Why do i get so many drafts?

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Len Raphael

Senior Member
Outlook version
Outlook 2016 64 bit
Email Account
Office 365 Exchange
with local Outlook client for Office 365, seems that it creates drafts every time I switch to another area of Outlook. That's fine, but after i finalize the draft and send it, there are often at least one partial drafts remaining. Then I have to check that i really sent the completed email.
 
Are you using an IMAP account? This is fairly common with some IMAP servers - outlook loses track for the message id. It shouldn't happen with Office 365/Outlook.com mailboxes, unless you edit the message on two computers. I've seen that cause a draft copy to stick around.
 
My profile has two Office 365 accounts and one Gmail IMAP account, which I rarely use. Notice this happening only on the two Office accounts. Could be related to my unintentional closing of Outlook, but I think it happens much more often than that.

Is there a way to turn off the automatic draft creation?
 
I'm surprised Exchange is creating so many duplicates. You can turn off drafts or lengthen the amount of time between saves. It's in File, Options, Mail - in the Save Messages section about halfway down.
 
I rarely access my Gmail Imap inbox and never send from Gmail. It's the Office 365 accounts that are generating multiple incomplete and even completely blank drafts.

But other than the completely blank drafts, looks like drafts were saved automatically after i started writing the email, stopped, and then resumed later. But almost seems like they are drafts of emails that took more than 3 minutes to finish writing.

Shouldn't those get deleted automatically when I send the email? I'll increase the delay between saves from 3 minutes to 5 minutes which might do more harm than good if i lose drafts.

Maybe caused by an add-in ? Will ask Standss if they've seen it with their add in.
 
While an addin could be causing outlook to do this, I'm more including to blame outlook completely. :)
 
While an addin could be causing outlook to do this, I'm more including to blame outlook completely. :)
I am also so inclined. I use StandSS SendGuard because I often hit send without carefully checking the auto suggested recipient. Or I was too hasty writing something.
 
Just looked and i had six completely blank consecutive drafts all with creation time within 1 minute of each other.
 
Are you using the mailbox on multiple computers? That can cause some duplicates - usually not a lot, but some if you have the mailbox open on two computers .
 
Just looked and i had six completely blank consecutive drafts all with creation time within 1 minute of each other.
Ok.. that is not typical. They are only created when you have a draft open?
 
Are you using the mailbox on multiple computers? That can cause some duplicates - usually not a lot, but some if you have the mailbox open on two computers .
Yes I have Outlook open to same Office 365 account on multiple pcs, but only use one for hours at a time. But I do have a second Office 365 mail account "fully delegated" to my main account. (I regret that method. Makes it easy to reinstall Outlook, but all sent email get saved in the main sent folder) But mostly I send from one account on the same computer during the day.
 
Ok.. that is not typical. They are only created when you have a draft open?

not sure what you mean by having a draft open. But I assume you mean are the drafts from my very recently created and eventually sent emails, then yes.
 
Lengthening the time between saves to 5 minutes from 1 minute seems to have eliminated the unintended draft accumulation. On one box I set it to 8 minutes and just now fat fingered something and lost the last 7 minutes of typing. I'll try 4 minutes. Thank you for the solution.
 
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