Outlook shortcuts disappear

[Doron]

I'm using the "shortcuts" bar in Outlook 2003, and create shortcuts for
frequently-used folders.
Lately I've noticed that all my shortcuts disappear, and had to re-create
them again...
This already happened twice, so I googled it and found this:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Applications/MS_Office/Outlook/Q_21452750.html

<quote>
Tip: Outlook shortcuts disappear due to special characters in the name
This is an answer, rather than a question, but I wanted to document the
answer since I hadn't been able to find it online.
One of our users was complaining that every time they created a set of
shortcuts in Outlook 2003, the shortcuts disappeared after they closed
Outlook and restarted it.
The shortcuts were being created in new groups, and we looked at a number
of different scenarios to recreate the issue and finally determined that the
problem comes from using certain special characters in the name of the
shortcut groups, in particular the slash (/) character. There may be other
characters that cause problems, but we didn't do further testing to
determine which are allowed and which should be avoided.
This appears to be a bug in Outlook -- the application should either
prevent you from entering the unsupported characters in the group name, or
support the name that it allows you to enter.
Note that the name is successfully displayed when it is first created.
It is only when Outlook is starting up again that the group is thrown away.
</quote>

I looked for some workaround at MSKB (http://support.microsoft.com) but
didn't find anything.
This is very annoying, especially since I have no idea what 'special
characters' are forbidden.

I tried to to find a workaround by myself:
the shortcuts are stored in XML file (in my case: c:\Documents and
Settings\dmeiraz\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Exchange.xml), I backed
it up before exiting Outlook (after creating 'illegal groups' in shortcuts
bar).
it appears that Outlook saves the data of groups/shortcuts with the
illegal characters, but when re-opening it - Outlook deletes these records...
I guess since it's an XML file, the 'forbidden special characters' are
such that might cause confusion with XML syntax (\ < > ...), but I'm not XML
expert so I don't want to guess what are these characters (and re-create my
shortcuts every time...).

please help...

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...690d1cfa6&dg=microsoft.public.outlook.general

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The solution is to create shortcut names using only alphanumeric characters and spaces. That way, you completely avoid any characters that would have to be encoded differently to work in XML.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Garyc]

I have a user who is having the same problem but we have confirmed that they
are only using alphanumeric characters and spaces. i have spent a large
amount of time looking a various solutions that have been surgested on
various discussion forums but still have not found a solution. Can you help?

 

[Simon Minder]

We had the same issue in our organisation. We resolved the problem by backing
up the outlook.xml file once and include the copy job in the login script.
The login script copies the file every time when the user starts up his PC to
the correct folder on his machine.

The file is located in drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook for XP users and for Vista users the file is located
in drive:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook if you use roming
profile.

 

[Simon Minder]

We had the same issue in our organisation. We resolved the problem by backing
up the outlook.xml file once and include the copy job in the login script.
The login script copies the file every time when the user starts up his PC to
the correct folder on his machine.

The file is located in drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook for XP users and for Vista users the file is located
in drive:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook if you use roming
profile.

 

[Solli]

hi Sue,

I have had the same problem both in Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. I do not
have any special characters in the shortcut names, but i.e. public folders do
have "-" in some of the names.

Sometimes I have my shortcuts working for months, while other times it
clears several times per week.

Any further information that can help isolate this issue?

Thanks