Emulate Out of Office Outlook 2007 with SP2

B

Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]

another big flaw is that Outlook may get into a big loop if the rule applies
to spam, and that may fill your mailbox on your ISPs mail server up very
rapidly, which would then mean that genuine messages would be bounced....

That shouldn't happen because the rule will reply only once per Outlook
session to any one address.
 
A

Alisha

I got a little further. For the two employees we've installed sp2 on, I've
been having to manually apply the rule to all messages in the inbox a few
times a day. On Friday, I was doing this for one employee. I saw the error
message, closed and re-opened outlook and turned it back on (which I've done
before). I moved all her read messages to another folder and applied the rule
to her unread messages, then filed those away as well. When I came back to
do the same thing later, I discovered that the new messages that had come in
already had the out of office rule applied to them. I moved all the old
messages back into the inbox, but did not open ANY messages, and left it
there. I came back later and more new messages had come, all having the out
of office rule applied. It worked ALL WEEKEND. The employee came in today
and opened her messages to read them, then the very first message that was
delivered had the "rules in error" message. I thought I'd post it to see if
anyone else wants to give that a shot (whatever THAT is). It's still not
fixed, I didn't see any new patches as of Friday. But we might be able to get
the automation back, very carefully, after all.
 
A

Alisha

No problem, Dede, it's something our company relies on right now, so I really
want to have it resolved.

Okay, I've come up with a workaround that is consistent for me. I believe
it will do until they come out with the patch (think positive!). We may need
to turn on our out of office rules 15-30 minutes early to get them working
and make sure they continue to work:

1. Turn on the rule that you've created

2. Send yourself an email (make sure you are on the distribution list
first, if you are using one).

3. When you receive the email (don't open it), you will get the "Rules in
Error - cannot reply to message" error, which will turn off your rule.
You'll need to turn it back on.

4. Close Outlook, then open it again.

5. Quickly go to Rules and Alerts and click Run Rules Now to run the out of
office message on unread emails in your inbox. If you get another email
before this process is complete, it will error out and you will have to go
back to step 4 if you want them to get your out of office reply.

6. After you successfully complete step 5, all subsequent emails should
have the out of office reply automatically applied. You can test this by
having someone else send you an email, or send an email to yourself from
another account.

It looks like a lot of steps, but it's really quick. Let us know if anyone
else tests this successfully.
 
O

OutlookIsTiknMeOff

So here it is June and there doesn't seem to be an answer for this. Clearly
something has been modified in Outlook that is preventing auto replies with a
template. Seems that MS is not doing anything about communicating it, not
unusual. I would like to see a solution to this. But if you are interested I
did find a not-so-great workaround. Here is the quick version:

Open Outlook
Turn the rule on
Receive and email (which will fail and turn the rule off)
Don't do anything other than close the message and close Outlook
Open Outlook again
Open your Rules
Turn the rule on
Manually run the rule
Close the rules interface
Hmmm, now magically any following receipts will successfully be replied to.
Ain't that some BS.

So, that leads me to believe that MS has probably once again gone APE S@#%
with some security addition.

YAY
 
O

OutlookIsTiknMeOff

Whoops. Someone already shared this workaround later down the thread. Ok, so
now changing my ID to "TryingToReadTheseThreadsAreTicknMeOff". Still not as
much as Outlook.
 
D

Dede

LOL.
I know what you mean.
I haven't found any more permanent solution than the one posted by Alisha or
yourself.
I guess for now we will have to live with it until Microsoft comes up with a
fix. Indeed, not everyone uses exchange server, but many would still like to
use outlook for all the other features it offers.
 
O

OutlookIsTiknMeOff

This appears to be the fault of the update for Outlook 2007 (KB969907). That
went on SP1 and is included in SP2. All is good with SP1 excluding (KB969907).
 
P

Peg

This work-around doesn't work for me since many of our attorneys have
hundreds (some thousands) of emails left in their inbox - probably another
problem I should address.

Has there been another solution for this?
 
T

Tom Willett

: This work-around doesn't work for me since many of our attorneys have
: hundreds (some thousands) of emails left in their inbox - probably another
: problem I should address.

A crash waiting to happen. Then, they'll have no emails. Hope they're doing
backups.
 

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