Bad - autodelete of messages from Inbox on Imap account

[Chris Barnes]

Yesterday, I asked this over on the m.p.outlook.general group and despite
there being 170+ new messages there today, none was a reply to my question.
Not even a "must be a user error" type answer.

So I'm asking here too.



I have searched both Google and the msnews. groups and have seen a few
others ask similar questions, but have not yet found an answer. My
situation is as follows:

OL 2003
Imap server
Preview Pane is OFF
View is set to IMAP Hide marked for Deletion


There are no rules to delete any messages whatsoever - there is in fact,
only 1 rule, which looks for messages with a specific string in the To:
line - those messages are moved to another folder.

When a message comes in with an attachment, it shows up in the list of
messages in the Inbox. All is well until the user double clicks on the
message to read it.

The window opens and the user can read the message (and open the
attachment). But as soon as the window opens, I notice (in the background)
window) that the message is marked for deletion.


*This is a very bad thing*
(obviously)


What can I do to prevent this from happening?

 

[Chris Barnes]

Also, in trying to fix the problem myself, I have made things worse.

Now, despite the View being set to "Received, Grouped, and "Hide marked for
delete"", the messages which are marked for deletion are still being
displayed in the index (with the line through them).


I am pretty sure I did this when I went to the "Customize" and saw a filter
in place and removed it. How can I fix this that I screwed up?

 

[Chris Barnes]

Well, I found a way to fix the problem, but I still don't know why it
occurred in the first place. The fix was crude - basically, I moved the
files from C:\D&S\userid\AppData\MS\Outlook\* to a \Temp folder. This
effectively wipes out all of the OL settings. I also (for safety's sake),
copied the .pst file to a safe location.

Hmmm. I spoke too quickly. After wiping out the OL settings files and
allowing OL to reset them all (which included rebuilding all the settings
that the user likes), things worked fine .... yesterday.

Last night the user logged off. After logging in this morning, the same
problem is back.

That is, when she double clicks on a message with an attachment, the
message is being automatically marked for deletion.


It's been ages since I last tried to contact MS tech support, but I believe
that is my next step (I'm not looking forward to this). Anyone care to give
pointers on how to even begin contacting them for this problem?

 

[Chris Barnes]

Solved (for real this time).

Giving the answer since a few folks emailed me privately saying they were
experiencing a similar problem.


Short answer: the messages were being marked as "junk" by Outlook's
anti-spam filters. Setting the Junk Mail rules to "don't filter" solved
the problem. Alternatively, adding the address to the "trusted senders"
would also have fixed the problem.


Longer answer: Something I hadn't noticed is that Outlook has different
menu options for it's junk mail than it's "user defined rules". The "user
rules" are under Tools | Rules.... But the Junk Mail settings are under
"Actions" ("Actions"?? WTF is "actions". Arg!).

The default setting is "low", but apparently that is enough to catch email
generated by our Xerox printer/scanner/copier which sends it's scan jobs as
a .pdf attachment to the user.