Unable to access contents of "Out" box

Question

This forum was extremely helpful last time I encountered a mysterious snafu, so I am looking for help again.
Whenever I open my Mail application, the window that shows first is whichever mailbox (In, Out, Drafts, Sent, Trash, etc.) I had open when I last quit the program. If this original window happens to not be the list of emails I need to begin my task, I will click on another of the mailbox or folder listings showing in the side 'drawer', extending left or right of this Mail window (i.e. to read new In mail). All of these mailboxes, with the exception of the "Out" box, are immediately preceeded by a right pointing arrow (flag?), which when clicked turns down and reveals the multiple contents therein. Also, the "In" box in this drawer always indicates in parentheses and bold italics the number of unread e-mails, when applicable.
Recently, random emails have been getting caught in the "Out" box (not being sent), and the "Out" box in my side drawer now indicates in bold parentheses that there are seven emails trapped there, and I am unable to access the contents of this mailbox to attempt to re-send the emails that are occasionally getting stuck there. Normally, I have been able to still send email most of the time since noticing this situation, and there appears to be no obvious pattern regarding which mail does actually get sent and which gets jammed up in this "Out" box. When I do click on the "Out" mailbox (the only one with no arrow), the resulting "Out" window indicates 0 messages (0 bytes), yet as mentioned, it suggests a content of seven emails in the mailbox list of the drawer.
First, how can I get to these inaccessible emails to either delete or re-send them? Next, how can I prevent future emails from randomly getting trapped and becoming lost, and why isn't my "Out" window showing a list of these seven emails much like any other mailbox will show all of its contents? Lastly, is there something on my hard drive which requires reconfiguration?
Thanks in advance for any helpful comments.

Answer 1

I don't know how helpful this will be, for previously there was a poster here, David Gimeo Gost who is a guru with Mail, but he has not posted for a long time. As your post is getting old, here is an attempt to offer some advice.
The outbox is, as you have probably guessed, the repository for emails that failed to send, usually because the intended recipient's server is down, and they will sit there temporarily until Mail tries to send them later. Another possibility is that the address is invalid.
If either of these things happen, you will be informed that it could not send the email and place it in your outbox until it tries again later. You should be able to see the contents.
If the outbox shows (7) items but on clicking on it there are none, and you have not received any message notifying you of failed delivery, then it may well be that there is nothing in there, and that the supposed (7) emails is some display error occurring in Outbox.
If you agree with this line of thought, you could simply delete the outbox by
1. Have Mail closed.
2. locate the ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Outbox.mbox
and drag it to the Desktop. Opening Mail will create a fresh one, and hopefully one that shows no 'phantom emails'. You can always save the old one in another location until you are satisfied that there was nothing that failed to send.
One thing to be mindful about is that when Mail's mailboxes get too large, erratic behaviour can result. In 10.3 this can happen if your mailbox starts to build into several hundred MBytes or more.
Message was edited by: roam