Unable to Delete Outlook 2003 EMails in Inbox when Sorted by Sender - Vista Home Prem

[M. David Petrella]

Hi;

When trying to delete emails in the inbox, I receive the following message:

The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the problem persists, restart Outlook.

This occurs when I try to delete more than one email, after I've sorted them by sender.

I have ...

1) re-started Outlook (as directed by the msg)

2) run Microsoft Update (to see if I'm up to date)

3) run "Detect and Repair" (to see if I have bad files)

So ...

I'm just wondering if anyone else has seen a similar situation; and / or if anyone knows where I might look for a resolution to this ..?

TIA! :)

p.s.

Microsoft Update installed SP1 for me; but this problem occurred before SP1, and now still occurs after SP1.





Grrrr!!! Just lost a reallly long edit .... :mad:



So here goes a very brief edit .... sorry ....

1) I can delete msgs as long as they're not older than 09/2007

2) Can't move old msgs to a Folder (just get a small pop-up w/ an "X")

3) RULES fail for older emails


Is this related to "[u]on this machine only[/]" restriction??

[jdc2000]

It might be time to run the Inbox repair tool (scanpst.exe) to fix any errors. Make sure to have backup copies of your .pst and .ost files first.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA010563001033.aspx

[M. David Petrella]

Yes ... I finally received an error which said run SCANPST ...

However ...

THIS PROGRAM IS ABSOLUTELY NO WHERE TO BE FOUND ON MY MACHINE AND MICROSOFT DOES NOT HAVE IT ANYWHERE FOR DOWNLOAD .....

Where, oh where, can I go to get this file????

TIA

[jdc2000]

Link:

http://www.emailaddressmanager.com/outlook/repair.html

[M. David Petrella]

Thanks for the pointer ... I got the file .. but it didn't run because (one of?) the required DLL's wasn't there ... which means I'm forced to find my install disk (what-ooh-I gotta do? tape the CD to my laptop so it's there for every update or repair?) and extract the files manually ...

Or, I can go here [http://www.msoutlook.info/question/77] and d/l and run this tool .... (found it on a Microsoft Discussion Board) ...

I'll let you know if it works ...

Thanks! ... so far! :)

[M. David Petrella]

Ok .. just ran SCANPST a few times in a row until it fixed errors ... but the magic date that will not process is 08/2007 and earlier ... Can't MOVE, or DELETE anything older than 09/2007.

It may be that 08/2007 is when I installed Office 2003, and imported my old pst file ...

Well ... all in all ... this Outlook is flat out unusable to me ...

I've GOT to be able to move my inbox emails into their folders ... if I can't do that ... then this Outlook is useless ...

My troubles began when I couldn't import the old pst and preserve the Message Rules ... I got around that by installing Office 2003 on the old machine ... importing the pst on that machine (XP w/ SP2) ... then uninstalling Office 2003 so that I could install it on my laptop ... (have to be legally compliant, doncha-know) ...

I'm thinking that I may have to do that all over again ....

Blitz this pst altogether ... build the pst under the Office XP machine with all the inbox emails already moved into their respective folders, then import those into this Office 2003 installation.

I just don't get this ...

When I used to roll out software upgrades at IBM, we went through a very very rigorous regression testing series of procedures to ensure that no users would be left unable to get at their old information ... that's what Information Technology is all about ... that's what customers pay for ... the I/T tools have to allow people to continue to run their businesses with no hiccups ...

24 x 7 x 365

??? :(

[jdc2000]

I agree, it looks like it is time to copy the e-mails you want to save to a new .pst file, then archive the old one.