Outlook 2003 deletes messages without downloading them

  • Thread starter Thread starter David Jameson
  • Start date Start date
D

David Jameson

Under certain circumstances, I am finding that Outlook 2003 is deleting
messages from the server without ever retrieving them. We have looked at the
raw POP3 protocol stream and have verified that Outlook 2003 sometimes
generates a DELE command without first executing the RETR command.

This problem does NOT occur with Outlook XP, OL 2000, or indeed any other
email program that I've ever come across.

I've made sure that I have Outlook's junk mail processing disabled (although
I think that process just controls what happens to a message once it has
been retrieved).

Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?

Thanks,
David Jameson

--


___________________________
Dr. David H. Jameson
CTO, DigiPortal Software

Block 100% of spam with ChoiceMail Enterprise
MS/Exchange, Domino, GroupWise
http://www.digiportal.com
 
No - they are brand new messages - but we have indeed wondered whether
Outlook THINKS it has already downloaded them any why it might think so.

D
 
We've figured out what's happening.

It appears that when Outlook 2003 is checking message IDs, it stops if it
finds an embedded space in the message ID.
Then, if you have two messages, both of which have the same message ID
prefix (i.e. up to the embedded space), then it assumes that it has already
downloaded the second message.

This does NOT happen with previous versions of Outlook.

I don't know offhand whether spaces are illegal in message IDs (and
therefore the change in Outlook 2003 is theoretically acceptable) but I did
lose legitimate mail due to this problem.

Hopefully this info will be useful to anyone else who is seeing mail
deleted.

David

--


___________________________
Dr. David H. Jameson
CTO, DigiPortal Software

Block 100% of spam with ChoiceMail Enterprise
MS/Exchange, Domino, GroupWise
http://www.digiportal.com
 
Can you log it and send me the logs? I'll forward them to a contact at
Microsoft.

(tools, options, other, advanced to enable logging)
 
logs not needed... i forwarded the post to my contact and he replied:
From RFC 1939:
The unique-id of a message is an arbitrary server-determined string,
consisting of one to 70 characters in the range 0x21 to 0x7E, which uniquely
identifies a message within a maildrop and which persists across sessions.

So a space (i.e. 0x20) is explicitly not allowed in a UID. He'll need to
get a server that follows the POP3 RFC.
 
Yes, we've already fixed our POP3 server to address this issue....in fact I
don't know why we didn't notice this a long time ago except for the fact
that previous versions of Outlook (and every other email program we tried)
didn't obey this restriction either.



In any case, I appreciate your following up with your contact.

Cheers,
David

--


___________________________
Dr. David H. Jameson
CTO, DigiPortal Software

Block 100% of spam with ChoiceMail Enterprise
MS/Exchange, Domino, GroupWise
http://www.digiportal.com
 
Diane,

I've posted a similar issue that David was experiencing
(http://tinyurl.com/ustb). I'm using a product called Vpop3 and I've asked
the author about RFC 1939. In the mean time, can you think of anything else
that may be causing the messages to be deleted from the server? It's very
troublesome and the only way I can be sure I get all email, is by having all
incoming mail to Vpop3 automatically copy-forwarded to another POP3 account
that I can check with a web client.

I've turned on logging, as you suggested to David below, if you'd be so kind
as to forward it to your contact at Microsoft, I'd be happy to send them to
you.

Thanks,

Todd.
 
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