ITPIP
asked on
Outlook 2007 Shared Calendars disappearing
So I have been running into this issue every so often but now it happens almost everyday on one of my users computers.
Here is the problem. The user is using Outlook 2007 and has multiple calendars open that she views at different times during the day. 3 are public folder calendars that have been added to favorites that are shared among most of the users in the office. Two others are shared calendars of two other users that she needs to view every so often.
Off and on over the past few months we have had an issue where this user will go click on the calendars button on the left and will find that all or most of her shared and public favorited calendars are not listed. She can go back and manually add them but it has become incredibly annoying this past week because it seems to happen every day now.
I have found two solutions that have only temporarily fixed this issue. One is to launch outlook with the /resetnavpan switch. This does restore the calendars to the list but a day later they will be lost again.
The next option was to rename the .xml file in the appdata folder for Outlook and reopen outlook to have it create a new one. This does work but again only temporarily. I was using the instructions found on the following link to do this: http://blog.palehorse.net/2007/09/26/outlook-ate-my-favorite-shortcuts/
One thing I will note about the second solution was that it didn't exactly follow that I had to re-add all of my favorites after renaming the .xml file. Instead all the shared calendars just reappeared after renaming and launching Outlook 2007. Not exactly what the instructions from that link had described.
I have also seen solutions that mention installing SP1 if not already installed. I am running on SP2 right now so I have already covered that idea.
I have been searching for a solution for this but I haven't found the right one yet. Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
Here is the problem. The user is using Outlook 2007 and has multiple calendars open that she views at different times during the day. 3 are public folder calendars that have been added to favorites that are shared among most of the users in the office. Two others are shared calendars of two other users that she needs to view every so often.
Off and on over the past few months we have had an issue where this user will go click on the calendars button on the left and will find that all or most of her shared and public favorited calendars are not listed. She can go back and manually add them but it has become incredibly annoying this past week because it seems to happen every day now.
I have found two solutions that have only temporarily fixed this issue. One is to launch outlook with the /resetnavpan switch. This does restore the calendars to the list but a day later they will be lost again.
The next option was to rename the .xml file in the appdata folder for Outlook and reopen outlook to have it create a new one. This does work but again only temporarily. I was using the instructions found on the following link to do this: http://blog.palehorse.net/2007/09/26/outlook-ate-my-favorite-shortcuts/
One thing I will note about the second solution was that it didn't exactly follow that I had to re-add all of my favorites after renaming the .xml file. Instead all the shared calendars just reappeared after renaming and launching Outlook 2007. Not exactly what the instructions from that link had described.
I have also seen solutions that mention installing SP1 if not already installed. I am running on SP2 right now so I have already covered that idea.
I have been searching for a solution for this but I haven't found the right one yet. Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
Have you tried deleting the Outlook profile and rebuilding a new profile?
There are some office updates on the Microsoft website, I would advise getting all the latest updates you can find. Also SP3 is the latest and greatest for XP. It's a risk to not have it. I would upgrade immediately. This may just fix your issues.
ASKER
I am running Vista Business SP1 and I do not see any new updates to Office that I don't already have installed. Sorry should have clarified that I was talking about SP2 for Outlook and not XP.
My next step was to rebuild the outlook profile but I wanted to see if anyone else had any other ideas before I did that.
I will give the profile rebuild a try and post back with results.
Thanks.
My next step was to rebuild the outlook profile but I wanted to see if anyone else had any other ideas before I did that.
I will give the profile rebuild a try and post back with results.
Thanks.
ASKER
I recreated the outlook profile and that did work for awhile but the problem has returned. Just found yesterday that the shared calendars both from public folders and individual users calendars disappeared from this users calendar's section. I re-added one of the public calendars and that disappeared sometime between now and yesterday afternoon.
Anyone have any other ideas?
Anyone have any other ideas?
ITPIP
a) I have a question
Can you view these calendars in OWA ?
Do these calendars persist in OWA - or they keep disappearing there too ?
I am not sure if you have done this, but let me know if you can try this over a day - and after multiple shutdown / restarts.
b) Are these shared calendars configured the same way for other users ? or is it for this particular user.
