Now that the fun is over, for starters are you selecting the target e-mail by clicking on it or scrolling with the arrows to it? Are you using the right-click>drop down menu>Delete or the Delete button on the Toolbar?

Are you certain there is only one email highlighted?

I find this interesting, but as of now I am grasping for ideas.

If you are selecting the target e-mail by clicking on it have you tried taking the cursor and going all the way around the e-mail list clock-wise avoiding any wording and then coming up from the bottom of the list to select the target e-mail?

Told you I was grasping.

DA

I am clicking directly on the target email and using the delete in the toolbar. I haven't tried using your suggestion about going around it with the cursor, but I am willing to try. This is driving me crazy, and to make it worse, it's intermittent. Very weird. Thanks for your reply.

If I understood you correctly, you are deleting the email with it open and not when you are back in your InBox, correct? If that is the case then maybe try closing the email and return to the InBox and delete from there. You also should try going directly to your ISP's website and login to your mail there and try deleting at that end just to see what happens.

Also I don't think canibus was really being disrespectful, just wondering why people still use Microsoft email software on their computer. I for one stopped using it years ago after a friend had her computer hacked and had all her personal information taken along with her address book. I for one received spam email and nasties that filled my mail box until I finally had to change my email addy. No more email anything kept on my computers now and its not a big deal to go directly to my ISP's website to check my emails.

Think I might try forcing windows into compacting the mail.

In windows mail > Tools > Options > Advanced(tab)
At the compact mail '100' Change that number to maybe ten & be sure to push Apply and close everything including browsers before closing the Windows Mail.

Then it should compact the mail right away... Open the mail and reset the compact frequency back to 100.

Ok, i'll try that, although, I just did that last week since it hit 100. While in the advanced tab, could you tell me what 'clean up downloaded messages on your computer' is? Should I click that too?

Go ahead and click the Clean Up button.. can't hurt anything.
If you do newsgroups it will clear those messages. It might give you some options once you push it but its mainly newsgroup messages not really sure if it affects regualr mail or not but it won't delete your emails.

... If that doesnt fix it and you feel brave and want to experiment more. There is a messages store that I'm thinking has become corrupt much like the XP mail .DAT files used to.

Vista keeps a copy of all the emails individually in folders.
I havent experimented but would think and am totally guessing here that if you rename the message store it will be lost to windows eyes and it may build a new message store based on the individual emails stored in the folders.
It may screw things up too. Hopefully changing the name back to norm on the message store would put you back to first base again.

Mine's not default so I can't give you an exact path but if you look around you can find a message store that is in use by paying attention to its date. Should be current date.

My inuse message store is here;
"C:\Users\mike\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail\Local Folders\WindowsMail.MSMessageStore"

Yours should be close to same path,, pay attention to dates as you may find an inactive one too. You possibly may need to set explorers folder view to show all hidden to see it.

Might run chkdsk if you havent.
It used to fix screwed up file things in XP. Maybe it will find something out of kilter.

I may have just figured this out. I discovered a second symptom which I googled. My back button started taking me back two pages instead of one. Just like deleting two emails instead of just one. I found someone with the same problem and it turned out to be a faulty optical mouse. I am looking for a new/used one and I'll post back if this is the solution.

My back button started taking me back two pages instead of one. Just like deleting two emails instead of just one. I found someone with the same problem and it turned out to be a faulty optical mouse.

I was having the problem of going back 2 pages also. I figured out it was the optical mouse and if I press on the mouse button quite hard, that it will work OK. You might try that until you get another mouse.

Sue