Outlook 2007 Crash When Synchronising With Exchange Server

Nice after-Easter problem - Outlook 2007 in Cached Exchange Mode would crash when synchronising with the Exchange Server.

If I started it up in Safe Mode (outlook.exe /safe) it would also crash.

I reconfigured it to not use Cached Mode and it worked correctly.

I managed to fix the problem by renaming outlook.ost and having Outlook rebuild it on next start.

For Vista users, outlook.ost is located at:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

and for XP users it's located at:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.

Recovering Public Folder Items Easily in Exchange Server 2003

I occasionally get requests from clients and colleagues asking me to recover Public Folder items from Exchange Server 2003.

Thankfully for me I performed the ultimate fubar while performing a test migration from NT4.0 + Exchange 5.5 to SBS 2003 Premium back when SBS 2003 first came out. That's right, I managed to blow away the majority of the Public Folder store in one fell swoop, simply because I wasn't following my own instructions properly and wasn't used to the new Exchange System Manager interface.

Thankfully, I had just been getting familiar with the new capabilities of Outlook Web Access and had used the Recover Deleted Items feature to get familiar with it and to be able to instruct clients on how to use it.

I didn't really want to have to spend the time re-copying the Public Folder store from the Exchange 5.5 install, so I looked for the Public Folder equivalent of the Recover Deleted Items feature for the mailbox. It appeared to be missing. Or was it?

I had noticed that the Recover Deleted Items window had essentially opened the Deleted Items folder in the mailbox and had set a URL variable. The variable and its setting was:

cmd=showdeleted

Being the lazy kind of guy I am - as well as being inquisitive - I thought I would give some link hacking a try. I opened up the Public Folders link, navigated to the parent folder of the folder I deleted, right-clicked on the parent folder and selected Open in new... This opened the folder in a new window. The URL of this folder was of the form:

https://server/public/Public%20Folder/?Cmd=contents

I then replaced contents with showdeleted. The URL then looked like:

https://server/public/Public%20Folder/?Cmd=showdeleted

Ta da! The folder I trashed was now visible and capable of being recovered, which saved me additional copying time. Sometimes screwing up a test environment is a great way to learn a new, lazy technique :-)

Outlook Web Access 2003 New E-mail Problem

One of my clients contacted me to say that their Distribution Lists weren't working in Outlook Web Access 2003. Due to the roaming nature of staff and the lack of Outlook installed on the PCs, I was unable to get them to switch to Outlook to check if the problem occurred there.

I spent a bit of time on it earlier this evening, only to find that I got a cryptic "The item could not be found. It may have been deleted" error pop up when trying to send an e-mail to a Distribution List created in the user's Contacts.

OK. Back to basics. I created a new Distribution List and added the addresses one by one. Wouldn't you know it, the problem only reared its ugly head on the last email address. Interestingly, the same problem occurred when I entered in the email address into a new message.

I looked at the Contact entry with the associated email address and found the cause of the problem - there was a trailing space at the end of the email address. I backtracked the cause of the error - an import of e-mail addresses from Alt-N's WorldClient created a trailing space for each imported address. How very nice of the Exchange Migration Wizard to create Contact entries with invalid email addresses. Grrr.

Looks like I'll be writing a script to strip trailing spaces from the email fields of the Contact entries...