Members of your organization may receive a non-delivery report if your delegate’s mailbox object is removed from Active Directory before you can remove the delegate in Outlook 2003

Consider the following scenario. You add a delegate in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. The delegate's mailbox object is then removed from the Active Directory directory service before you can remove the delegate in Outlook 2003. When this occurs, members of your organization may receive a non-delivery report (NDR) when they try to invite you to a meeting or when they respond to your meeting request.

How to obtain the hotfix

This issue is fixed in the Outlook 2003 Hotfix Package that is dated December 19, 2005. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
Before you apply the hotfix, the deleted delegate information is hidden. After you apply the hotfix, the deleted delegate information will be visible as a legacy distinguished name (DN) on the Delegates tab in Outlook so that the information can be removed manually.

To work around this issue, use one of the following methods, depending on your situation.

Method 1: Remove the delegate in Outlook 2003 before the delegate is removed from Active Directory

To remove a delegate in Outlook 2003, follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. Click the Delegates tab.
3. Click the delegate that you want to remove, and then click Remove.
4. Click OK to close the Options dialog box.

Note After the delegate has been removed from Outlook 2003, the delegate's rule is removed. Then, the delegate can be removed from Active Directory.

Method 2: Run the /cleanrules switch

To run the /cleanrules switch, follow these steps:

1. Make a note of any current rules that you want to re-create. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. Start Outlook.
   2. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
   3. Make a note of any current rules.
2. Determine the location of the Outlook.exe file. The following is the default path of the Outlook.exe file:
   C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Outlook.exe
3. Run the Outlook /cleanrules switch 1. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. Click Start, click Run, and then type the following:
      "path of the Outlook.exe file" /cleanrules
      For example, if the Outlook.exe file is in the default location, the command will look similar to the following:
      "c:\program files\microsoft office\office11\outlook.exe" /cleanrules
   2. Click OK.

Outlook starts, and the rules are cleared from the rules and alerts.

For more information about Outlook 2003 command-line switches, click Microsoft Office Outlook Help on the Help menu, type switches in the Search for box in the Assistance pane, and then click Start searching to view the topic.

For more information about the MFCMapi utility, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: