[mdlug] Anyone an "expert" with MS Outlook?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Mon, 2010-05-10 at 17:37 -0400, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:24 PM, Robert Adkins II <radkins at impelind.com> wrote:
> > The boss has been experiencing problems with Outlook in recent weeks.
> > What happens is that out of the blue, Outlook just stops sending email
> > through our server. There's no rhyme or reason to it, this just happens.
> > Except for this, when I have him restart his Outlook, it will work fine
> > again, until it happens again.
> > I have found nothing on the MS Support pages discussing this behavior and I
> > believe most of it is how he uses the application.
> > He will open up dozens of emails and leave them on screen for days on end as
> > a method of keeping track of what he is up to.

Perhaps you can just show him the feature of how to turn an e-mail
message into a to-do item?

> > The only thing I can come up with is that there is some memory issue
> > creeping up in Outlook due to the fact the he never shuts the application
> > and the non-standard way in which he uses the application, leaving multiple
> > Outlook windows open for days on end.

That seems like a reasonable guess to me.

> > Now, I have been experiencing some issues recently with Outlook myself, such
> > as it will suddenly no longer allow me to copy/past attachements out of
> > emails into other applications, such as explorer to store the file on the
> > server. A simple restart of Outlook fixes the problem.

Have you looked int he workstations event log to see if there are any
application errors being logged?

> > I believe that both issues are related. Both also started happening shortly
> > after the release of several MS Windows updates about a month or two back.
> Mozilla Seamonkey has an e-mail module and tolerates persistently open windows.

I know it is an extremely unpopular thing to say, but: Seriously?
Thunderbird (which is all Seamonkey is) is hardly a stellar example of
an e-mail client.  On Windows I'd choose Outlook over TB anyday.  The
popularity of Thunderbird is unfathomable; it is slow, not really all
that featureful - and butt ugly.