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Previous: Perkins menu | Main | Next: Red Bull signage in local Target
September 23, 2005 12:03 AM
Broken: Outlook 6 message
The Ferret writes:
Outlook Express 6 asks me this every time I shut it down on my laptop.
Of course, if I don't want it to compact my messages, I hit "Cancel." Which, since I am cancelling instead of clicking "No," does not save the information in the "Don't show me this again," meaning that the only way to avoid seeing this pop-up dialogue is to cave and allow it compress my message. Which, since I don't want this to happen, means that I have been seeing this message ever since I got my laptop.
(read the full post)
_@_v - you try clicking "don't show me this again" and closing the box with the red "x" instead of hitting cancel?
from thinking about this, it almost makes it seem like 'dont show me this again' would make it compact them automatically every time. this isnt logical here, but isnt that usually how things like that work? checking a 'dont show again' box usually just makes something happen automatically, so u dont have to confirm?
This stopped appearing on my computer for about a month, but then started up again. I wish I knew what I had done to get it to stop!
Why not let it compact? It will not make any user-visible changes to any of your messages, yet it will reduce disk usage and make Outlook Express start up and work faster.
If anything is broken, it's the fact that they give you the option to say "No" to this important maintenance task.
Check the don't show me this again box, then hit cancel. You are cancelling the the compaction of messages and telling it not to ask you again.
I don't see what is broken about the problem here. The message could use some help since you don't understand it. Here goes my improvement.
"There is a significant problem in how the data in your outlook is stored. It is causing you major problems in speed and reliability of your software. We can fix the problem, and you will not loose any data or anything. However the fix will take some time, and you really need to complete it in one sitting. Would you have time now to have us fix the problem for you. This problem will only get worse with time. Sooner or later your outlook will stop functioning unless you do this. So the sooner you do this the better, but if you are headed for a meeting or something right now just hit cancel and do this later."
Now read this and while it is longer see if you can understand it. Also now do you understand why just setting the computer to automatically answer no every time is a really bad idea and is not allowed.
Two responses:
1) Checking the box and hitting "Cancel" does not do it. I tried. Nor does the red box.
2) If it's so vital that Outlook will crash if I don't do it (which, given that I've had this laptop for four years and it hasn't crashed or slowed notably*, obviously isn't that big a deal), then why bother to ask me at all? Why not just schedule a time for it, like Norton Antivirus does, with a warning message that it must be done?
If it is absolutely necessary to do, then giving the user the power to say "no" as opposed to "do later" is a silly, silly idea. It took me two years to figure out how to turn off Word 97's annoying "Findfast" feature, which spontaneously came on at random intervals and slowed my processing power to a crawl (and didn't even find things particularly well); considering that Microsoft's obviously willing to annoy me on a regular basis with its other products, why didn't Microsoft make this a background task when I'm running Outlook and nothing much else is being done?
Now that's bad design.
* - I virus-check every month since I don't use it that much, Ad-Aware and Spybot every other week, and defrag once every six months or so. It's not like the hard drive's a junkpile.
It is not a background task because it uses up too many resources whilst in procedure, to do so. It is not absolutely necessary to perform this function. I think the comapction of messages moreso is for people who save hundreds of emails. However not necessary, just beneficial in making outlook run a bit faster.
*sigh* Just switch to OS X. It works. It doesn't try to tie you to particular software. The software that comes with it, like Mail & Safari, work better than the MS software (the intelligent Junk mail sorter is worth the price of admission alone even before you discuss the lack of security and stability problems). Why keep fighting a bad OS, a bad design and related problems if you don't enjoy it? How much is your time and quality of life worth?
((I think the comapction of messages moreso is for people who save hundreds of emails. ))
Actually, I have something like 5,000 emails in my deleted folder on that PC alone, and probably 2,000 in my inbox. (As the editor of a reasonably-large site, I get a lot of mail/spam/email viruses.) It's possible that this was designed for even larger emails than that, but if so then why make it optional?
