Bug: Since 11.2.3, Entourage/Microsoft News Server #s of unreadare false

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

Since updating to 11.2.3, when I click on the titles in the Entourage Mail
sidebar for microsoft.public.mac.office, microsoft.public.mac.entourage,
microsoft.public.mac.excel or microsoft.public.mac.word, I frequently see
false numbers of "new" unread posts.

I have View set to Unread only. If I click on one of the newsgroup titles,
its name may turn from lightface to boldface font and a number will appear
but when I look inside the newsgroup, no new posts appear.

Now, for example, the Entourage newsgroup shows 6 unread but when I look,
there are no new posts and none unread; the Word newsgroup shows 2; Excel
shows 1 and Office remains light-faced without any number for unread.

At other times, when there are actual unread messages, the sidebar display
will show more than appear on my screen.

I'm running OS 10.4.5 and have found no problems when I run Disk Utility's
Repair Permissions.

The newsgroups' false numbers in the sidebar continue even after a rebuild
of the database.

Anybody else seeing this bug?

Respectfully, Norm

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi Norm,

that's no new bug, and it's been with us for some time now. The problem does
not lie with Entourage, but rather with the Microsoft servers, where some
"ghost messages" are picked up and consequentially marked as unread by
newsreaders such as Entourage. In fact, if you google the Entourage group,
you should find a series of posts about this particular issue. There's not
much you can do, rebuilding your database will not help since, as I've
pointed out, it's not an Entourage problem. I can only recommend using the
Alt+Cmd+T keyboard shortcut, which will mark all the messages of the news
server you've selected as read; it's slightly faster than clicking on the
icon in the toolbar.

Michel