Emails disappear from Outlook Inbox after being read

It is not the first time that users or clients come to me complaining that as soon as they read an email in their Inbox folder in Outlook, the email disappears when they select another email or folder.

Every time this is caused by the user (somehow!) creating a view filter to only display unread emails:

Once the filter is removed, everything is back to normal!

The program used to create this object is Outlook

Many Outlook users are facing a number of problems after applying the recent June 2017 security updates.

In one of these issues, when you open an attachment in an email, contact, or task formatted as Rich Text you get the following error:
“The program used to create this object is Outlook. That program is either not installed on your computer or it is not responding. To edit this object, install Outlook or ensure that any dialog boxes in Outlook are closed”

Microsoft has acknowledged the problems and suggested that users make use of the following workarounds until the issue is resolved.

1. Forward the email to yourself and then open the attachments from the forwarded email;
2. Change the email format to HTML, or Text format;
3. Save the attachments to your computer, using one of the following methods, then open them from the saved location:
   - Drag and drop the attachments to your desktop;
   - Go to File -> Save Attachments;
   - Copy and paste the attachment to your computer.


This and other issues caused by the June 2017 updates are detailed in the Outlook known issues in the June 2017 security updates page. Microsoft said they will update this page when fixes are available, so keep an eye on it!

Outlook Calendar Sharing Error Message

When you use Outlook to share a calendar with another user, you might get one of the following errors:

• Calendar sharing is not available with the following entries because of permission settings on your network
• You Cannot request to share calendars with the following people because of permission settings on your network

This typically happens when users type the recipients’ email address or use the address from their cached addresses. When this happens, clear the cached entry for the user, click the TO button and select the intended recipient(s) from the address book.

Outlook Online Mode Search Limited to 250 Results with Exchange 2013

When running Outlook in Online mode in an Exchange Server 2013 environment, the number of search results is never more than 250, even though there are more results available.

 

 

Cached Mode

When running Outlook in Cached Mode, this does not happen. When we perform a search that returns more than 250 results, we get the following message informing us of the high number of results:

 

And only 200 results are returned:

 

However, if we click on the message itself, which states "(…) click here to view all results" we do get all the results back, as expected.

 

An option to avoid this message and automatically return all the results, is to go to options and disable the Improve search speed by limiting the number of results shown:

 

 

Now we get all the results, no matter how many, whenever we perform a search.

Unfortunately, the same does not happen when in Online Mode...

 

 

Online Mode

If we follow the same steps when in Online Mode, we get the same 200 results back:

 

 As well as the message informing us of the high number of matches found:

 

 However, if we click on the warning message, we only get an additional 50 results:

 

 If we untick the same option under Search settings:

 

 We no longer receive the warning message, but only receive 250 results no matter what:

 

 

To fix this issue, we need to install Cumulative Update (CU) 11, or later, for Exchange 2013.

After installing the latest CU, the default value still remains 250, but we can now edit the Microsoft.Exchange.Store.Worker.exe.CONFIG file to increase this search result limit. To do so, we must add the following entry under the <appSettings> section as follows:

<appSettings>
  <add key="MaxHitsForFullTextIndexSearches" value="2000" />
</appSettings>

If <appSettings> does not exist, simply create it after the </runtime> tag:

 

The above entry will increase the number of search items returned to 2000. The MaxHitsForFullTextIndexSearches value can be between 1 and 1,000,000. However, please be careful when increasing it as it might cause performance impact on the server(s).

Once the above file has been edited, restart the information store service on the server for the change to take effect.

Clear Outlook AutoComplete Cache

Microsoft Outlook maintains a nickname list that is used by both the automatic name checking feature and the automatic completion feature. The nickname list is generated automatically as users use Outlook. If the nickname cache is corrupted, Outlook may be unable to identify recipients, may offer incorrect recipients when automatically completing the email address, or may send the message to the wrong person.

Please note that the AutoComplete list for Outlook is specific to Outlook and is not shared by Outlook Web App (OWA). OWA maintains its own AutoComplete list.

Unlike earlier versions of Outlook that store the nickname cache in a file on the local computer, Outlook 2010 and later versions store the nickname cache in the user’s primary message store. This means that deleting the entire nickname cache is no longer a matter of deleting the famous .NK2 file.

To reset the whole Outlook nickname cache for Outlook 2010 and later versions, first open Outlook, go to the File tab, click Options, click the Mail tab and, under Send messages, click Empty Auto-Complete List:

Outlook will then generate a new nickname cache.

Alternatively, you can close Outlook, click the Start menu, click Run (depending on which version of Windows you are using), and start Outlook by using the /CleanAutoCompleteCache switch: Outlook.exe /CleanAutoCompleteCache

Outlook will start up and generate a new nickname cache.

"The Delegates page is not available" Error Message

The other day, a user was trying to give his new personal assistance Delegate permissions to his mailbox. However, whenever he clicked on Delegate Access:

He would receive an error message stating: “The Delegates page is not available. Cannot access Outlook folder.”

After some troubleshooting and digging around, it turned out that this was being caused by a particular Outlook (Inbox) rule! I am still to investigate why this rule was causing this problem and why would any rule prevent configuring delegates, so this is still a mystery...

If you are experiencing the same problem, simply disable any existing rules one by one until you are able to configure delegates. Alternatively, you can start Outlook by typing “Outlook /CleanRules” in the Start Menu to start Outlook and delete all rules (probably not recommended).

Outlook Chinese NDR

There is a known bug with Outlook 2010 and 2013 that causes Non Delivery Reports (NDR) to be converted to Chinese-like characters when they are forwarded:

The same NDR does not get converted when being forwarded using OWA or when forwarded as an attachment.

The good news is that there are updates to fix this:

• Outlook 2010: February 9, 2016, update for Outlook 2010 (KB3114756)
• Outlook 2013: Forward of NDR in Outlook 2013 displays Chinese characters