September 18th, 2005, 03:10 PM
I don't really have a question, but rather a bugfix suggestion:
I use MS Outlook 2003 to check a single IMAP mail account with two different machines, and I recently installed Plaxo on each system. I started noticing that every time I closed and re-opened Outlook, the Read/Unread/Deleted status of my recent messages would change (whether I was alternating between my two computers or not). I finally tracked the problem back to the time of my Plaxo installation, and disabled Plaxo. The read/unread/deleted status is working fine again. Reenabling Plaxo causes the problem to return, and disabling makes it go away. Problem solved, for me. No more Plaxo.
To be more specific about the problem, if I open Outlook and get a new message (status "unread"), then read the message (status "read") and close Outlook, the the next time I open Outlook that message will have "unread" status again. It does not matter if I am viewing the message in the preview pane or double-clicking to open the message... once I close and re-open Outlook, the "read" status reverts to "unread." Conversely, if I manually mark an old message as "unread" and then close and open Outlook, it will lose its "unread" status and be marked as "read" again. Actually it will flash "unread" quickly and then change to "read" as Plaxo catches up with Outlook.
Similar problems occur when messages are marked as "deleted" (they later re-appear as new). FYI: On an IMAP server, deleted messages are designated in Outlook as strikethrough light grey characters, and they're not moved to a trashcan folder. To eliminate them, you must purge the deleted messages out of your folder.
I know that Plaxo is actually changing the flag on the message at the time that Outlook closes, because I can read a new message, close Outlook, open PINE (a simple UNIX mailreader, not running Plaxo), and the message will be marked as unread again.
Now that I've isolated the problem as a Plaxo/Outlook/IMAP conflict, all the problems are re-create-able (enable Plaxo) and fixable (disable Plaxo).
As a solution, I tried running a manual Plaxo sync every time I closed Outlook, but that didn't help. I do not have Plaxo configured to be syncing email, just contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes. I can see where this read/unread syncing might be useful with two machines checking the same POP3 mail account, but it does not work for IMAP.
It looks like Plaxo would be the perfect program for me to keep my calendar and contacts in sync between my home and work computers, but it is not worth this unread/read confusion.
I use MS Outlook 2003 to check a single IMAP mail account with two different machines, and I recently installed Plaxo on each system. I started noticing that every time I closed and re-opened Outlook, the Read/Unread/Deleted status of my recent messages would change (whether I was alternating between my two computers or not). I finally tracked the problem back to the time of my Plaxo installation, and disabled Plaxo. The read/unread/deleted status is working fine again. Reenabling Plaxo causes the problem to return, and disabling makes it go away. Problem solved, for me. No more Plaxo.
To be more specific about the problem, if I open Outlook and get a new message (status "unread"), then read the message (status "read") and close Outlook, the the next time I open Outlook that message will have "unread" status again. It does not matter if I am viewing the message in the preview pane or double-clicking to open the message... once I close and re-open Outlook, the "read" status reverts to "unread." Conversely, if I manually mark an old message as "unread" and then close and open Outlook, it will lose its "unread" status and be marked as "read" again. Actually it will flash "unread" quickly and then change to "read" as Plaxo catches up with Outlook.
Similar problems occur when messages are marked as "deleted" (they later re-appear as new). FYI: On an IMAP server, deleted messages are designated in Outlook as strikethrough light grey characters, and they're not moved to a trashcan folder. To eliminate them, you must purge the deleted messages out of your folder.
I know that Plaxo is actually changing the flag on the message at the time that Outlook closes, because I can read a new message, close Outlook, open PINE (a simple UNIX mailreader, not running Plaxo), and the message will be marked as unread again.
Now that I've isolated the problem as a Plaxo/Outlook/IMAP conflict, all the problems are re-create-able (enable Plaxo) and fixable (disable Plaxo).
As a solution, I tried running a manual Plaxo sync every time I closed Outlook, but that didn't help. I do not have Plaxo configured to be syncing email, just contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes. I can see where this read/unread syncing might be useful with two machines checking the same POP3 mail account, but it does not work for IMAP.
It looks like Plaxo would be the perfect program for me to keep my calendar and contacts in sync between my home and work computers, but it is not worth this unread/read confusion.