Just sayin'.
Broken. Like most everything Microsoft is broken once you dig deep enough.
Ray Stevens, are you the same Ray Stevens who writes novelty songs like "The Streak," "Ahab the Arab" and "Osama Yo' Mama"? Is your "help" message going to appear in your next song? (Will it be called, "Defrag THIS" or "Broken Windows" ? )
There is a very good reason to not compact messages unless you are out of diskspace: greater risk that the data will be unrecoverable if your disk has an error or the data otherwise gets corrupted. Uncompressed, you can get the text content out of messages more easily than if compressed, especially if 5/10/20/however many years from now, you no longer have a copy of Outlook.
Personally, I suggest getting rid of Outlook altogether. It's outdated, buggy, and extremely insecure (like most of Microsoft's stuff). So is IE, for that matter. I suggest Mozilla Thunderbird (and Firefox, if you so desire), which can import all of your preferences and mail quite easily, and is far more secure.
((Actually, I have something like 5,000 emails in my deleted folder on that PC alone, and probably 2,000 in my inbox. (As the editor of a reasonably-large site, I get a lot of mail/spam/email viruses.) It's possible that this was designed for even larger emails than that, but if so then why make it optional?))
It matters not how many emails you have, nor I, the point is that this procedure is not necessary for those who read, then delete most of their email. If one were to have 10 emails saved in a folder, why bother compressing them? It's optional for the simple fact that MS has no idea if a consumer is a business or just a home user (for example). I, for one, have hundreds of work related emails from my clients. I don't like to compress them for the simple fact that I sometimes need to access them at much later dates. If MSOL automatically compressed everytime the program was closed, people would complain that the program takes too long to shut-down.
"Actually, I have something like 5,000 emails in my deleted folder on that PC alone, and probably 2,000 in my inbox. (As the editor of a reasonably-large site, I get a lot of mail/spam/email viruses.) It's possible that this was designed for even larger emails than that, but if so then why make it optional?"
It matters not how many emails you have, nor I, the point is that this procedure is not necessary for those who read, then delete most of their email. If one were to have 10 emails saved in a folder, why bother compressing them? It's optional for the simple fact that MS has no idea if a consumer is a business or just a home user (for example). I, for one, have hundreds of work related emails from my clients. I don't like to compress them for the simple fact that I sometimes need to access them at much later dates. If MSOL automatically compressed everytime the program was closed, people would complain that the program takes too long to shut-down.
Compacting is not the same as compressing - it will not lose any data at all (not to Reed, Chaos, etc.).
What it will do is permanently remove emails you thought you'd deleted (not just moved to Deleted Items), which Outlook Express just marked internally as hidden.
Not doing this won't crash OE, but will make it slower over time.
I am suprised you have not noticed that it is slower. Of course I am also suprised you have not cleaned out your deleted mail folder. I have seen situations much less than this kill outlook. But yes labeling this "later" would seem more logical.
Data recovery is in fact a good reason to be doing this. No it will not make the messages unreadable, or at least any more unreadable than they already are. ;-) It will make a lot less to search through to find it. It also will mean that index updates can occur faster so you are less at risk of having a failure while one is in progress, a major cause of loss of data in outlook.
No I am not him and not related to him.
Some technical remarks. Compacting in Outlook Express does not mean compressing. It will not compress data; it will just remove already "deleted" messages from its mailbox files. For example, if you receive an e-mail (into Inbox), then delete it (so it goes into Deleted Items), then empty the Deleted Items folder, nothing will be actually deleted neither from the "Inbox.dbx" nor from the "Deleted Items.dbx" file on your hard disk. Outlook Express will just set some bits in those *.dbx files to indicate that the message was deleted. But the actual contents of the message will be still intact. Over time, Outlook Express's *.dbx files will grow larger and larger because it never actually deletes anything you once received, sent or deleted. To get rid of the vast amounts of data, which were deleted but are still stored on your hard drive, Outlook Express has a compact feature.
