Printing Drafts in Outlook 2007 - Showing Date sent

Thanks DrUltima,

I'll give it a day or two to see if anyone has any ideas. You may understand that users like automation and any extra clicking or steps generally causes resistance.

In office 2003, when you print a Draft email, there is no SENT: field on a printed draft. When you send the email and print the very same email the sent: field appears on a printout. This makes it easy to differentiate between the two.

I don't understand why Office 2007 has to attach the sent field on a draft, when it hasnt even been sent. It pulls the date of creation as the sent date and time on a draft.

I don't know either.  Sometimes Microsoft seems to lose functionality on upgrades, but that is a very different topic of discussion.  One thing you might do administratively is set up a "Drafts" template on your print server...  That way your users can just click the appropriate template rather than changing the settings themselves each time they print.  I know that users want total automation.  I have written more than one really odd PowerShell script to address such requests.

BlueDevilFan,

These are messages that are sitting in their drafts folder that have NOT been sent to anyone. Yet they still have a sent line when printed. Unless this is a unique problem to us, I have tested this on several machines here with the same results (All office 2007. Office 2003 does not add the sent field on unsent drafts.)

As an example:
I create a new email and save it. (Not sending it) It shows up in the drafts folder. I open the folder, and select it. Then File-> Print Preview.

I see the Sent line, even though the email was not sent. (Image Attached)
The same sent line appears on the printed page.

We are using exchange, so perhaps it was sent to the exchange server, if that is what you are suggesting, but it is not sent to the addressee on the email, and simply sitting saved in drafts.

The email in my image was created by me yesterday and it seems to have listed the created date and time. It is still in my drafts.

I can run the "draft style" option by them to see what they have to say about it.

Also, thank you DrUltima for your comments.

I tested before posting by creating a message, saving it to Drafts, and then printing.  My print does not include the Sent line.  Here's what I see.  AIn my experience an item can't have a sent date unless it's actually been mailed.  It's easy to test.  Create a message, save it to Drafts, then print.

Yes, I did that in my test yesterday and just did it again. Still says sent.
Like I said... Any machine here with office 2003 does not show sent. Any machine here with office 2007 does show sent. It was not sent. The email goes nowhere. Just sits in drafts folder. Its been tested on multiple machines.

Just tested it again on 3 other machines by our other techs here. Same result.

Tried with cached exchange mode, and without. SMS deployed installs, and standalone straight from the CD installs. Windows XP/Vista and Windows 7.

Were using Exchange 2007 with Office 2007 enterprise. Not a retail copy. Not sure if that would make a difference.

Check that you have SP2 installed:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b444bf18-79ea-46c6-8a81-9db49b4ab6e5&displaylang=en

SP2 and all office updates and windows updates are up to date as of this post.

Hrm, something must be making it think that the email was actually sent....

If you select the Email in The Draft Folder
And you view it in your Reading pane on the right
Do you see a grey bar that says it has not been sent yet?
Or does the grey bar also say its been sent on a particular day?

Is this draft created from a form or template at all?

Might also check to see if cached Exchange Mode is on.
Perhaps its making Outlook think its actually been sent...
Check under Tools>Account Settings>Open Users Account Details
Under Exchange Server name, Untick Use cached Exchange Mode.

Might also try closing Outlook and reopening using
Start>Run>Outlook.exe /safe

see if the issue is the same here.

If it doesnt happen in safe mode, its likely there is an Add In causing this issue.

Hi Apache09,

The grey bar says: "This Message has not been sent" on all messages i've been testing.

AH! But an interesting thing just happened.

When I create a draft, and save it to drafts folder, but I don't close the message after I save it, sent does NOT show up when I print. However, when I close the email after I save it, then reopen it and try to print, sent DOES show up.

This is something I had not noticed before. So that means something about closing the email and reopening it is adding that tag.

Opening in safe mode did not change the behaviour.

Sorry I also forgot to add that the email messages we've been testing with were not created by a template, and are just standard messages.

Split up the points a bit since this is more of a workaround then an actual soloution. Extra points to the first person to mention the same workaround another person outlined later in the thread.

Just wanted to add a comment to this call even though it has been closed (but only in my opinion with a workaround).  At my organization we have exactly the same problem as mentioned here.  All PC's fully up to date and this error in fact appeared after the recent record patch day.  One of those updates must have added this functionality as we are absolutely sure it wasn't there before.  As a law firm we rely on the date sent fields a lot and it has been confusing to hand a lawyer a draft email that now includes a sent date when the actual date is the date it was last saved.  The first question the lawyer asks is 'has this been sent'?

A fix would be much better than changing the way the users print draft emails and to be honest i can see now rationality in having this information in a draft email print.  I mean it is actually completely wrong, the email not having been sent at all.  A better fix would be a patch that changed the 'sent' field in the drafts folder to a 'saved' field to avoid confusion

Did anyone actually find  a solution to this problem (apart from the accepted one?)

I am also having this exact same issue with Outlook 2010, so clearly it hasn't been resolved even with a new release.

I also have this situation at a law firm, although I have noticed that logged in with my Outlook profile, the problem doesn't occur. I have checked versions and settings between my Outlook profile and the profile of the user having the problem, but can't seem to find any differences.

I was wondering if it was something to do with the Memo Style, but can't seem to find a way to modify, only create a slightly different version (as mentioned earlier).

Will keep digging and if I find anything, will post it up on here.