What does the SmarterMail error "unable to send message this time" mean?

Every so often you may receive an error from SmarterMail when sending an email stating "Unable to Send Message at this time"; this can be result of a few problems listed below:

Disk Space is Full

Often times when there is no free disk space left, SmarterMail will be one of the first services to stop. If there is a little bit of disk space left, a copy of the message may be saved in Drafts or the Sent Mail folder and can be resent once disk space is available. If there's too little disk space available, the message may not be saved at all.

Maximum Message Size Exceeded

If a user's maximum message size is set to 15MB per message and the message exceeds that, SmarterMail may report this error and fail to send. The work around is to increase the maximum message size for the domain/account or to decrease the individual message size so it is less than the maximum message size.

Corrupted Mail Spool

To check this, view the delivery logs (typically in C:\SmarterMail\Logs\). If you see an error similar to the below, a message in the spool is corrupt:

01:01:32 Exception: The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath) at System.IO.Directory.InternalGetFileDirectoryNames(String path, String userPathOriginal, String searchPattern, Boolean includeFiles, Boolean includeDirs, SearchOption searchOption) at System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(String path, String searchPattern, SearchOption searchOption) at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.MailStore.SpoolManager.EmailFiles() at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.RelayServer.DeliveryManager2.CleanSpoolDirectory() at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.RelayServer.DeliveryManager2.ProcessSpoolMessages() 01:01:35 Exception: The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

If you see an error such as this, attempt to access the spool directory (typically located in C:\SmarterMail\Spool). If that cannot be accessed, the spool is corrupted. The folder will need to be renamed and a new spool directory created. Alternatively, a new spool directory can be created and then updated in SmarterMail admin to use. All mail that is in the spool likely will not deliver due to the corruption.