Outlook 2003 Shortcuts

[Scott Williams]

Hi,

We have a user who uses Outlook 2003 on a laptop. He regularly complains
that his Outlook Shortcuts disappear. We are fully aware of the issue
surrounding the use of special characters in shortcuts group names and
checked and confirmed the user uses only alphanumeric characters and spaces.
Basically, it look like his entire Default Oulook Profiles.xml is being wiped
and replaced with a fresh clean version. Nothing untoward has happened on his
machine (i.e system crash, outlook crash etc) and we are really stumped on
this one. Has anyone ever seen this before?

 

[Econ Prof]

My shortcuts disappear all too often. It has become a major annoyance.

I have skimmed through many posts and there seems to be no real answer as to
why this occurs.

I am also confused as to how to deal with it. Some people have suggested
copying an xml file, but they do not give the name of this file or where it
might be located. Hence, the advice is useless.

Random losses of data is quite disturbing. Microsoft should address this
issue, find what is causing it, and prepare a fix. Failing that, they should
tell users what file to copy as a backup and how to restore it.




--
Douglas O. Walker
Professor of Economics
Robertson School of Government
Regent University
Virginia Beach, VA 23464

 

[Scott Williams]

Yeh, it does look like there are a few issues of this type out there, and I
agree there also appears to be no explanation or solution. I don't see
constantly backing up the *.xml file as a solution, more of an annoyance!

FYI the file they are talking about should be called username.xml. It is
held in the Application Data area of your PC, but you're probably better off
searching for all xml files to find it. Ours is held on the network as we use
a re-directed appdata area. Incidentally, ours is also called
DefaultOutlookProfile.xml... but most people's tend to have the username as
the filename.

Regards
Scott