Topic: Outlook woes

[Jean]

Some of our Outlook users have been having problems with disappearing attachments.  The same email, when opened in Outlook Express, shows the attachment in tact.  From reading past postings, I understand this is an MS RFC non-compliance issue.  Nonetheless, that is one BIG frustration.

Today, another problem cropped up.  When a message is opend, Outlook issues the following error message.

"Your server has reported a UID which does not comply with the IMAP standard.  This typically indicates a server bug.  Your program may not function properly after this.

MsgSeqNum 50, New UID 1037206353. Prev UID: 1037205013, Next UID: 1037206353."

We are running SME5.5 on a stock P2 400mhz w/ 256mb & 40gb.  Most of the Outlook clients are 2000, a few are 2002.

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

TIA,
Jean

[Michael Maggard]

See
>http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q294779
for MS's take, basically they don't know why that pops up either.

Running the error through Google with

>http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=Your+server+has+reported+a+UID+which+does+not+comply+with+the+IMAP+standard

brings up a number of hits, several suggest it may be procmail messing up the message sequence numbers. My own advice would be, if you do have procmail installed, to determine if you can live without (or at least limit) procmail and see if that stops the problem.

Also look into anything else that might be munging incoming emails like spam-blockers, virus-scanners, address bursters, etc. Try turning those off and re-enabling them, if any, one at a time and see if one seems to be the culprit, or worse yet two in concert.

[Terry Brummell]

For the record, I don't use procmail and I get this error.  I've narrowed it down to this:
1. I leave Outlook 2000 open and viewing the Inbox of my IMAP account.
2. I go to work and use the webmail client to check email, send, delete mails, etc....
3.  I come home, I find this error on my 2K Pro machine  (happened just now when I got home)

I don't know how to explain it, or the reason for it, but I just shut Outlook down and restart it, then it goes and updates the IMAP Inbox, if I don't restart Outlook and try and view the contents of the Inbox then it just hangs when I try and view a mail, and won't refresh the contents.  In other words, I'm looking at email headers that I have previously deleted with IMP.  By restarting Outlook everything returns to normal.

Hope that helped some,
Terry

[Jean]

Thanks for the input, Michael.  I need to dig some more.  As for your description, Terry, you may be onto a more difinitive pattern than me; the user did use IMP prior to this problem occuring.  He used Webmail at 1PM yesterday.  At 3PM, he used Outlook & no problems.  Used Outlook again this morning & it complained.  Before the Webmail use, however, never a problem.  Hmm...

[Michael Maggard]

Terry, you pretty much detailed exactly the problem. IMAP reads things in sequential order. They needn't be 1-2-3-4-5 but they must be in ascending order such as 1-2-5-6-8. After you remote in and change things on your server your home IMAP client (in this case Lookout) is discovering its sequence is out of synch with the IMAP mailbox and complaining.

IMAP is not a multi-user PO system, just a centralized mail folder, there are no locks or other safety mechanisms. Really there should only be one client connected at a time to any account, more then that and they could well step on eachother, cause mysterious problems to occur, cows milk to go bad, etc. With that in mind it would probably be best to leave the home client not connected while you're out or refrain from remoting in while its connected.

In this case it wasn't procmail changing things, nor a spam filter or virus scanner, you were editing the IMAP folders and confusing Lookout.

[Michael Maggard]

Er, let me clarify that (and sorry, I conflated Terry & Jean, I’m fixing an Outlook problem in another country remotely as we speak and got distracted.)

IMAP can service some large number of accounts. However it only expects one client to be interacting with any account at any one time. There is no explicit provision made for preventing two clients from trying to edit the same file or otherwise conflicting with each other. Indeed as IMAP requires things be in a certain order so when two clients change sequences things can indeed get out of whack.

Therefore use IMP, or use Outlook, or use one then the other, and continue back and forth, but not both (or more) at the same time. It would appear your problems come from when that happens which is what one would expect. The left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing and everything gets kerfluffled, luckily not disastrously.

By the way, I don't want to present myself as the expert on this, I just had occasion to pick these up when testing an IMAP server for a large institution long ago, hadn't occurred to me it might be 2 clients and not 2 processes playing with an account.

[Jean]

Fabulous!  That just un-kerfluffled everything.

Thanks,
Jean

[Terry Brummell]

That's pretty much what I figured it was (a sequence thing) and wasn't too worried about it.  When I leave for work I normally leave Outlook viewing one of my POP accounts instead, but I'm only human and sometimes forget.


Terry

[Andy Parkinson]

I manage to Use IMAP with squirrel mail (which is just and IMAP client) and Mozilla often concurently from several different location with absolutely no problems. The reason I do this is that on some sites several users need to access the postmaster or admin account to check on failed deliveries etc and they usually manage to keep in sync ok. So maybe this is an Outlook prob