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General discussion

Outlook 2000 can not recieve invitations.

Jul 21, 2005 2:42AM PDT

All right, so here is what is going on. I work on the IT staff for a small financial group. They need to be able to schedule meetings and send invitation requests. Some of them are using Outlook 2002 and others- most others- are using Outlook 2000. When someone sends an invitation request to someone who is running Outlook 2000 they simply get it as an email with no accept/decline buttons and a bunch of code in the mail.

Copy of the code: (*'s have been applied to items like IP addresses, computer names, company email address's, employee names, etc. for the sake of privacy and security.)

Received: from **************** ([**.***.**.**])
by mail.*************.com (Merak 7.6.4) with ESMTP id LPC74557
for <********@********.com>; Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:48:43 -0600
From: "**** *******" <********@********.com>
To: "'**** ******'" <********@********.com>
Subject: ********
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:50:39 -0600
Message-ID: <***************************************@****************>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/calendar; method=REQUEST;
charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.6626
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2180
Importance: Normal

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Microsoft Corporation//Outlook 10.0 MIMEDIR//EN
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:REQUEST
BEGIN:VEVENT
ATTENDEE;CN="**** ******";ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;RSVP=TRUE:MAILTO:********@********.com
ORGANIZER:MAILTO:********@********.com
DTSTART:20050721T163000Z
DTEND:20050721T173000Z
TRANSP:OPAQUE
SEQUENCEShocked
UID:040000008200E00074C5B7101A82E00800000000501B2C284B8DC5010000000000000000100
00000733F80476730624C8BBA90BA2D4B4E1E
DTSTAMP:20050720T225038Z
DESCRIPTION:When: Thursday\, July 21\, 2005 10:30 AM-11:30 AM (GMT-07:00)
Mountain Time (US & Canada).\n\n*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*\n\n ***** ****** ***** ** ****** *** *****\n
SUMMARY:*******
PRIORITY:5
CLASS:PUBLIC
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGER:-PT5M
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Reminder
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

I have researched this issue. A lot of people are saying if the sender unchecks the reminder checkbox that the Outlook 2000 clients will be able to recieve the message. That might be true, but not in this case. I have tried that and the problem still exists. Not only that, to further troubleshoot the issue I installed Outlook 2000 on my own machine. I updated it to SP3 (as I have done with the other 2000 machiens in the office) and I recieved invitations just fine. With or without the reminder box being checked. So, it is working on my system but no one elses and I have no idea why. I also have SP2 installed for XP though and some of these outlook 2000 machines may not have that. Could that be it? To my knowledge I haven't installed any extra updates to my machine that haven't been applied to the others. (With the exception of Windows XP SP2). If you have possible suggestions please reply. Happy

Discussion is locked

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Try..
Jul 21, 2005 4:01AM PDT

Review http://www.slipstick.com/calendar/ but I can't comment further since you left crucial details about Outlook (any version) as to CW or IMO mode and not a word about an Exchange Server.

Best of luck,

Bob

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Update
Jul 21, 2005 6:28AM PDT

You're right, I did leave out some crucial information there. The outlook 2000 machines are running SP3. They have the same build that my working Outlook 2000 is using. Build: 9.0.0.6627
There is no exchange server being used at all. I wish there was but sadly there is not. As for the Outlook 2002 clients, the ones sending out the invitations, they have misc. builds I believe. That shouldn't matter though, considering the problem carrys over to Outlook 2003 as well. So no updated for 2002 on the sender side are going to fix the issue.
Thank you for the link to that site... I reviewed all the resources on there and none of them yieled a solution.

Anyone other suggestions?

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Update: The problem is now resolved.
Jul 21, 2005 6:53AM PDT

As it turns out some of my users have been lying to me. Yes, that is right, they have been lying to me. They were telling me they were leaving the reminder box unchecked when sending invites. I even verified it by watching them send an invite, except I walked off just before they sent it and apparrently they re-checked the stupid reminder box right when i walked off. So, what that does is creates a reminder trigger. This trigger has gone unsupported in Outlook 2000 and there is no update to fix it. That reminder trigger screws up the entire invite, turning it into an email message rather than an invitation request. This has been the problem the entire time. Now that I know this and have explained in full to my users what the problem is, the problem is resolved. Sorry to stir up a mess and thanks for everyone's help. Happy

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It gets worse.
Jul 21, 2005 10:41PM PDT

This calendaring without Exchange Server is failing on OL2003 altogether. Seems there is some arm twisting going on.

Bob