Can you set up a test user with same calendars and see if you can reproduce the problem.
I am trying to isolate what might be causing the problem.
thanks
sunny
a) I have a question
Can you view these calendars in OWA ?
Do these calendars persist in OWA - or they keep disappearing there too ?
I am not sure if you have done this, but let me know if you can try this over a day - and after multiple shutdown / restarts.
b) Are these shared calendars configured the same way for other users ? or is it for this particular user.
Can you set up a test user with same calendars and see if you can reproduce the problem.
I am trying to isolate what might be causing the problem.
thanks
sunny
As a continuation of sunnyc7:
c) Is the Exchange server restarted from the time it's added to when it disappears regardless if Outlook is restarted?
c) Is the Exchange server restarted from the time it's added to when it disappears regardless if Outlook is restarted?
ASKER
Thanks for the responses. I will try and answer your questions the best I can.
Regarding OWA I wasn't aware you could setup your calendars section to have shared calendars in OWA. I can view the office calendar but it is not part of the calendar "view" I just have to navigate to them. And as far as the two user calendars that were disappearing they do not show up in the calendars section of OWA so there isn't really a comparison to make between OWA and Outlook. I wasn't aware you could setup shared calendars in OWA either so I am a little confused by this question. Please let me know if I am missing something there.
This users calendars view is setup almost exactly the same as another user in the office. They both have the same peoples shared calendars open and they also both have the same public folder calendar open. I actually have looked at that before too but all I can tell is that one user does have this problem and one doesn't and they have the same calendars open.
One thing that is different about this user than about 80% of my other users is they have two computers. They have one in the office and one at home. Both connect to exchange using Outlook 2007 and both have the same calendars listed. The one at home doesn't loose its calendars though. The one from home is connecting via secure VPN connection. My other multi computer users don't have this issue though so I can't say that this problem is there because they use two computers either although something about that might be causing this issue.
In answer to your question digitap I have maybe restarted my exchange server twice since I first started dealing with this problem and the problem occurs probably 2 to 3 times a week, except after the profile rebulid, it actually went away for two weeks after that. I have been dealing with this problem for more than two months so I haven't seen any correlation between an Exchange server restart and the disappearing calendars though. For example, I will go in and re-add the calendars and the next day they are gone and I haven't even logged into the exchange server since then let alone it restarting. I will pay more attention the next time I restart just to make sure.
One thing I tried last week was running a repair on the office install. The user hasn't been in the office since I tried this so I am not sure of the results but I will be watching closely to see if this helped.
If you need more information let me know. I appreciate the help.
Regarding OWA I wasn't aware you could setup your calendars section to have shared calendars in OWA. I can view the office calendar but it is not part of the calendar "view" I just have to navigate to them. And as far as the two user calendars that were disappearing they do not show up in the calendars section of OWA so there isn't really a comparison to make between OWA and Outlook. I wasn't aware you could setup shared calendars in OWA either so I am a little confused by this question. Please let me know if I am missing something there.
This users calendars view is setup almost exactly the same as another user in the office. They both have the same peoples shared calendars open and they also both have the same public folder calendar open. I actually have looked at that before too but all I can tell is that one user does have this problem and one doesn't and they have the same calendars open.
One thing that is different about this user than about 80% of my other users is they have two computers. They have one in the office and one at home. Both connect to exchange using Outlook 2007 and both have the same calendars listed. The one at home doesn't loose its calendars though. The one from home is connecting via secure VPN connection. My other multi computer users don't have this issue though so I can't say that this problem is there because they use two computers either although something about that might be causing this issue.
In answer to your question digitap I have maybe restarted my exchange server twice since I first started dealing with this problem and the problem occurs probably 2 to 3 times a week, except after the profile rebulid, it actually went away for two weeks after that. I have been dealing with this problem for more than two months so I haven't seen any correlation between an Exchange server restart and the disappearing calendars though. For example, I will go in and re-add the calendars and the next day they are gone and I haven't even logged into the exchange server since then let alone it restarting. I will pay more attention the next time I restart just to make sure.
One thing I tried last week was running a repair on the office install. The user hasn't been in the office since I tried this so I am not sure of the results but I will be watching closely to see if this helped.
