Entourage (EWS) Message Status icons missing for Reply and Forward

[bhansen_mn]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Email Client: Exchange This week I started upgrading people in my office to Entourage Web Services, v13.0.3 (machines running 10.6.2 and Office v12.2.3).

The upgrade and re-import of Entourage DB goes fine. The problem is that the Reply and Forward status icons do not sync. So, no one has any idea if messages in their Inbox have been acted upon or not. This is a HUGE deal as I have multiple sales executives who track communication with clients by quickly looking to see if they have replied to a message yet or not.

As I have been troubleshooting this issue with my hosted Exchange provider, and checking the forums, I found this reply to a post on Mactopia from October 2009 for a person having a similar issue as me

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William Smith [MVP]
Oct 28, 2009 8:10pm
Re: Message status icons missing (replied, forwarded, etc) (e-mail address removed) wrote: .....

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  If you're connecting to an Exchange Server 2007 server with sp1, rollup
4, then be sure to use the Web Services Edition of Entourage. It syncs
statuses with the Exchange Server and should preserve them, even when
syncing with Outlook or Entourage on other machines.

Hope this helps!

-----

My experience is that EWS v13.0.3 does not sync status w/Exchange or preserve status. I am not even getting a Reply or Forward indicator on new messages that I Reply to or Forward.

Can anyone confirm that EWS should preserve Reply/Forward status, or even have it work correctly on new messages?

Today I have started the process to downgrade people back to Entourage v12.2.3. Historic Reply/Forward status are still gone, but at least when employees Reply to or Forward a new message an indicator shows up.

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

Can anyone confirm that EWS should preserve Reply/Forward status, or
even have it work correctly on new messages?

I can confirm that message status icons Reply, Forward and Redirect do
sync in Entourage 13.0.3 (Web Services Edition). I'm viewing my Exchange
account at home and see these status icons for messages I acted on at
work earlier in the day.

They do NOT appear in delegate accounts, however. This is a known issue.

No idea why your hosted Exchange account is not syncing these messages.
Can you confirm your service provider has applied all service packs and
roll-ups for Exchange?

I suggest you also ask your question in the
microsoft.public.exchange.admin newsgroup. Someone there may know of a
reason why this is not working for you.

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[bhansen_mn]

Thanks for the confirmation that message Status Indicators work in v13.0.3 Bill!

My hosting provider was also able to setup an Entourage v13.0.3 account this weekend and confirm that Reply and Forward indicators worked for them too.

I'll continue to troubleshoot on this end and see if there is something with our configuration that may be causing the issue.

After my post on Friday I was able to setup a test account, importing an Entourage v12.2.3DB, and have newly Forwarded and Replied messages show indicators. Again, historic message indicators did not appear.

I also took the original problem account and downgraded back to Entourage v12.2.3. All historic Message Indicators showed up again.

 

[lmadden]

I have just started deploying EWS here and the message status worked great up until 1/29/10, then stopped working for me. I've been using EWS for months with no problems. Had another user today who says it is sporadic whether the status arrows show up. I've tried deleting the status, and readding it, to no avail.

Is there any fix for this? It is quite annoying.

Lisa

 

[bhansen_mn]

I have just started deploying EWS here and the message status worked great up until 1/29/10, then stopped working for me. I've been using EWS for months with no problems. Had another user today who says it is sporadic whether the status arrows show up. I've tried deleting the status, and readding it, to no avail.

>
> Is there any fix for this? It is quite annoying.
>
> Lisa

Hello Lisa,

I've been working on EWS v13.0.3 issues since my original post in January. It is frustrating as the problem does seem to be hit or miss. In my experience the status indicators seem to work (better) when the Preview Pane is on the right. When Preview Pane is set to the bottom the status indicator does not always show up. Though, for 2 users now, the &quot;History&quot; of the message correctly shows when a message was forwarded or replied to.

I also have two users where EWS works great. Very tough at this juncture to pinpoint what the real problem is.

 

[lmadden]

I have tried with no preview pane, with it on right and on bottom, no joy. NO status symbol for the blue reply arrow or the orange forward arrow. However, the other status flags do show up fine. Very odd.

For me this started end of January, but for others it started as soon as I loaded EWS on their systems.

It is annoying not to know if you responded to messages or have a way to track this.