Outlook 2007 improvements in the February 2009 cumulative update

Update information

To download the updates for Outlook, see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

961752 Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook.msp): February 24, 2009


For full Outlook functionality, you can install the Cumulative Update package that is associated with the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

967688 Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook-en-us.msp): February 24, 2009

Overview

Outlook 2007 SP2 performance

Outlook 2007 SP2 calendaring

Because having the same data everywhere is foundational to a reliable calendar, it is no surprise that much of our work focused heavily on Cached Exchange synchronization. We improved the synchronization engine so Outlook automatically resolves conflicting edits without generating alternative copies of the items in the Conflicts folder. We have also turned on the conflict resolution engine for delegates who cache their manager's calendar. By focusing heavily on synchronization, we have mostly eliminated issues that caused problems such as the following:

• Duplicate copies of a meeting
  

• Organizer have a different meeting version than attendees

• Disappearing meetings

• 
  Reappearing meetings (usually exceptions)
  

• Meeting that are removed from the organizer but still remain on attendee calendars
  

Individual bugs that are fixed

The following fixes are included in the February Cumulative Update:

• If you click Remove from Calendar for a canceled instance of a recurring meeting, the whole series is deleted.
  
  

• Synchronization conflict resolution frequently causes Exchange server conflict items.
  
  

• When you close an e-mail message, Outlook 2007 crashes.
  
  

• Attendees can cancel meetings on behalf of organizers in Outlook 2007.
  
  

• Synchronization with SharePoint could generate error logs even when logging is not turned on.
  
  

• After a series update, if an instance is moved to previously occupied timeslots, attendees may lose an instance.
  
  

• Assume the following scenario:

  • An organizer sends a recurring meeting.
    

  • The organizer moves the instance to a different day.
    

  • Attendees accept the series and the update.
    

  • An attendee proposes a new time.
    

  • The organizer accepts the new time proposal and then sends the update to all attendees.
    

  In this scenario, the meeting time reverts to the original time that was proposed.
  
  

• A local change to a meeting item is not synchronized to the server. Sometimes, the meeting disappears and is moved to the local failure folder.
  
  

• When multiple processes are accessing the same data file by using MAPI, the Outlook UI does not receive the highest priority access to data files.
  
  

• A reminder cannot be dismissed on a corrupted meeting.
  
  

• When you build information to display new mail notification alerts, Outlook may periodically become unresponsive.
  
  
  

• If a meeting is corrupted, an attendee becomes the organizer and can cancel the meeting.
  
  

• After you add many feeds, Outlook crashes.
  
  

• If you act on meeting requests before the Calendar folder is synchronized, the meeting response states are reverted. For example, the declined meetings come back. Or, meetings are duplicated.
  
  

• If you update the status bar during Outlook synchronization or during a folder switch, Outlook becomes unresponsive.
  
  

• When Outlook is synchronizing with multiple RSS feeds, Outlook crashes.
  
  

• When you import lots of RSS feeds from an Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) file, the CPU usage of Outlook is very high.
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Some users may not change the recipient list when they reply to all recipients on a digital rights management (DRM) protected item in the Sent Items folder.
  
  

• When you remove an attendee from a recurring series that has an updated instance, the attendee is not removed from the updated instance.
  
  

• More logging capabilities are added when logging is turned on. This can help the support team investigate calendaring issues.
  
  

• Downloading a large message blocks the user interface.
  
  

• A solution is developed to process internal change notifications in the background. This enables the user interface to be more responsive to user input when significant background processing occurs, such as synchronization or indexing.
  
  

• When you download CSS definitions while Outlook displays a message, the user interface becomes unresponsive.
  
  

• Inefficient processing occurs during folder switch operations. Sometimes, the user interface becomes unresponsive.
  
  

• When you work in Outlook 2007, and you enable the Show in Groups option, folder switching becomes slow, and a performance decrease occurs.
  
  

• Users cannot select which pages to print of a message item.
  
  

• Three or more processes access a MAPI store. If one process stops unexpectedly, Outlook 2007 becomes unresponsive.
  
  

• You open an instance of a recurring series and edit it as an organizer. When you receive a response from a user for the series, your changes are saved without your interaction.
  
  

• Licensing validation can cause Outlook 2007 to become unresponsive when it first starts after you install or upgrade Outlook.
  
  

• If the Mailto hyperlink contains international characters, the hyperlink does not work.
  
  

• If the store providers are disconnected early, the Outlook.exe process becomes unresponsive for a very long time.
  
  

• The synchronization between Outlook 2007 and a SharePoint document library has a URL size limitation of 260 characters.
  