It is something similar to what Microsoft Access does to a database file (*.mdb) if user selects Compact Database. It just removes deleted records from the file and frees up needlessly wasted space. A database file often shrinks several times after compacting.
I found a very good article on compacting in Outlook Express:
http://www.insideoutlookexpress.com/files/maintain.htm
Section "Compact Your OE Folders" explains how to perform e-mail compacting process manually (using File | Folder | Compact) and the reason why you should do it. Other sections are mainly about compacting newsgroup folders.
And one more thing. Don't confuse Outlook Express with Outlook. Microsoft Outlook is an absolutely different application (highly sophisticated, with e-mail capability among other things). Outlook is available as a part of Office and as a stand-alone product. Microsoft Outlook Express is, on the contrary, rather simple e-mail and news client. Outlook Express is not a part of Office; it is a part of Windows operating system (more precisely, it is a part of Internet Explorer, which is, in turn, a built-in component of Windows nowadays).
Also- John M- Why does it not delete them? Will MS delete things when you empty the Trash? (the system trash, not Outlook's)
(((I am suprised you have not noticed that it is slower. Of course I am also suprised you have not cleaned out your deleted mail folder. )))
Sad thing is, that IS cleaned out. That's just the deleted emails I've gotten since 9/1. I empty it once a month.
Like I said, I get a lot of email.
I don't really have any comments other than a ceremonious bashing of IE and most of ther other stuff MS gives you for free. Mozilla Firefox is so much better. You can even get an extension that lets you see the weather forecast. Very handy indeed.
So there!
This is really broken. It's just as bad as the options you get for auto updates when you install SP2. You don't get to turn them off (as I wanted to do, with good reasons), you only get "Yes" and "Remind me later". Broken.
For anyone who says 'this is not broken': prima face, the fact that there are dozens of people debating what the message means proves it is broken, since broken, in UI terms, often means people simply cannot figure what the heck is going on.
I tend to agree that the information provided by this message is in fact broken. This needs a OK and a "Later" button. Then it needs a "more information" button.
But the original statement of broken was that there was no way to make this message go away. This is in fact not broken as this would not be a desirable effect.
Sorry Ray, I had to ask. Bet you get that a lot.
But if the other Ray is reading, he can have the song title "Broken Windows."
Sounds like a top ten song to me, especially if my name sake sings it. All of America would buy it, and the the American work place would ban it as a dangerous weapon.
Sad but true:
Last night, after viewing this article, I decided to look at my e-mail. Guess what Outlook asked me after I finished reading my messages?
Vaguely related is Outlook's "Do you want to permanently delete all the items in your Deleted Items folder?". [Yes] [No]
Two things: first, the split infinitive. I'm not an enormous hater of split infinitives, but I've been seeing this one every day for the last X years and I'm sick of it. At work I use Lotus Goats and although out of spite for the user they have made EVERYTHING ELSE work differently from Outlook, this message is verbatim in Notes too! Aaarghh....
Second, why not give me a cancel button on that dialog, eh? Like, I went to quit the program, now you could have just quit, or you could ask me an annoying question, and THEN decide I want to write another email, but although the program is running I have to CLOSE IT DOWN AND START IT AGAIN. Aaaarghh...
If only there was a site like we.hates-software.com that wasn't just Mac-based. Suggestions?
Outlook works fine with little slow down until your PST gets to 1.5 GB or above then expect problems however till then conpacting does little.
if you happen to get coruption in the PST file this will come up every time till completed.
Do this to stop the pop-up.
start> run> regedit> ok
> navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{long nomber}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook
Express\5.0
> Compact Check Count
Delete.
After 100 times of opening outlook express, you have to tweak the registry using this method again.
I thank the few who pointed out the obvious solution. Don't use Outlook. Switch to Thunderbid/Mozilla/Firefox/...
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Previous: Perkins menu | Main | Next: Red Bull signage in local Target
outlook is broken
Posted by: gmangw at September 23, 2005 12:24 AM