Popular question - Why do messages stay in the Outbox?

[tasadam]

Hi all
This is a popular question, so I thought I'd make this post to explain.
When you send a PM, it goes to your Outbox.
This gives you the opportunity to edit it until such time as the recipient reads the PM.
If you do edit a PM in the Outbox, the PM will show Last edited (date), edited X times total when the recipient receives it.
If you are in the process if editing a PM when the recipient reads the PM, the edits will be abandoned, it won't let you.

Once a PM is read, it is then in your Sent messages folder.

If you send a PM to multiple recipients, it will be moved to the Sent messages folder once it has been read by any one of the recipients.

Hope that helps.

[mjdalessa]

Thanks for that! I remember once I noticed a message was staying in the outbox so sent the unfortunate person 5-10 messages of the same thing!

[Rob A]

With regard to inbox/outbox, I dont quite understand;
Is the "new messages" at log on, not related to the PM box? And no, the screenshots were not taken out of order.
Buried lower in this sub forum is a Quick Tute help. Can this or something like it be made a sicky for new bods to easily find? Or maybe this and similar could be stuck in 'Testing and Learning' which is where, being not so bright, I first went looking for stuff about using the site.

[Son of a Beach]

The number of "new messages" shown at the top of most forum pages is related to the number of new messages in your PM inbox since you last viewed your inbox, whether you've read those messages or not. So if it says "3 new messages" and you then click on it (or otherwise view the list of messages in your PM inbox), but do not view the contents of any of those messages, and then got back to the index page, it will say "0 new messages", even though there are still 3 unread messages in your inbox.

I find this to be rather annoying, and I've no idea why they decided that was a good way to implement it.

I can see the confusion of the "Testing and Learning" site. I might go and remove the "Learning" bit from that forum name.

[Rob A]

The top screenshot is at first log on. The reason I knew to check my inbox was the notification sent to my gmail. Maybe I did open my PM Control Panel some time yesterday after the message was sent and didnt notice the inbound PM to open it.
More likely I was trying to re re send the message that seemed stuck in my outbox .
There are a number of things that are a bit quirky to this forum and it probably wouldnt be a bad idea to have somewhere with threads like WalkinTas' held at the top.
Anyway, thanks for that.

[Son of a Beach]

There is also the official phpBB FAQ linked to at the top right of every forum page (doesn't have all the answers, but can be helpful sometimes).

[tasadam]

A small change has been made to the forum.
When you send a PM, you will briefly see this message -

Your message has been sent successfully. It will remain in your outbox until read by a recipient, where it will then appear in your "sent items" folder.

It has been reworded due to the influx of questions relating to mail sitting in the "Outbox".

[Mountain Rocket]

Welcomed change.