Microsoft has released a wide-ranging patch for an alarmingly long list of bugs in Outlook 2007.
Microsoft has released a wide-ranging patch for an alarmingly long list of bugs in Outlook 2007.
The patch is a ‘hotfix’, in other words an interim update that has not been fully tested. The update isn’t directly available, you have to call Microsoft support and discuss your problem. If they agree that your issue is related to the bugs fixed they’ll make the patch available to you.
The fixes are so wide-ranging that the patch actually replaces many key Outlook files including outlook.exe itself.
Below is the official list of bugs (sorry ‘issues’) addressed in the hotfix though there seems to be more to the patch than this list suggests – check out our article on the winmail.dat fix.
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• In Outlook 2007, you open a Rich Text format (.rtf) e-mail message that has a Word 2007 document attached.
Note To open the e-mail message, you save the e-mail message as an .rtf file, you open the .rtf file in Word 2007, and then you double-click the attached Word 2007 document.
When you do this, Word 2007 may stop responding. Additionally, the Opening Mail Attachment dialog box appears unexpectedly behind the Word 2007 window.
• In Outlook 2007, data will be flushed to disk on a schedule. In this case, Outlook 2007 may stop responding for several seconds when the data is written to disk.
• Consider the following scenario:
• You add a delegate for an Outlook 2007 mailbox.
• You enable the “Cache Shared Folders” feature for the mailbox.
For more information about how to enable the “Cache Shared Folders” feature, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
955572 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955572/) You cannot cache shared mail folders in Outlook 2007
In this scenario, when the delegate tries to open an appointment in the Calendar, the delegate may receive the following error message:
Cannot open this item
• Outlook 2007 may stop responding when you switch between the views of the shared calendars for different users.
• Microsoft Windows has predefined colors that are used for many elements on the screen. For example, there is a predefined color for the background of all windows and a predefined color for the text for all windows. You can specify a custom color for the background for all windows and for the text for all windows. However, after you do this, some applications still use the predefined colors instead of the custom colors for the background of all windows and for the text for all windows. This problem may occur in Outlook 2007.
• In Outlook 2007, when you try to send a calendar by using an e-mail message, the Free/Busy information in an iCalendar Format (.ics) file that is attached to the e-mail message is correct. However, the Free/Busy information in the body of the e-mail message is incorrect unexpectedly.
• Consider the following scenario:
1. In Outlook 2007, a user has a managed add-in installed. This managed add-in is listening to an Application level event.
2. As a meeting organizer, the user sends a meeting request to an attendee.
3. Then, the organizer opens the meeting appointment to make some changes.
4. After that, the organizer clicks Send Update to try to send the meeting update.
5. During the sending of the meeting update, the organizer cancels the send and clicks Don’t save changes.
In this scenario, a meeting update is sent to the attendee unexpectedly. Additionally, the changes to the meeting appointment are also saved in the organizer’s calendar.
• Outlook 2007 stops responding when you try to print a calendar in the monthly style. This problem may occur if the Print exactly one month per page check box is not selected in the Page Setup: Monthly Style dialog box.
• When you try to delete lots of messages in Outlook 2007, only some selected messages are deleted. Some messages still remain in the original folder unexpectedly.
• When you use the Outlook object model to programmatically delete multiple attachments from an e-mail message that is in the Rich Text Format, you may receive the following error message:
Operation failed
• If you have two overlapping appointments for the same day in Outlook 2007, the Busy information appears only for the first appointment. This problem occurs when the overlapping appointments start at the same time.
• You open any one of the occurrences for a recurring meeting in Outlook 2007. When you try to open another occurrence for the recurring meeting, you may receive the following warning message:
Cannot read one instance of the recurring appointment. Close any open appointments and try again, or recreate the appointment
When you close this warning message, you receive an Open this occurrence dialog box or an Open the series dialog box.
• Consider the following scenario:
1. You receive a meeting request from a meeting organizer in Outlook 2007.
2. You are in a time zone that differs from the time zone of the meeting organizer.
In this scenario, when you try to propose a new time for the meeting request, you notice that the Propose New Time dialog box uses the meeting organizer’s time zone unexpectedly.
Note The Propose New Time dialog box should use your local time zone.
After you apply the hotfix, the following changes occur:
• The Propose New Time dialog box uses the meeting attendee’s local time zone as expected.
• The meeting attendee sees the time zone controls are shaded for the meetings. As a meeting attendee, you can view the time zone information. However, you cannot change the time zone.
• As a meeting attendee, you cannot change the meeting to an all day event.
• In Outlook 2007, you open your calendar and a shared calendar of another user in the Day view that has the Daily Task List shown. When you resize the Daily Task List in the Day view, you notice that the start time of the appointments in those two calendars may be displayed incorrectly.
For example, an appointment should start at 2:00 P.M. However, the start time of the appointment may be displayed as 3:00 P.M.
• In Outlook 2007, you save an e-mail message that contains an attachment as an Outlook Message Format (.msg) file. When you open the .msg file and then try to save the attachment, you experience one of the following issues:
· If the attachment that you try to save is an Outlook e-mail message, you receive the following error message:
A resource is busy or you lack sufficient access rights or permissions
· If the attachment that you try to save is another kind of document, such as a Word document or an Excel workbook, nothing occurs.
• An InfoPath 2007 form template contains Check Box controls and Option Button controls. The form template also has a data connection for submitting the form data to a specific recipient by using an e-mail message. In this case, when users submit the forms, the recipient receives the e-mail messages that have the submitted forms attached.
When the recipient opens the submitted form in Outlook 2003, the controls may be displayed incorrectly as the telephone icons.
Note When the recipient opens the submitted form in Outlook 2007, the controls are displayed correctly.
• Word 2007 may stop responding when you use Mail Merge to send personalized e-mail messages to an e-mail address list that contains a large amount of recipients, such as 10,000 recipients.
• When you
