interesting exchange/outlook problem

Vermillion

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Apr 5, 2007
Messages
4,411
I have a user who has a computer, a laptop and a Blackberry Bold. All computers/laptops are work issued and have our standard images on them. One computer is in the users work office connected to the LAN. The laptop connects via VPN as well through whatever Internet connection the user has at the time.

The user has changed the Blackberry so that if the user deletes an e-mail on the Blackberry it does not delete it on the Exchange Server. We use Exchange 2003, Outlook 2003 and our BES.

Earlier last week and then over the course of the weekend the user used both the Blackberry and the laptop to check e-mail and move e-mails around to different folders. At some point the laptop was reporting roughly a dozen new e-mails only these were not new e-mails. The system randomly picked e-mails and set them back to unread causing the user to have to re-read and move the documents back to their correct folders. These do not show up on the Blackberry and it is unknown, but highly doubtful, they show up on the other computer.

Anybody have any idea what could cause Outlook to randomly mark those e-mails as unread and how to stop it? I've put in a few questions to some Exchange MVP friends but figured I'd see what some of the brains here come up with as well before I start making phone calls to RIM or MS and try to translate an issue that I can't duplicate and only effects a single user.
 
I'd suspect the laptops offline folder file got wonky...and caused some stuff 'tween it and the users mailbox on the server. Is it Outlook over HTTP?

I've not seen BES cause issues with the mailboxes. By default the Blackberrys don't delete anything in the Exchange mailbox..at least not on all the ones I've setup.
 
I'd suspect the laptops offline folder file got wonky...and caused some stuff 'tween it and the users mailbox on the server. Is it Outlook over HTTP?

I've not seen BES cause issues with the mailboxes. By default the Blackberrys don't delete anything in the Exchange mailbox..at least not on all the ones I've setup.

It's not OWA if that's what you mean. It's straight VPN in and open Outlook itself.

Right after I posted this I was playing with suspending the laptop while the VPN was connected and Outlook was open. In the end it caused outlook to corrupt. So I had to repair it and then I trashed the offline folder file and let it rebuild. So my guess at this point is that it was Outlook/offline files that caused the corruption which is why it was so random and can't be duplicated. Every time you suspend while connected doesn't mean it will corrupt. It must take everything happening at just the right time.
 
I've seen this happen with BIS but not with a BES.

It happens if you're using a POP3 or IMAP conenction from the phones.

Any other phones generating this error? Can you see the device in the BES Manager?
 
I've seen this happen with BIS but not with a BES.

It happens if you're using a POP3 or IMAP conenction from the phones.

Any other phones generating this error? Can you see the device in the BES Manager?

No other user is having any of these issues. And yes the BES can see the phone. Honestly, after having to repair outlook and the offline files earlier I'm going with user error.
 
It's not OWA if that's what you mean. It's straight VPN in and open Outlook itself.

Right after I posted this I was playing with suspending the laptop while the VPN was connected and Outlook was open. In the end it caused outlook to corrupt. So I had to repair it and then I trashed the offline folder file and let it rebuild. So my guess at this point is that it was Outlook/offline files that caused the corruption which is why it was so random and can't be duplicated. Every time you suspend while connected doesn't mean it will corrupt. It must take everything happening at just the right time.

OWA is the web browser, I meant Outlook over HTTP/RPC...where you can setup Outlook to connect to Exchange across http instead of doing the VPN.

End result is the same cached mode file that you found rebuilding that file. Happens once in a while.
 
Yeah, I see this happen too often with Outlook cached mode and BES, especially when the user has a gigantic mailbox. Even when they are connected through the LAN, the local cache just loves to corrupt itself, then read/unread starts getting out of sync. Deleting the local .ost file fixes it for a while, but getting the users to clean up their mailbox works better. Somewhere around 4GB seems to be the magic size where I start noticing stuff like this.

But as buggy as BES is, I'm just happy when the services actually function properly after a reboot. :) Thank god the log files it creates are so detailed, otherwise it would be impossible to track down all the weird things that crop up with it. It downright scary how many issues can be fixed by just redoing enterprise activation.
 
Back
Top