BBTech BBlatherings

Had an interesting issue with a client the other day.  She called saying that she was having problems with Outlook – messages not coming in, things stuck in the outbox, etc.  This client uses our hosted Exchange service.

I remoted into the machine and discovered (not to my surprise) that there were multiple copies of outlook.exe running (seen via Task Manager, there was only one Outlook window obviously).  This had happened before – you know what happens, the user clicks on the Outlook icon, waits a few seconds, nothing seems to happen, so they click it again (and sometimes again and again) until Outlook pops up.

This time I wanted to see if something else might be causing this particular problem, so I killed all the outlook processes and then started Outlook.  Then I closed it and watched the process in Task Manager.  Sure enough, it just stayed there.  That explained why she had multiple instances running at least, but why wouldn’t outlook.exe die like it’s supposed to?

A quick Google search revealed the answer.  Others had reported that recent versions of iTunes install a COM add-in to Outlook (apparently the add-in performs synchronization between an iPod/iPhone and Outlook), and this add-in caused outlook.exe to keep running after the program had been closed.  Disabling the add-in fixed the problem and Outlook behaves as it should.

Apparently this is a well-known issue but Apple has yet to address it.  Hopefully they’ll get it fixed soon, but until then, just disable the add-in.  Of course if your user actually wants to sync their iPhone with Outlook using this software, you might have a problem…

I was on vacation in Vegas staying at the Paris Hotel. I was winning at the blackjack tables and loving life, but I remembered I had a very important email needed to send out to a client. I went up to my room and turned on my computer. I started up Outlook 2003 and began to write my email. After finishing the email, I spell-checked it and attached a 6 MB power point.

The only thing that was stopping me from winning more money at the tables was hitting the send button. So I hit send and I went back downstairs to gamble. I came back early in the morning having lost all my money. I was frustrated and the only thing I was looking forward to was the praise email from the client I helped out.

Well, it turns out my email was still in my Outbox and I had an angry email from my client in my Inbox. I felt horrible. I tried sending it again, but Outlook kept failing to send it. I now realized it must be the ISP. I called my ISP and found out that the largest attachment they accepted was 8MB for an email attachment. My attachment was 6MB so I was back to square one. What could the problem be?

I then opened up my Outlook Settings and soon found out what could be the culprit. The server timeout for sending emails was set at 1 minute. I changed it to a longer time. The upload speed at the hotel wasn’t very fast and so Outlook was timing out when trying to send the large file. After changing the setting in Outlook the email was finally sent.

Problem solved!