Sending’ reported error (0x80040201) : ‘Unknown Error 0x80040201’

If you are a Gmail user that also uses Outlook to manage your email, then you may have seen this error

Sending’ reported error (0x80040201) : ‘Unknown Error 0x80040201’

(*or one like it) during a send/receive. It will either pop up or show up at the bottom of your Outlook.

As an Outlook Expert, I get calls about this error or one like it often. In a nutshell, your connection from Gmail to Outlook is broken (*even though it still might be working) and it’s saying “fix me!”.

So why are you getting it? Why is it broken? How did it break?

Could be a few reasons and I will explain.

If you setup your Gmail in Outlook many years ago, chances are that your email is not in synch with Gmail and you are hoarding 1000’s of emails (probably hiding in the All Mail or Important folders) and maybe went over the size limit or it’s just too much for Outlook to handle synching. What I do is create the client a test profile in Outlook and then get a fresh IMAP download (if the current Outlook is setup with IMAP as it probably is) and then let Outlook download a fresh IMAP copy. If I’m right and this is usually the case, you will see tons of email come down and it will show as “caching” or “fetching” and don’t be surprised to see 100,000 emails or more.

You could also need an upgrade to Outlook 2013, this might be necessary.

You  might need to fix your Gmail settings in your Outlook too.

Or it could be a mix of all 3.

Moving on..

After I download all the email to a new profile….then we move into the fun stuff, the sorting and removing email off the Gmail IMAP server. This is the only way to really clean up the Gmail server if you’re using Outlook, download it all, the move it (not copy) to another PST file.

I helped 2 clients today with issues like these. 1 client just needed a fresh IMAP download, the other unfortunately had over 120,000mails I have to move off the Gmail server.

The final question I will answer is this…why doesn’t Gmail on the browser have problem because the email is on their server, via the browser. It does not download to Outlook, so the problems are rare.

If you want help slaying this dragon, I have done helped clients many times over fixing errors, reworking their Outlook and moving out 100,000’s of thousands of emails off their Gmail to a local PST file.

To get help, call 612-865-4475 or fill out this form and I’ll be in touch, thanks!