The infamous unread email flag bug

[VanguardLH]

OK so we agree then it should be fixed. Anyone from the Microsoft
development team reading this?


Yes it is misnamed for what it does. I suppose Microsoft could make
two different rules,

(1) "make the item unbold" which does the same thing as the rule
that is currently named "mark as read."

(2) "mark as read" which really marks it as read (including updating
the flag status).

Actually I only really agree that we Outlook users are attempting to
use a *corporate* designed e-mail client as a *personal* e-mail
client. There are a ton of features in Outlook that make sense in a
corporate environment when using Exchange and RM servers that don't
make sense in a personal one-user POP/SMTP environment. In a
corporate environment where you are responsible for reading your
company's or department's e-mails, the tray icon remains until you
actually read those new e-mails regardless of what you did with your
rules, so the tray icon remains as a persistent reminder to read those
e-mails that you are required to read. I use Outlook at both work and
home (but wouldn't be using it at home it I had to pay for it out of
my pocket). "Features" that are wanted by an employer may not be
wanted by a user at home. When managing a herd of corporate
customers, the vermin of end-users don't get much attention.

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

I think you meant to say in your example that a rule you have
defined performs the action "mark it as read" on one of the emails
but not for both (rather than "move"). In this case of course the
tray icon should continue to display because two unread (bold)
emails remain in the inbox. If all three are acted upon by the
"mark it as read" rule because all three meet the criteria, then
there are no more messages to read

Um, and who gets to make the determination "there are no more messages
to read"? Certainly not you in a corporate environment where you are
still required to read all the company's or department's mail
regardless of how you chose to personally manage their appearance in
your e-mail client. Outlook is a *corporate* e-mail client. It is
not designed for personal use. Even if you had the option to turn off
the tray icon (and the bubble notice that works with it) using a rule,
that doesn't obviate your responsibility to read those company
e-mails.

Outlook is not designed for use as a personal e-mail client. It is
designed as an enterprise solution along with Exchange (and optionally
RM) as a corporate e-mail client. To be honest, you (and I) are using
an oversized program to do personal e-mail that is not designed for
personal use.

So then I'll explain my particular case. As a software architect at
my company I joined a new project where every member of the team
receives automatic email notification whenever a file is committed
to source control. I get enough emails every day and I don't need to
be bothered by these, but I need to find them in an email folder for
reference whenever the need arises.

So I created an Outlook rule to match the subject and move the
messages to a folder, and also to "mark it as read." I use this
rule because I don't need to know that I didn't read some
developer's source control notification email (on another project I
worked on before this, we got daily build emails; similar story).

But the problem is, now I get these phantom task tray notifications
with the little yellow envelope telling me that I have new email,
when I really don't. If I want the flag to disappear I have to go
into the source control folder and try to guess which email
triggered the flag (probably the most recent) and click on it. It
is not bold anymore and has already been marked read, but as soon as
I click on "mark as UNread" the flag disappears! Very weird, but
this works as a cumbersome manual flag clearing step.

The reason I need the new mail notification flag in the task tray is
because often I get very important emails, such as when someone
wants to arrange a meeting, and I need to know when these arrive. I
have many other application windows open and I can't be staring at
the Outlook preview pane all day long. When the task tray envelope
appears I know that I need to open Outlook.

That is why I suggested turing OFF the envelope tray icon from showing
up in the system notification area and instead using a rule to decide
when to present an alert window.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I think you meant to say in your example that a rule you have defined
performs the action "mark it as read" on one of the emails but not
for both (rather than "move").
Correct.

In this case of course the tray icon
should continue to display because two unread (bold) emails remain in
the inbox. If all three are acted upon by the "mark it as read" rule
because all three meet the criteria, then there are no more messages
to read and the flag should disappear if the problem were fixed. I
don't think any user would be unhappy with this behavior. This is
the expected and correct behavior.

It is certainly not the expected behavior (to me, expected behavior is
as-implemented behavior) and I'm not convinced it's correct, either. It
remains, however, that the two processes are disconnected.

 

[fpbear]

Actually I only really agree that we Outlook users are attempting to use a
*corporate* designed e-mail client as a *personal* e-mail client. There
are a ton of features in Outlook that make sense in a corporate
environment when using Exchange and RM servers that don't make sense in a
personal one-user POP/SMTP environment. In a corporate environment where
you are responsible for reading your company's or department's e-mails,
the tray icon remains until you actually read those new e-mails regardless
of what you did with your rules, so the tray icon remains as a persistent
reminder to read those e-mails that you are required to read. I use
Outlook at both work and home (but wouldn't be using it at home it I had
to pay for it out of my pocket). "Features" that are wanted by an
employer may not be wanted by a user at home. When managing a herd of
corporate customers, the vermin of end-users don't get much attention.

My real life experience is actually the other way around. When I use
Outlook as a personal email client, this doesn't affect me, because personal
emails are from such a wide variety of senders and topics I don't get
repetitive corporate-process emails that need to be moved and automatically
marked read. Also, it is not so critical that I see up-to-the-minute email
flag in the task tray, my friends can wait.

