncle. I'm merely adding another potential action on to the MS fix.