Formcache and Outlook 2003 - corrupt

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Guest

What is the deal with "frmcache.dat" and Outlook 2003. Since moving many of
our users from Office XP to Office 2003 (with SP1) we have continuous issue
with the frmcache. Outlook works fine for a while but will eventually starts
to do quirky things like not being able to right click on messages or not
being able to attach messages inside new emails. You can fix the problem by
closing Outlook and deleting the frmcache file. There are various other
symptoms too.

Some things to state up front....

1. When Outlook is "quirky" the frmcache file is always about 10K in size.
When you delete and recreate it it is about 170K. So a small frmcache size
is an indication that we have a problem.

2. We have added the reghack "ForceFormReload" as per KB 839804 and set to
the value of "1" on all the desktops and this does work sometimes. i.e by
closing and opening Outlook the problem goes away for a while about 50% of
the time.

What is the deal with this? I know it is a bigger issue as Google is full
of posts with the same problem. Does MS have a hotfix or one in the works?

Anyone any ideas? We are holding off on purchasing about 150 Office 2003
licenses until we fix this problem.

Thank you
 
There are a couple of Formcache issue and a lot have been fixed already with
SP1 (after updating clear the Formcache once). Unfortunately not all issues
have been fixed yet. Therefore I've created a script that to automate the
clearing of the Formcache;
http://www.howto-outlook.com/Downloads/clearformscache.htm

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
www.howto-outlook.com

Tips of the month:
-What do the Outlook Icons Mean?
-Create an Office 2003 CD slipstreamed with Service Pack 1
 
Thank you Robert, (and great web site!)

We thought about doing this where we just delete the frmcache at logon using
the logon script but it does not help with the instances where it breaks
after the logon process has completed.

Can anyone from Microsoft comments on any future hotfixes or service packs
for Office/Outlook 2003. I am willing to beta any fixes for you as this
issue is very repeatable in my environment.

Thank you
 
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