Appointments Disappearing in Outlook Calendar

[Paul Rouse]

I have had reports of users having appointments literally disappear
from their calendars in front of their eyes. I too have witnessed this
happening and am trying to get to the bottom of why this is occuring
and possible reasons for it.

Of the 2 users I have investigated so far both are blackberry users
and both have delegates managing their calendars. I have witnessed a
recurring appointment item disappear from the users calendar in front
of me. The item can then be found in the deleted items folder. This
happens with NO user interaction whatsoever and is scary to watch and
frightening when considering the possible consequences (missed
meetings etc).

This issue now appears to be affecting our CEO so needs to be resolved
ASAP.

Having read through lots of information online most of the answers I
have found have pointed to calendar caching issues but I believe
Outlook 2003 doesnt cache the calendar?

One possible cause I have looked at is that the CEO wasnt using cached
mode but his PA (who is a delegate) was. I have now turned off cached
mode on the PA's machine to rule this out as a possible sync problem.

Our Setup

Clustered Exchange 2003 running on Server 2003, with users on Outlook
2003 on XP SP2 machines.
Blackberry Enterprise Server

Is there any client side logging I could look at or switch on (I'm no
Outlook expert I'm afraid), or has anyone else come across this?

Thanks

Paul Rouse

 

[pauljamesrouse]

I've had reports from 3 other users experiencing the same problem - all
blackberry users with delegates. All using cached mode - have now taken
off cached mode for all users and will monitor the results.

 

[Graham Seel]

I am seeing this same issue, and have just tried turning off caching. In the
past month since you tried turning it off, have you still been seeing
calendar entries drop off?

BTW one other idiosyncracy about my configuration is that I have Outlook
2003 and my admin assistant has Outlook 2000. Could that be a factor?

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Not sure that this will help but here is a reply from a previous thread
indicting the version of cdo may be the culprit - reprinted in whole from
groups.google.com:

Thank you for your reply. It was helpful and correct. In my situation
we're running Exchange 2000 and Outlook 2003. We were also running
BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) prior to the implementation of
version 4.0. Once we upgraded to BES v4.0 we started getting the
duplicate calendar entries. I was certain this was relative to the v4.0
upgrade. Although I read your solution as well as a few others online,
I wanted to verify this with BB Support before making any changes. They
verified the solution as being correct. For the sake of others that may
run across this post, my in house ticket was closed with the following:

"According to BB Support, BES 4.0 stores a copy of cdo.dll which can be
found on your MS Exchange Server in Program File>ExchSrvr>BIN in the
same file directory of your BES, i.e. Program File>ExchSrvr>BIN. The
previous version stored this file in the BES system32 folder. With
assistance from BB I verified that the cdo.dll file did not exist in
the Program File>ExchSrvr>BIN directory on the BB server. This was the
cause of duplicate entries in Office Calendar. I acquired the cdo.dll
from Exchange and copied this to Program File>ExchSrvr>BIN on the BES.
I registered the .dll, and then restarted the BB service in Services. I
was told this may create a 5-10 minute delay in messages received, but
messages would not be lost. This issue has since been tested and
verified as issue resolved."



--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. Due to
the (insert latest virus name here) virus, all mail sent to my personal
account will be deleted without reading.

After furious head scratching, Graham Seel asked:

| I am seeing this same issue, and have just tried turning off caching.
| In the past month since you tried turning it off, have you still been
| seeing calendar entries drop off?
|
| BTW one other idiosyncracy about my configuration is that I have
| Outlook 2003 and my admin assistant has Outlook 2000. Could that be a
| factor?
|
| "Paul Rouse" wrote:
|
|| I have had reports of users having appointments literally disappear
|| from their calendars in front of their eyes. I too have witnessed
|| this happening and am trying to get to the bottom of why this is
|| occuring and possible reasons for it.
||
|| Of the 2 users I have investigated so far both are blackberry users
|| and both have delegates managing their calendars. I have witnessed a
|| recurring appointment item disappear from the users calendar in front
|| of me. The item can then be found in the deleted items folder. This
|| happens with NO user interaction whatsoever and is scary to watch and
|| frightening when considering the possible consequences (missed
|| meetings etc).
||
|| This issue now appears to be affecting our CEO so needs to be
|| resolved ASAP.
||
|| Having read through lots of information online most of the answers I
|| have found have pointed to calendar caching issues but I believe
|| Outlook 2003 doesnt cache the calendar?
||
|| One possible cause I have looked at is that the CEO wasnt using
|| cached mode but his PA (who is a delegate) was. I have now turned
|| off cached mode on the PA's machine to rule this out as a possible
|| sync problem.
||
|| Our Setup
||
|| Clustered Exchange 2003 running on Server 2003, with users on Outlook
|| 2003 on XP SP2 machines.
|| Blackberry Enterprise Server
||
|| Is there any client side logging I could look at or switch on (I'm no
|| Outlook expert I'm afraid), or has anyone else come across this?
||
|| Thanks
||
|| Paul Rouse