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Droswell

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Exchange 2003 Problem

We recently upgraded to Exchange 2003, We have a problem slowing showing up. Some of our users are reporting a problem where a reoccuring appointment in there calendar has gone corrupted. When the appointment is clicked on a messages pops up "Cannot read an instance of this recurring appointment. Close any open appointments and try again or recreate appointment" You must close outlook and reopen it to get rid of this message. The only solution so far has been to restore mailboxes from tape prior to before the problem started to occur. I intially thought that the problem was caused by the upgrade but it was not until a week and a half later that this started. Any help would be greatly appreciated and time saving. Thank you

Avatar of Brian Mulder
Brian Mulder
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you may try to clean out the forms cache

-close outlook
-perform a FIND (click on desktop and press <F3>) (If you are using XP or W2K operating system be sure to look in hidden files)
-look for FRMCACHE.DAT file
-delete it from the find window
-restart Outlook
-when you restart Outlook it will rebuild a fresh new FRMCACHE.DAT file

-outlook uses forms on everything. It could be that somehow the FORMS CACHE is retaining incorrect form information

else post outlook version

hope this helps a bit
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Droswell

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That didn't do it unfortunatly, the FRMCache.dat file did not rebuild when I opened outlook either.  I did backit up however.  We are using Outlook 2000, on Windows 2000 machines.
Hi Droswell

Are these error messages occuring on a particular type of appointment (other than recurring) ie:

One that was accepted from a meeting invite?
Uses a custom form?
Created in a shared calendar or public folder?
etc?
No, it just seems to be recurring onse.  They are used pretty heavily.  The three users that are reporting the problem all use the appointments for the same purpose.  They have an appointment that recurres everyday.  Then the secratary can connect to the users calendar and schedual under the times of those recurring appointments.
the frmcache will always be rebuild at least when you create a new mail or other item since all those are forms, maybe not in the same place [that could be part of your problem] but it should be there

have you tried recreating the profile? the upgrade and profile settings could be out of sync in some way and creating your problem
We have tried backing up the the entire mailbox into a .PST folder and recreating the mailbox.  As well as deleting profiles.
Are the 3 users using *.ost for caching?

Is the secretary setting the intitial recurring appointment or opening it and modifying it after the user creates it?  Do you have others (besides these 3) that have the same set up (secretary that adds to their calendar under recurring appointments)?  If so and they are not having the problem, you may want to see what the differences are in their methods for handling the appointment.  I think that it may have something to do with the calendar being shared and modified by multiple persons.
maybe a stupid question but have you deleted the complete entry from the calendar | closed outlook | and open outlook to recreate it

or a scanpst.exe to repair the pst
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/scanpst.htm
none of the users are using OST chaching.  I have tried upgrading to Outlook 2003 and putting them in Cache mode.  What happense then is the appointment does not appear in the calendar but it is still there if you go to add a new appointment where the one causing a problem was it says that the new appointment conflicts with another.  So it is not visible but it is still there makes me think that it is corrupted.  But to happen to 3 seperate users with no relationship they are in seperate offices.  I also think it may have somthing to do with the appointments being modified by the secratary but this process has worked for years.  We have some users that use this process and are having no problems.  They are not experiencing any issues and there is no difference between setups.  

It is not possible to delete the entry from the calendar, as soon as you left or right click on the appointment it the program returns the error "Cannot read an instance of this recurring appointment. Close any open appointments and try again or recreate appointment"

I am going to try the scanpst.exe as soon as I can get a hold of one of the users.
even if you try to display the calendar in a table view and filter based on recurring appointments then delete, sorry for asking
No it still crashes outlook
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spikeworld

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I will try that if you don't mind me asking do you have any idea what brought it on.  Are you using exchange 2003 or have you recently upgraded.  I have not heard of anyone else with this issue.
exchange 2003 upgraded.. dunno what caused it..
Hello,

I have exactly the same problem with one user, she has two different recurring appointments which say "Cannot read one instance of this recurring appointment. Close any open appointments and try again or recreate appointment".

The solution above is all well and good for an appointment with an end date but if no end date is set to the recurrence then what do I do, I've sat there for ten minutes with my finger on the enter key and it just keeps on going deleting (or so it says above, not seen it actually delete one) the items.

Help please!  Thanks.

Rob.
Sorry, ps. Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003 installed on Windows XP Pro SP1a workstations and Windows 2000 server installed SP4.

Thanks,

Rob.
I have the same problem with one of my clients that i just installed a new SBS 2003 server, with clients running W2K Pro and Office 2000. HELP, this is the only site that I have seen anyone talking about this issue. Any help would be great!

Thanks,

Trip
I have the same problem also. I access Exchange 2003 by the Outlook object model in VB6.
Before migrating to Exchange 2003 there was no problem at all.
The problem ("Cannot read one instance of this recurring appointment. Close any open appointments and try again or recreate appointment") seems to occur only on reccuring appointment with an exception in the serie. The 'error' behavior doesn't seems to be popping up on a constant base. Sometimes the 'error' does not show up at all.

Recreating the appointments solved the problem for now. We started with editting the recurring appointment: Give them a end date one week in the past from the current date (just to preserve the recurring exception) and start a new recurring appointment.

Any ideas to solve this problem without edit the appointments would be very nice.
Thanks
Frans
After some research the next solution worked for use:

look at this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=830836

Frans
If you have Outlook Web Acess installed on the server, have the user log in to their calendar through OWA delete the recurring entry, get out of OWA and thenget back in to Outlook, should be ok from there (you can then recreate the item or whatever you need to do)