Inbox showing minus 1 read messages

[Paul Harris]

We have a user who is using outlook 2000 conected to
exchange 5.5 whos mailbox is constantly showing -1 unread
messages next to the inbox in the outlook bar. I have
selected all the messages and marked them as read but this
made no difference, I even marked them as unread and then
read, still no change. Please help.

 

[Lorien]

If there are five real unread messages, does it show 5, 6, or 1?

Create a temp folder, select all (from the edit menu) from the inbox and
move it to the temp folder. Does it still show 1 or did the 1 move to the
temp folder? If the latter, move the good ones back one at a time until the
temp folder is empty and then delete the @%#$ thing.

OK, so that didn't work. Time to make a backup of his .pst files.

Empty what you can from the deleted items folder. Archive what you can from
old messages. Trim down that .pst file. At that point, I'd try the Inbox
Repair Tool (scanpst.exe) on his .pst file.

If that still doesn't work, then I'd post this in the Exchange newsgroup,
because my next recommendation would be to reinstall Outlook in "repair"
mode.

Good luck!