On the other hand, in a corporate environment, I frequently have to use the
"mark as read" rule because I get these useless repetitive emails that must
be moved to unclutter my inbox. They are often very low priority emails
such as "daily build completed" or "source code checked in" so I don't care
if I have ever reviewed these emails. On the other hand if I get an email
about scheduling a meeting then I need to see that email right away. So if
I'm working on something else in many windows covering up Outlook, the task
tray icon is my only notification for these time sensitive emails. So this
bug we are talking about reduces some of the productivity in Outlook in a
corporate environment.

It is not a factor when I use Outlook for personal emails, so I believe the
opposite is true of the argument that you have put forward about corporate
designed vs. personal designed email client and the flag.

 

[fpbear]

BTW - what version of Outlook do you use? I thought 2007 handles it
better, although I never tested it as I never bother with marking messages
read since I never look at the tray (too much other crap there and windows
hides the mail icon eventually) and tune out the new mail sound - I just
move the messages that are not important and deal with what is in the
inbox. I check the inbox every now and again on my schedule - checking it
each time new mail arrives (whether you use the tray icon, sounds or toast
to alert you) is a sure way to kill productivity.

I use Outlook 2003 at work and this is where the problem really affects me.
I also use Outlook 2007 at home and although I don't use mail filtering
rules at home, I can reproduce the same problem. So both versions,
including 2007, have the bug.

 

[fpbear]

The problem Brian was trying to explain: Say you get 3 messages. the first
2 stay in the inbox. #3 is moved by a rule that marks as read and removes
the tray icon. As soon as a message is read, the icon disappears - it
doesn't matter if you have 1 or 50 unread messages in the inbox, as soon
as 1 is marked read, the icon disappears. So now you don't have the icon
to alert you that there are new messages in the inbox.

Now if the order is the marked read message first then the other 2, its
not an issue - the first one removes the icon, but the next ones restores
it.

The rule works fine if you always get messages 1 at a time - but anyone
using pop or cache mode / rpc over http where the messages are received in
bunches will not benefit by removing the tray icon via a rule.

I see the example now, but I am not saying that the "mark as read" rule
should blindly take a swipe and remove the tray icon without consideration
of what else is in the inbox.

If the programmer had implemented this properly according to software
application design best practices, when the "mark as read" rule is
triggered, it would call another procedure that checks whether this is the
only remaining unread message.

Microsoft should be able to find a way to re-use the same function that is
triggered when a user clicks on an item to mark as read. This function
checks to see how many other messages there are unread. So why can't the
automatic rule do the same thing? The only reason the automatic rule
wouldn't be able to do it is if there was some unconventional programming
practice (which should be fixed).

 

[fpbear]

for cases like this turn off the tray notification and use a rule to move
the messages. Use stop processing on all the rules that move messages and
a final rule that applies to all mail (stop processing on the earlier
rules makes this rule apply only to messages that are left in the inbox)
that plays a sound and/or runs an application that adds an envelope icon
to the tray.

That is an interesting idea Although if there is some little application
that could add a tray icon, it would just stay there and it wouldn't
disappear when I mark something read by clicking on the message subject. It
would seem to solve one problem but would introduce another new problem.
But thanks for the effort trying to find a workaround to the bug. So
far there isn't any practically useful workaround that I've heard of.

 

[fpbear]

Um, and who gets to make the determination "there are no more messages to
read"? Certainly not you in a corporate environment where you are still
required to read all the company's or department's mail regardless of how
you chose to personally manage their appearance in your e-mail client.
Outlook is a *corporate* e-mail client. It is not designed for personal
use. Even if you had the option to turn off the tray icon (and the bubble
notice that works with it) using a rule, that doesn't obviate your
responsibility to read those company e-mails.

Outlook is not designed for use as a personal e-mail client. It is
designed as an enterprise solution along with Exchange (and optionally RM)
as a corporate e-mail client. To be honest, you (and I) are using an
oversized program to do personal e-mail that is not designed for personal
use.

Then if this is true about being "required to read every message" then
Microsoft should rename the "mark as read" rule and call it "undo bold
text." Oulook should not try to pretend it has a "mark as read" rule when
it really doesn't have one. Some manager/programmer came up with a fake
rule in that case.

 

[fpbear]

It is certainly not the expected behavior (to me, expected behavior is
as-implemented behavior) and I'm not convinced it's correct, either. It
remains, however, that the two processes are disconnected.

Here is something you should try, that may help to convince you that this is
indeed a bug and not expected behavior. Reproduce the orphaned tray icon
using the "mark as read" rule, and then close Outlook and start Outlook
again. Notice that the tray icon has now disappeared. Therefore the tray
icon is not sticking around because of a sensible usability reason, but
rather because of a missing software call. By restarting Outlook the
program initialization routine finally makes the proper software call.

If still not convinced, go to the message that the rule "marked as read" and
then manually right click and "mark as unread." Now the task tray icon
disappears! Very strange!

This evidence should override all these other discussions we've been having.
If it acts so strange in this manner, it should be clear it's a bug and I
have a really hard time to believe that it's a feature, and it reminds me of
those silly cartoons where programmers like to claim that a bug is a
feature.

