Outlook/Exchange 2003 disappearing meetings

[hottie_parms]

Hi there,

I'm the tech support for a group of users in an Exchange/Outlook 2003 environment. I do not manage the Exchange server. Some of them are experiencing the following problem.

The user has a bunch of recurring meetings scheduled. Occasionally, an instance of that meeting will disappear from her Calendar, but not the calendar of the attendees. She is the organizer of these meetings. She sometimes updates the meetings with agenda items and other information, which I heard can cause this sort of problem to happen sometimes, however I was hoping to find some sort of work-around, apart from having her create new meetings.

Blackberries are involved, however they are set so that "Mailbox wins" and theoretically should not remove anything off of the Exchange server.

Any ideas? Google and Microsoft aren't being much help for me.

 

[boonality]

this could be a multitude of issues. Even working together on occasion. Are you up to the latest patch level with windows/exchange? There are alot of hotfixes for appointment/public folder related problems. How big is your pub.edb database? Do you have your server configured to complete online maintenance passes weekly? Do you have public folder replication? If so, between how many servers?

There's a billion things to look at. When was the last time an offline defrag was done? This generally is NOT recommended but may be necessary depending on the problem.

 

[Onus]

Starting Outlook with the /cleanfreebusy option may help. Use Start and Run, then browse to where Outlook.exe lives (typically "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE"). Add the /cleanfreebusy switch at the end of the command line, after the final " and a space.
Note that it may take 15 minutes or so for freebusy information to be updated across all clients.
Edit: Otherwise, the Exchange administrators may be able to tell what is happening. Provide them with as much relevant detail as possible, including the userID, and the name, date and time of the meeting.

 

[hottie_parms]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I unfortunately have zero access to the servers, thanks to a certain level of bureaucracy within the larger organization I work in. I have a support ticket open with them, but they take time to get back to me.

Any suggestions for me to try on the client-side while I wait to hear back from the server admins?

 

[boonality]

^ +1

That's excellent information. There are quite a few outlook "command line switches" that can be used. Several of which focus around the appointments and calendar items.

 

[hottie_parms]

Starting Outlook with the /cleanfreebusy option may help.

Thanks! I'll give this a shot, although I think recreating the .ost file in effect does that, right?

The problem is intermittent, so it's hard to tell if any particular solution works until a couple of days later sometimes.

 

[boonality]

http/office.microsoft.com/assistance/hfws.aspx?AssetID=HP010031101033&CTT=1&Origin=EC010229981033&QueryID=_pK48V5fl

The link to the different switches available for troubleshooting outlook.