Occasionally sending and receiving emails can pose problems for end users. One of the more serious problems is when users are unable to receive their email messages.

A sample error message related to being unable to receive emails is the following:

“Outlook is unable to connect to your outgoing (SMTP) email server”

This error message can occur if Outlook is trying to retrieve email messages from a Post Office Protocol (POP3) email server. It can also be produced if Outlook is trying to retrieve email messages from a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) email servers.

It is also possible that you may receive the error code 0×80042109 along with the above error message. This can happen if an end user is attempting to send a message via an email server and they are then asked to provide their login credentials. However, if the OK button is clicked again it will only result in another login prompt being displayed. And, instead of selecting the OK button, if the user hits the Cancel button then the following error message is displayed:

Task ‘<SMTP server name> – Sending and Receiving’ reported error (0×80042109): ‘Outlook is unable to connect to your outgoing (SMTP) email server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).’

A workaround for this problem is to create a new profile for the user account. The current email server is not responding to the existing user’s profile. A new profile will correct this problem.

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