If you need more information let me know. I appreciate the help.
a) How to open shared calendar in OWA - Exchange 2003
on IE address bar
if userA is sharing with userB
on OWA
Login using userA
then on address bar type this
https://mail.domain.com/exchange/userB/calendar
and same for userC and others.
See if you can access it over OWA
on IE address bar
if userA is sharing with userB
on OWA
Login using userA
then on address bar type this
https://mail.domain.com/exchange/userB/calendar
and same for userC and others.
See if you can access it over OWA
ASKER
I apologize for not getting back to you about this. I actually thought I had this problem fixed. After the repair the problem did not resurface till a couple weeks later.
I did try the OWA test and it worked without a problem.
The biggest problem is the Public folder calendar disappearing. The user calendars are a problem, they just aren't quite as impotant.
What I have noticed after doing the repair is that if you go to the favorites section while in the Folder List view you will still see the missing calendars in there. So they are still in favorites but they don't appear in the calendars section of outlook.
I have removed them and re-added them to favorites and this didn't help the problem either. We are now back to it happening about once or twice a week.
Thanks for the help.
I did try the OWA test and it worked without a problem.
The biggest problem is the Public folder calendar disappearing. The user calendars are a problem, they just aren't quite as impotant.
What I have noticed after doing the repair is that if you go to the favorites section while in the Folder List view you will still see the missing calendars in there. So they are still in favorites but they don't appear in the calendars section of outlook.
I have removed them and re-added them to favorites and this didn't help the problem either. We are now back to it happening about once or twice a week.
Thanks for the help.
So they are still in favorites but they don't appear in the calendars section of outlook.
>> If they are in favorites, when you click on the calendar section - the public folder calendar will be listed with a check box next to it.
Please check that check box.
thanks
>> If they are in favorites, when you click on the calendar section - the public folder calendar will be listed with a check box next to it.
Please check that check box.
thanks
ASKER
Well I am back again. I was out on travel till just this Monday and had not checked back on this question till today.
That box has been checked and the public calendar appears but this isn't the problem. The problem is that the calendar listed in the calendar section, checkbox and all, disappears from the calendar list at what appears to be random times.
To add it back you constantly have to go back to the public folder listing in the folder list section of Outlook, then to the favorites section and then open that calendar back up. Once you do that you go back to the calendar section and it is listed with a checkbox but after some random interval it will disappear from that list and we will have to re-add by following the same process.
That box has been checked and the public calendar appears but this isn't the problem. The problem is that the calendar listed in the calendar section, checkbox and all, disappears from the calendar list at what appears to be random times.
To add it back you constantly have to go back to the public folder listing in the folder list section of Outlook, then to the favorites section and then open that calendar back up. Once you do that you go back to the calendar section and it is listed with a checkbox but after some random interval it will disappear from that list and we will have to re-add by following the same process.
Check this
http://blog.palehorse.net/2007/09/26/outlook-ate-my-favorite-shortcuts/
Close outlook
Go here
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Applic
rename outlook.xml to outlook-old.xml
open outlook
try to re add the calendar and monitor it for a few days
http://blog.palehorse.net/2007/09/26/outlook-ate-my-favorite-shortcuts/
Close outlook
Go here
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Applic
rename outlook.xml to outlook-old.xml
open outlook
try to re add the calendar and monitor it for a few days
ASKER
Sorry I have tried that solution already without any success. I know this problem has been open for awhile but I did mention that solution in my original post.
Thanks for the effort though.
Thanks for the effort though.
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ASKER
I had read about those but I had not tried opening outlook that way. I just launched with /cleanprofile. We will see if that makes a difference. Since the problem is so intermittent I will just keep checking back to see if the problem resurfaces.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks for the suggestion.
ITPIP is the issue still open ?
Please advise.
Please advise.
ASKER
Since last posting I haven't been informed that the issue has reoccured. It looks like opening Outlook with /cleanprofile might have worked. The problem was pretty intermittent but it has been long enough without hearing anything that I feel like it might have been solved. The points are yours sunny. Thanks for the help.
ASKER
outlook /cleanprofile worked.
Thanks.
Thanks.