OLEXP: You Experience a Delay the First Time You Send E-mail

The first time you send e-mail to a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server during an Outlook Express session, you may experience a delay of approximately one minute. You do not experience this delay again until you quit and then restart Outlook Express.

This problem is a result of the way Outlook Express looks up the SMTP host name. If the first attempt does not work, Outlook Express waits for a period of time and then attempts to find the SMTP host name again using a different method. Subsequent messages sent to the SMTP server automatically use the second method, which eliminates the delay.

To resolve this problem, install Outlook Express version 4.5 for Macintosh.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Earlier versions of Outlook Express look up mail exchange (MX) records using the SMTP host name. Some e-mail servers are configured without an MX record list. When Outlook Express attempts to look up an MX record and the request times out, Outlook Express looks up an address record instead.

Outlook Express 4.5 reverses the order in which the SMTP host name is obtained by looking up the address record first. If the request times out, Outlook Express looks up the MX record.