  

• Assume the following scenario:

  • You run a search in an Outlook 2007 folder.
    

  • You run the search in All Mail Items.
    

  • You click the show all results bar.

  In this scenario, the bar does not disappear.
  
  

• The synchronization between a calendar on a SharePoint Web site and Outlook causes Outlook to become unresponsive.
  
  

• Assume the following scenario:

  • You run a search in an Outlook 2007 folder.
    

  • You run the search in All Mail Items.
    

  • You click the show all results bar.

  In this scenario, a timing issue occurs, and nothing is returned.
  
  

• If a distribution list (DL) that includes a meeting organizer is removed from the meeting, the organizer receives a cancellation. The organizer can remove the meeting without sending a cancellation. Additionally, a meeting that does not have an organizer cannot be updated or canceled.
  
  

• When Outlook 2007 restarts, it does not resend the AutoDiscover counter. The counter may not run for at least six hours.
  
  

• When you save an Outlook 2007 message, it takes a long time. This problem occurs when you install InfoPath on your computer.
  
  

• The Offline Address Book download starts immediately at startup. A change was made to start the download after initial mail synchronization for improved responsiveness.
  
  

• When you roam SharePoint lists to a new Outlook profile, Outlook keeps adding duplicates of personal folders.
  
  

• If a RSS feed item download is interrupted, the RSS feed items that are deleted by users reappear.
  
  

• If a distribution list is part of the attendee's list, an attendee receives a cancellation unexpectedly. This problem occurs when the Send updates only to added or deleted attendees option is enabled.
  
  

• When you copy lots of items in the same store, it takes a long time. This problem occurs when you have InfoPath installed on your computer.
  
  

• When you issue a query to check the Out of Office settings on an Exchange server, Outlook becomes unresponsive immediately.
  
  

• Opening mail items in a window or reading mail items in the reading pane may be slow if many messages are already open in other windows.
  
  

• POP servers should download the newest mail first instead of the oldest mail.
  
  

• Folder sort indexes are not saved in certain cases. This causes Outlook to recompute the index for each folder switch.
  
  

• A reminder dismissal occurs as a background task. This change instantly restores UI responsiveness after a reminder.
  
  

• A meeting that is copied from a shared calendar does not indicate that it is a copy. SP2 adds "Copy:" to the subject line.
  
  

• Moving lots of items causes the UI to pause for a long time and high CPU usage to occur.
  
  

• Date sorting is not efficient.
  
  

• AutoDiscover in Outlook fails if the user domain names are long.
  
  

• When you close an item, the clipboard is cleared unnecessarily. Outlook becomes unresponsive when the clipboard content was retrieved from slow applications or remote applications, such as a Terminal Services session.
  
  

• Duplicate calendar entries, duplicate attendees, old-style conflicts because of using more than one client or running against Exchange Server 2007 or later.
  
  

• Exceptions to a recurring meeting show duplicate attendees.
  
  

• The Outlook calendar sometimes displays appointments and meetings in black text on a black background when you use high contrast mode.
  
  

• Sometimes an update is sent to all attendees when you wanted to send an update only to added or updated attendees.
  
  

• You receive a reminder for a canceled meeting, even though the meeting request was declined.
  
  

• When you update the unread counts, Outlook becomes unresponsive. Additionally, the unread counts have been removed completely on operating systems, such as Windows Vista, that do not support Fast User Switching per user unread counts.
  
  

• IMAP accounts become unresponsive during a Send/Receive operation.
  
  

• Outlook 2007 becomes unresponsive shortly after startup because Outlook issues a remote procedure call (RPC) to the Exchange directory server.
  
  

• When you run All Mail Items searches across multiple stores in which a result set can be returned, a blank view is substituted for the result set.
  

• When you double-click an attachment, Outlook 2007 becomes unresponsive. This problem occurs when other applications on the system are not responding.
  
  

• When you right-click an item, the whole item is loaded into memory more frequently than necessary.
  
  

• Inefficient processing occurs in a loop during intermittent network connectivity.
  
  

• Unnecessary disk reads are performed for every time that a custom form icon is rendered.
  
  

• Administrators cannot use Group Policy settings to block the export of contacts from the global address list (GAL).
  
  

• When you try to use the PropertyAccessor interface on a Recipient object to determine the Recipient flags, an error is returned.
  
  

• Items in search folders sometimes disappear and do not reappear.
  
  

• Outlook becomes unresponsive when you open an Information Rights Management (IRM) protected message.
  
  

• After you discard some changes to a meeting that you own, an update for that meeting may be sent out when you close Outlook.
  
