Outlook 2003 archive feature doesn't work

R

Ryan

The archive feature of Outlook 2003 isn't working properly for me. After
running an AutoArchive, many or all of the messages in my mail folders
remain. I tried manually archiving a particular folder to no avail. I even
tried setting the "older than" date to a date in the future and all of the
messages stayd in place. None of the messages in this folder had been
modified in any way since early 2004.
 
N

neo [mvp outlook]

The archive engine looks at several properties to determine if an item is
eligible for archiving. These properties are Sent Date, Received Date, Last
Modified Date, and the to do not archive bit. Any date that is empty/null
will be treated as 1/1/4501 and never be eligible for archiving.
 
R

Ryan

Do the messages need to have *all* of the properties you mention, or is one
sufficient? Outlook is able to arrange the messages by date in the
"Received" column, it seems that this should map to the Received property.
Choosing one message at random, it has several "Received" headers with the
correct date as well as the "Date" header. (Interestingly, this message was
actually sent from Microsoft, so I'm pretty sure Outlook was the sending
program as well!)

I also tried toggling the "Include items with Do Not Archive set" flag in
the archive dialog--that didn't change the behavior. It seems that I am
unable to archive up to half (or more) of the messages I've received--that
seems like far too many.

Thanks for you help,

Ryan
 
N

neo [mvp outlook]

yes, need to have all 3 date fields. the do not archive bit is looked at
but can be null/empty.
 
R

Ryan

Thanks for the information, neo. Out of curiostiy, do you know how Outlook
actually assings these properties? I've looked at the headers for a message
that was nabbed by the archive action and one that was missed and I frankly
can't see a difference--both have the Received and Date headers, as well as
the X-Received header (I'm not sure what that one actually is).

Ryan
 
N

neo [mvp outlook]

Sent date is stamped by sending client/server

Received date is computed from the internet header

Last Modified date is whenever something happens that changes the message
(e.g. moving it from folder a to folder b would trigger the updating of this
field.) Since the above 2 are easy to see, this one requires the user to
add it to the view to see it. Try right clicking on a column in a folder
and select Field Chooser. Look for "Modified" under All Mail Fields.

FWIW, once a message is converted from MIME (internet) to Binary
(Exchange/Outlook storage), the internet header isn't looked at.
 
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