Archive for microsoft activesync

Microsoft Outlook – can you please be a little less fucked?

Posted in Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows, Smartphone with tags , , , on January 15, 2010 by dublinranch

Has this happened to you:

  • Accept Outlook meeting organized by someone else
  • Later try to decline Outlook meeting
  • Outlook won’t let you – claiming you are the organizer of the meeting
  • If you delete the meeting everyone gets a meeting cancelled notice… even though you never owned the meeting!

That is fucked.  I have a theory it is due to Microsoft Outlook not doing a good job of handling the combination of access via the client, via a browser and/or via a smart phone (through Microsoft ActiveSync).  I could be completely wrong but the symptom of the problem is very annoying.

Here is my work around solution: when a meeting that I didn’t create claims I’m the owner I switch from the Outlook client to the web-based version of Outlook… and everything works.  Whatever was confused gets un-confused.

I’d call Microsoft support for help… but that would be akin to dipping myself in boiling acid (meaning painful and pointless).

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Note to Outlook – Stopping Fucking with my Meetings!

Posted in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows, Smartphone with tags , , on November 10, 2009 by dublinranch

I have a theory – buggy Microsoft ActiveSync code combined with the out of control use of smartphones for corporate email (ok, I’m part of the problem) has resulted in meeting madness.  Madness I say.   MADNESS.  Here is one example of how Outlook gets confused: I accept a meeting, sometimes on my smartphone, sometimes on my PC.  Everything is fine until I want to delete the meeting from my calendar later on… but I can’t – I’ve somehow become the meeting owner and if I delete the meeting I delete it for everyone.  And I can’t decline the meeting because somehow I own it!  This lands in the fingerpointing deadzone of tech support.  Very hard to reproduce – seemingly random (but nothing digital is actually random – everything digital is deterministic even if the root cause is hard to find).  Sprint can’t help – not fair to expect they could help.  Palm (I’m a Pre owner) can’t help – perhaps it is their implementation of ActiveSync… except iPhone and BlackBerry users have experienced the same problem.

So I have to point the finger squarely at Microsoft – Outlook should be able to handle and prevent situtations like this – ActiveSync is the gatekeeper to 3rd parties accessing Outlook.

And when you point the finger at Microsoft… well, I guess I’ll just have to live with the problem.

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