Outlook 2003 is a step backwards for stability

[Shan McArthur]

Hello,

I have to say that I am very disappointed with the stability of Outlook
2003. It is a step backwards in that regard.

Right now I am moving some email from one folder to another, and this
process also locks all other Internet Explorer windows so that they cannot
respond at all to the user. This is supposed to be a pre-emptive
multi-tasking operating system, and I have turned on the option of launching
each IE in it's own process. It does not make sense why IE is locked on my
machine just because Outlook is busy working. I cannot even move the IE
window to a new location on the screen; it's that locked. However, if I
cancel the move operation in outlook, IE pops back to life.

The spam filters are useless. Last week, I had more than 700 spam and the
filters only caught 50. I just installed SpamBayes and have had a lot more
luck with it.

I keep getting an annoying message pop-up from the system bar "outlook is
trying to retrieve data from the Microsoft Exchange server..." This is very
annoying.

Many times Outlook opens a modal dialog box UNDER its main screen. The only
way to get to it is to try to terminate the process, where task manager pops
up the window to the top. Alt-tab doesn't work.

In the middle of this folder copy, outlook keeps poping a window for a very
brief moment and stealing the cursor focus. The window goes away so fast I
cannot see it, but my typing gets interupted.

Finally, every time I click send/receive, the "Microsoft Exchange Server"
task fails with the following message: "Task 'Microsoft Exchange Server'
reported error (0x8004010F):;The operation failed. An object could not be
found.'"

I certainly hope that these stability issues, usability issues, and bugs
will be fixed an an upcoming service pack.

Shan McArthur

 

[nkjg]

Hi there,

I have Outlook 2003, and I've never had any of the
problems that you describe.

As for the moving mail from one folder to another. Are
the e-mails very large (i.e. they have attachments)? It
will take a large amount of time to transfer the e-mail
from one folder to another, especially if you're moving
it to an archive file (i.e. an external file).

As for the spam filters, they take some configuring, but
I've found them to be quite good.

To prevent any window from stealing focus, get TweakUI.
There is a setting that prevents any program from stealing
focus.

Have you tried re-installing Outlook? Or even doing a
clean install of your OS? I was having a whole host of
problems with my computer, and I did a clean install just
this past weekend. Everything is much more stable, and the
comptuer runs faster in general.

Hope this helps,

Nick