Hi, Don.
As you probably know, this is a VERY active newsgroup. I show 43,000+
messages here since 10/11/04, or an average of over 700 per day. If you
haven't changed OE's default settings, you are getting only 300 headers at a
time; if you sign on just once a day, you are missing over half the posts
here. That may be why you might sometimes download MVP Alex's answers to
questions that you did not download. Of if you have OE set to delete
messages too soon, the question may disappear before Alex's answer appears.
(Alex lives in England. He has explained elsewhere that he usually
downloads a large batch of messages, reads them and prepares replies, then
sends the replies as a batch; this sometimes results in a delay of perhaps a
day or more. This explains, too, why you may sometimes see his reply that
seems to echo an earlier response: he prepared his reply before the other
response was posted.) So the combination of time-zone difference and his
batch-mode participation - and your OE settings - might explain what you are
seeing. I've learned that Alex's answers are worth waiting for. ;<)
OE is customizable in many ways. Click Tools | Options... On the Read tab,
under News, you can change the setting for Get ___ headers at a time, from
the default 300 to as many as 1,000 - or uncheck the box (as I did) to get
ALL the headers. (Be prepared for a long wait the first time you visit the
NG after this; even with broadband it takes a while to get them all.) On
the Maintenance tab, increase the setting for Delete news messages ___ days
after being downloaded; the default (5, as I recall) may be too short for
the way YOU read the newsgroups. I have this set to 32 days. If you have
this at just 1 day, for example, OE may be deleting the questions from your
Message Store before Alex's reply arrives. And you can set individual
newsgroups to download All Messages, New Messages Only or Headers Only.
Here again, be prepared for a long session the first time you synchronize a
busy NG with All Messages set, but you won't miss parts of a thread.
One more possibility is that you are accessing this newsgroup through some
news server other than "the mother ship". These Microsoft public newsgroups
(also known as Discussion Groups in Microsoft Communities when accessed via
the Web-based interface) are hosted by the Microsoft news server, which is
free and does not require a logon. Other news servers simply "slurp"
messages from here and relay them - and replies - back and forth, often
resulting in messages that are delayed, out of sequence, or simply lost. If
you are using your ISP's news server to read this NG, try setting up a News
Account in OE for msnews.microsoft.com, and subscribing to your choices of
the 2000+ MS public NGs through that server.
RC
