Microsoft Outlook Bugs



I used to work with Outlook all day at Plaxo. I worked on our Add-in for all the different versions of Outlook and Outlook Express. Every now I will come across something interesting that might be beneficial to know for other people.


The Missing Contacts Pane in Outlook Express



In all Outlook Express versions, if you go over a certain number of contacts in your address book, the contacts pane on the lower left will just disappear.

Here is a link to an article on the net describing this issue.


The Missing Email or Preview Pane Problem on Outlook XP



In all Outlook versions, there is a view called the 'Preview Pane' which allows you to see contents of an email as you select different messages in the list view. In all Outlook versions, the designers at Microsoft have changed the design of that component.

  • Outlook 2000 - Preview pane is not interactive
  • Outlook 2002/XP - Preview pane is interactive
  • Outlook 2003 - Preview pane is interactive, but using new code

    In Outlook XP, I have found an interesting bug that exists for emails received with long Cc: lines. If such an email is received, and the user clicks on one of the Cc addresses, it will cause the 'Preview Pane' header (which shows To, From, Subject, and the Cc) to irreversably grow. This will cause the email content to get pushed down and possibly out of view. The size of this growth depends on how many entries are in the Cc: line.

    I discovered the bug when working on a problem at Plaxo that caused this bug to happen 10 times faster, and I came up with a workaround in Plaxo that fixes the bug within Outlook.

    I checked the various sites and there is no service pack that fixes this.

    Pre Cc: Click


    Post Cc: Click