  

• Data file checks occur too frequently. Also, data file checks to checkpoint and resume from a previous session is enabled.
  
  

• If the organizer of a meeting is a member of an external distribution list and sends a meeting request to that external distribution list, the organizer becomes an attendee.
  
  

• Bursts of write operations are flushed to the disk too frequently. This causes frequent pauses, and the UI becomes unresponsive.
  
  

• Outlook does not add users to the publishing license when you use Reply to All from the Sent Items folder for new recipients.
  
  

• Outlook ignores the IRM template. Therefore, a new license must be obtained every time that a protected message is opened.
  
  

• If you change the file name when you save a file from an Outlook attachment, the extension is lost.
  
  

• Outlook resets all favorite mail folders during a startup after a crash.
  
  

• User-created add-in handlers for shortcut delete events ignore cancel commands, and the shortcut is deleted.
  
  

• Form regions are sized to have 0 height or width when they are loaded. After the form regions are loaded, they are invisible.
  
  

• The To-Do bar does not keep a minimized setting correctly, depending on each Outlook module.
  
  

• IMAP accounts start slowly.
  
  

• An entry for a Calendar or Contacts folder is duplicated in the Calendar or Contacts list, respectively. Only one of the duplicated links for a folder will work.
  
  

• The following PstNullFreeOnClose registry data is not used by Outlook:
  
  

  Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\PST
  
  DWORD: PstNullFreeOnClose
  
  Value: 1
  
  Therefore, deleted data in your .ost or .pst file is not overwritten when you exit Outlook.
  
  
  For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  
  

  245776 New Outlook 2000 feature removes deleted data from .pst and .ost files
  
  Please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base for additional details on this registry value. 245776 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;245776
  
  

• When you share a folder with a delegate, the delegate sees informational meeting updates for you as regular updates.
  
  

• You receive the Application object instead of the Namespace object when you try to obtain the parent from an Accounts object.
  
  

• Voice mail items display the sender's name in non-Unicode fonts.
  
  

• The policy setting that enables or disables the RSS feeds synchronization between Internet Explorer 7 and Outlook does not prevent prompts.
  
  

• RSS items are sometimes duplicated.
  
  

• Outlook stops indexing mounted PSTs when a Classic Online mode account is used.
  
  

• When you process client-side rules, such as moving mail to a PST, frequent pauses occur, or Outlook becomes unresponsive during synchronization.
  
  

• A reminder cannot be dismissed or made to snooze. Therefore, a restart of Outlook may be required to dismiss the reminder or make the reminder snooze.
  
  

• The new mail notification window unnecessarily reloads the delivered messages to check for additional and rarely used properties.
  
  

• When you click a hyperlink, the user interface becomes unresponsive during a check of the Internet proxy server settings. These checks now occur after you click the hyperlink and in the background. Therefore, responsiveness is immediately restored to the UI.
  
  

• When you enter double quotation marks in the Sent To field in a search folder, Outlook crashes.
  
  

• RSS feeds become dormant and do not reactivate.
  
  

• When the indexing process encounters problems, many event logs are generated, and CPU usage increases.
  
  

• Outlook crashes when you create a message view.
  
  

• Outlook re-adds itself to Indexing Options in Control Panel as a searched scope after you deselect it.
  
  

• Server-relative links in SharePoint RSS feeds do not work in Outlook.
  
  

• Outlook cannot search for items while in classic offline mode.
  
  

• Outlook with Windows Search 4 stops indexing items if a PST is renamed in the Account Settings dialog box.
  
  

• Unnecessary registry queries for ClearType checks occur during some UI drawing operations.
  
  

• When you connect to an Exchange server over the Internet (RPC/HTTP) from a Windows Vista-based computer, you are repeatedly prompted for your credentials.
  
  

• Free/busy shows as tentative when a new meeting arrives that coincides with a meeting on your calendar that is busy.
  
  

• Manager's calendar is not updated with content that the delegate has added or changed in the meeting.
  
  

• You are repeatedly prompted for credentials when you try to connect withExchange Server 2003 using RPC/HTTP on a Windows Vista client and you are using NTLM authentication.
  
  
  
  

Known issues

• .cnt, .osd, .vbp, and .hpj file attachments were added to the Outlook blocked extension list. For more information, see Outlook's previously blocked extensions.
  

• Items in the mail message list shift temporarily while you are running an All Mail Item search in Online Mode.

• Using Outlook 2007 SP2 together with the Outlook Live Connector 12.1 may cause duplicate entries in the Calendar and in Contacts unless all clients that are connected to the account are upgraded to SP2.