Is there a way to contact an Outlook 2003 developer/Product Manage

[Guest]

There is a bug in Outlook 2003 so that the Created/Received dates are
backwards. If you display both (turn off the reading pane and make sure you
have both in the field list) you find that the created dates are later than
the received dates at least for POP mail. If you send yourself an email and
wait several minutes before picking it up, the created date will be when you
pick it up and the received date when you sent it which backwards. This bug
is new in 2003 (or at least is wasn't there in 2000). How do I get this to
them? Support has been no help.

Charley
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I think your might be confusing the Sent date with the Created date and that there is no bug here. Outlook stores 4 dates for each message. From earliest to latest, for messages received via a POP account, they should be

Sent - when the message was sent by the sender
Received - when the message was received by the recipient's POP server
Created - when Outlook downloaded the message from the POP server and created an item in the local Personal Folders file
Modified - the last modification made to the item; same as Created in most cases

I can't explain why you might have seen something different in Outlook 2000.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Guest]

Thanks Sue. Well I do understand now but it took a while. Yours is the
clearest explanation.

To make a long story short, in upgrading to Outlook 2003, I only saw the
"received field". So I went to add the Sent field using field chooser. As I
started to add it and saw the various fields available, my eye saw Created
which I (naturally) assumed was the time that the message was created by the
sender. (I would never have thought that Created could mean the time that
Outlook downloaded and stored the message and that Received wasn't!) That has
got to be one of the worst terminology choices I have ever seen and I have
seen a lot.

Then I searched everything I could think of -- Outlook options, Outlook help
files, Microsoft support, this forum, newsgroups, the web, etc. with no luck.
I sent myself some test messages and looked at them on the POP server. I
waited to download them. Remember that at this point I have it in my head
that Created should mean the time that the message was created by the sender
and that Received was the time that Outlook received it. Sure enough the
Created field had the download time (what I expected the Received field to
be) and the Received field had a time close to when I sent the message (what
I expected the Created field to be). Taking into consideration some small
network delays, that all made sense for Outlook to have gotten the times
backwards. I did some more testing with the same results. I wasn't sure if
Outlook was using that actual Date field from the email message or one of the
"Received:" headers in the message but either one was OK but neither should
have been the "Received" field in Outlook since I thought that was supposed
to be when Outlook got it.

As far I can tell, I can't find anything that documents the various Outlook
fields. I couldn't find it in help files or online at Microsoft or on the web.

Thus, I was convinced that Outlook had a new bug which I didn't see in
Outlook 2000. I probably had the Sent field selected in 2000 but didn't
realize they had both field when I went to 2003 and was convinced that
Outlook 2003 had renamed it Created.

Thanks a lot for your help. I really hate those name choices. My choices
would have been Created or Sent, Server (or you choose something for it) and
Received rather than Microsoft's choices of Sent, Received and Created but
those are my choices. But no matter what you choose, I NEVER would have used
Created to mean received by outlook!

Charley Kline

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

It should make more sense if you take a broader view: Created is a property that all Outlook items have, both those created on demand by the user and those created by automatic processes like downloading mail. In that context, it's hard to imagine a better name for that date -- a name that covers all types of Outlook items -- than Created.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Guest]

Yes, but ...

Even as you describe, other things aren't created by the user. When you
receive a invitation to a meeting or other calendar item, you aren't creating
the item -- you are accepting it. Similarly, you aren't creating the Email,
you are accepting it, downloading it, reading it, viewing it, storing it --
choose your favorite. You aren't creating it. Finally, creating an email is
not the same as downloading it. Email has different connotations.

I also thing "creating" a calendar entry doesn't make sense when you are
accepting it. In fact I don't even think you create a contact entry when you
receive one from someone else.

In this context, I think that create should be a special verb that means
exactly what it says -- when I create a NEW thing, not when I receive a thing
from somewhere else. You are trying too hard to fit everything using one set
of terms -- nice goal when it works but it doesn't always work. People have
tried to do similar things with dates -- trying to somehow used creating and
modified to fit all circumstances but they don't always work. I can give
example where you need several different kinds of dates -- date an item was
created a new, date an item was imported from somewhere else, date when
security attributed are changed, date when the name is changed but not the
item, date when the item is modified, date when item is moved, date it was
last read, date it was archived, date it was marked to be deleted, date is
was "deleted" and moved to a recycle bin, date it is removed from recycle bin
and place in backup storage, date it is removed from the system entirely,
date it was encrypted, etc. People try to squeeze all these into 3 or 4 that
they implement and then try to rationalize their usage.

Create just doesn't fit when you download email.

Charley Kline

 

[Brian Tillman]

Even as you describe, other things aren't created by the user. When
you receive a invitation to a meeting or other calendar item, you
aren't creating the item

Yes, you are. The item didn't exist in your data store until you received
it, so it was created at that point.

Similarly, you
aren't creating the Email, you are accepting it, downloading it,
reading it, viewing it, storing it

But also creating it. It didn't exist in your data store until the moment
of download, so you created it.

Finally, creating an email is not the same as
downloading it. Email has different connotations.

Not at all. The message the other person sends isn't the what you receive.
It is a copy of what they sent, reconstructed (created) by your local mail
client. It's not an object that has existence outside of your mail client.
Passing a mail message or a meeting announcement isn't the same thing
passing, say, an apple from one person to another.

I also thing "creating" a calendar entry doesn't make sense when you
are accepting it. In fact I don't even think you create a contact
entry when you receive one from someone else.

Yes, you are creating those things. They didn't exist in your data store
until you received or accepted them, so those actions create them.

In this context, I think that create should be a special verb that
means exactly what it says

And I think it already has that meaning.

-- when I create a NEW thing, not when I
receive a thing from somewhere else.

You are creating a new thing. You are creating a data item in your data
store. It was created on the spot by the actions engendered by receiving
the bit stream representing the data the other person sent. You are not
receiving the actual item the other person sent because that item doesn't
exist in your data store. You are creating a copy of it.

You are trying too hard to fit everything using one set of terms

Your interpretation of what "created" should mean doesn't match what's
actually happening.

People have tried to do similar things with
dates -- trying to somehow used creating and modified to fit all
circumstances but they don't always work. I can give example where
you need several different kinds of dates -- date an item was created
a new, date an item was imported from somewhere else, date when
security attributed are changed, date when the name is changed but
not the item, date when the item is modified, date when item is
moved, date it was last read, date it was archived, date it was
marked to be deleted, date is was "deleted" and moved to a recycle
bin, date it is removed from recycle bin and place in backup storage,
date it is removed from the system entirely, date it was encrypted,
etc. People try to squeeze all these into 3 or 4 that they implement
and then try to rationalize their usage.

I can't argue that there aren't times when it would be nice for additional
date stamping of events.

Create just doesn't fit when you download email.

Yes, it does.