Help. It looks as though e-mail messages are downloading into my

[Skidmore]

Microsoft Outlook program, gives a number downloading (e.g. 15 and counts up 1-15 showing bytes incoming), but I only have 1-2 messages actually appear in my inbox. What is going on? Has my computer been hijacked? How can I tell?

[NJmaverick]

1. Usuaully the problem is either a bad email getting stuck or it's timing out

neither is an indication of your computer being hijacked. You could adjust the time outs, to see if that does the trick.

[LakeSamish706]

2. Do you have a Firewall up and do you have Virus/Spyware protection running? n/t

[Skidmore]

7. Both.

I subscribe to Norton.

[ddeclue]

3. Look in your junkmail folder.

Also you probably need to run an integrity check on your PST file.

[LakeSamish706]

4. Another solution, try restarting your computer; ie: Actually powering it off. n/t

[TwilightZone]

5. Could be the Outlook anti-spam process

Some versions of Outlook filter out junk mail. If that's happening, they'll usually end up in a Junk sub-folder, though I think it can also be set to delete them automatically.

It could also be that the e-mail retrieval process is timing out. If the mail server is slow, Outlook will eventually stop trying to download the messages and try again at the next send/receive interval.

[csziggy]

6. Do you have an anti-virus program that screens for spam? Check for a Spam folder

And see if it is putting some emails into that. Every so often mine decides that my political emails are spam and stuffs them in there. Oddly enough, not one of the male enhancement spam messages is ever there but the 30-40 per day are in my regular email list.

[SharonAnn]

8. Also, check that your Inbox is sorted by date, not name or subject.

If it's not sorted by date, with most recent emails on top, then the emails will come in and get sorted to their appropriate alphabetical section.

I have clients with this problem all the time. They sort them by name or subject while they're working on something and then forget to change it back to being sorted by date. The emails come in and then they "disappear", but they're really located in the alphabetical order of the name or subject or whatever.