 

[Diane Poremsky {MVP}]

Microsoft should be able to find a way to re-use the same function that is

triggered when a user clicks on an item to mark as read. This function
checks to see how many other messages there are unread.

where did you get the idea such a function exists? When a message is marked
as read, the icon disappears regardless of how many other unread items there
are.



** Please include your Outlook version, Account type, and Windows Version
when requesting assistance **

 

[Diane Poremsky {MVP}]

The problem is that everyone calls it an unread message alert - it's a new
mail alert and is only there when you have new mail. If you have older
unread mail, it will not show. As soon as you read 1 message (even if you
have 50 new ones), it disappears because you should know there is new mail
in your inbox. When you close outlook the icon disappears because outlook is
closed and when you restart, for at least a few seconds, there isn't any
*new* mail - so no icon.



** Please include your Outlook version, Account type, and Windows Version
when requesting assistance **

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Um, and who gets to make the determination "there are no more

Then if this is true about being "required to read every message" then
Microsoft should rename the "mark as read" rule and call it "undo bold
text." Oulook should not try to pretend it has a "mark as read" rule
when it really doesn't have one. Some manager/programmer came up with
a fake rule in that case.

Strictly speaking, isn't the envelope icon indicative of 'new, unopened items'?
Just because a rule marks a message as read, it doesn't change the fact
that the message is new and unopened.

 

[fpbear]

The problem is that everyone calls it an unread message alert - it's a new
mail alert and is only there when you have new mail. If you have older
unread mail, it will not show. As soon as you read 1 message (even if you
have 50 new ones), it disappears because you should know there is new mail
in your inbox. When you close outlook the icon disappears because outlook
is closed and when you restart, for at least a few seconds, there isn't
any *new* mail - so no icon.

I see, now that makes sense. I think this confusion arises because the tray
icon uses the marked as read mechanism to make the flag disappear, at least
for the first message.

I still can't figure out why the "mark as read" rule does not cause the same
effects on the tray icon envelope as when a human does it.

Outlook should have another rule called "mark as read while simulating a
human" that produces the correct behavior.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I still can't figure out why the "mark as read" rule does not cause
the same effects on the tray icon envelope as when a human does it.

Because, as Mr. Muffman said, "mark as read" doesn't mean "opened".

Outlook should have another rule called "mark as read while
simulating a human" that produces the correct behavior.

Now you're being silly.

 

[AliasJ]

Well, this has been lively.

If you want to get the functionality for which you are looking, you'll
have to do it in Outlook VBA, with calls to WIN32 APIs. See:
http://www.outlookcode.com/d/code/clearenvicon.htm

 

[Diane Poremsky {MVP}]

or for a very low cost, buy an add-in - http://www.techhit.com/autoread/



** Please include your Outlook version, Account type, and Windows Version
when requesting assistance **

 

[fpbear]

Because, as Mr. Muffman said, "mark as read" doesn't mean "opened".

Then if we choose to play with words Microsoft needs to create another rule
called "mark as opened."

This is a problem for the ordinary corporate user. Search the web and
you'll find thousands of complaints on this.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Because, as Mr. Muffman said, "mark as read" doesn't mean "opened".

Then if we choose to play with words Microsoft needs to create another
rule called "mark as opened."

I wasn't trying to play with words. I was simply using the words that are
there. You want the words to mean something they don't, not me.

This is a problem for the ordinary corporate user. Search the web and
you'll find thousands of complaints on this.

a) Then train your corporate users.
b) And I see millions of Outlook users who aren't complaining, notable by
the lack of complaints.

I'm just thinking that this is something you need to accept and move on.
If you want Microsoft to fix it, call the support line, say what's broken
and ask them to open a bug. If they won't, ask for a supervisor. Keep asking
for one until they open a bug and give you a bug number.

Take that however you want.

 

[fpbear]

a) Then train your corporate users.
.....

"Corporate Training Manual for Outlook Section 44.2"

"When you mark mail read by clicking on it, your new mail notification will
disappear from the task tray."

"When you mark mail read using a rule, the new mail notification will not
disappear."

"If you right-click on the message that is marked read via the rule, and
then you manually mark it un-read, the tray notification will disappear."

"This is by design, because when you mark mail read using a rule, Outlook
knows you didn't really mean to do that. Whereas if you mark it read by
clicking on it, then you must have done it on purpose. This is Outlook's
way of protecting you."

"There is another new protection feature from our IT department: when you
configure an automatic Out of Office notification, it won't be sent when
you're away from your desk. This is because you are not really out of the
office unless you turn off the computer. When you physically press the
power button, the notification will be sent."

 

[Brad]

I had this same problem, but I found a solution to the bug. I get three or four emails a day from various administrators notifying me of updated/new/deleted procedures. I don't need to read them so I had Outlook mark them as read and move them to another folder. When Outlook moves unread, unopened email to another folder the tray icon does not appear, but since Outlook was first marking them as read and then moving them to a new folder the tray icon would remain, even if I later opened that folder and read the newly received email.

Solution: I made two separate rules- the first moves the mail to a new folder and the second marks it as read. This circumvents the bug (which is a bug, obviously) and allows me to focus on the emails that I actually need to read.