Microsoft: Outlook email sending issues for users with lots of folders

[Porthos]

Microsoft: Outlook email sending issues for users with lots of folders

Microsoft has acknowledged a new issue affecting Outlook for Microsoft 365 users and causing email-sending problems for those with too many nested folders.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[callthatgirl]

The article is vague, is it Outlook itself or Exchange? If Outlook, then does it affect pop, IMAP or Exchange, or all 3? Good grief, good share though, I'll keep my eye on it.

 

[britechguy]

The Microsoft support page directly referenced (through via a here link) in the article, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...00000000-cafc5cd5-2f8f-41b6-a2e9-24baf21e9830, pretty clearly indicates this is an Exchange thing.

 

[HCHTech]

Saw that over the weekend and braced for calls today, but so far none received... I probably shouldn't have said that out loud.

 

[britechguy]

Saw that over the weekend and braced for calls today, but so far none received...

I would hope that most of us wouldn't be getting calls on this one. The conjunction of circumstances needed to trigger the dumpster fire shouldn't be commonly occurring.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I remember when this announcement came out...and I braced myself.
I have 135 folders under the inbox myself....wife has more.
Not a call. Not a hiccup.

 

[britechguy]

I have 135 folders under the inbox myself....wife has more.

From the previously referenced MS page:

• Reduce the number of folders which have subfolders to under 500. We recommend no more than 450 nested folders while we continue to investigate.

How many users have anything near to 500 folders, let alone 450 with nested folders?

I love, love, love using file systems of all sorts as a filing organization system, but if you're at 500 folders with hundreds of nested folders beneath those you are at the very far extreme of the bell curve. I've dealt with lots of Outlook over the decades in all sorts of settings, and I've never once encountered a configuration like what is needed for things to become problematic.

 

[HCHTech]

How many users have anything near to 500 folders, let alone 450 with nested folders?

I agree - never ran into anyone with that many folders - thank goodness. This is why I could never be a developer. Can you imaging having to support such hairbrained behavior? No wonder there are 50M lines of code in Win11!

 

[britechguy]

Can you imaging having to support such hairbrained behavior?

No, and yes. I have had to deal with similar hairbrained behavior, but when confronted with it what I do could not be considered "supporting" it. Clients who do such are counseled, in no uncertain (yet businesslike) terms that they must undo this mess, and pronto, and the exact "how" of the rearrangement is a business decision, not an IT one.

If they need my hand holding to actually accomplish the undoing, then I'm more than happy to supply that and bill for it. Usually, after sufficient practice with what needs to be done with the initial part of the effort, they can take it from there.

I consider it an ethical obligation to NOT allow a client to do whatever they want to do when whatever they want to do results in both short term and long term issues. Fix it, once, then walk away with a very happy client who will come back. Band-aid it, and they may come back another time or two, but they'll leave if issues keep recurring that you could have eliminated by doing what needed doing to begin with.

My role is not "IT lunacy enabler."

 

[callthatgirl]

Didn't get any calls. I have helped clients with 24,000 folders, 13,000 folders and many of my big hitters have over 1000.

The more folders, the more these clients make me so it's up to them how they want to manage their data.

 

[britechguy]

Interesting to see Microsoft acknowledge folder issues causing Outlook sending problems! While I keep a lot of emails categorized, maybe it's time to re-evaluate my folder structure and avoid nesting them too deeply.

Well, that article dates from last December, and Microsoft has acknowledged all sorts of problems involving Outlook over the years.

That article states: "The company's recommendations include reducing the number of folders that have subfolders to under 500, with at most 450 nested folders during this issue's ongoing investigation. Another temporary fix would be to keep all mailbox folders collapsed instead of expanded."

We come back to hoarding, even if it's overorganized hoarding. I cannot fathom a legitimate use case for 500 folders with subfolders in Outlook with "only" 450 of them having nesting in them.

Although I haven't seen anything specific (because I haven't been looking) it would surprise me if a patch had not already been made after 6 months.

[Interesting to see how that BleepingComputer article "launched a thousand ships" but there's been nary a peep about it since.]

 

[callthatgirl]

We come back to hoarding, even if it's overorganized hoarding. I cannot fathom a legitimate use case for 500 folders with subfolders in Outlook with "only" 450 of them having nesting in them.

You're going to be seeing it the closer we get to New Outlook. I have clients with 450+ all the time. It's their way of organizing, not my business. I paid to do anything I can do for them.

 

[britechguy]

You're going to be seeing it the closer we get to New Outlook. I have clients with 450+ all the time.

Doubtful. I've never had one, on known one, in the entire time I've been in this business.

 

[callthatgirl]

You're doing less volume of Outlook calls than I am, so you might not ever see it.

 

[britechguy]

You're doing less volume of Outlook calls than I am, so you might not ever see it.

Which was exactly my point; you made the assertion otherwise. You see all sorts of edge cases precisely because of your market segment. But you can't tell me that the bulk of even the people who turn to you for help fall into the demographic that is having problems because of this issue.

I lived and breathed working in Outlook intensive enviroments for decades, and never encountered a single case of a user that had 500 folders many of which had subfolders. It just doesn't happen often, at all. It's a rarity.

 

[callthatgirl]

I didn't make any assertions, anyone in Outlook support will be seeing these heavy hitters come through their queue at some point.

 

[britechguy]

Lisa, yes, you did. I replied to a direct assertion of yours in message #14.

For the love of God, at least look at what you write, because I do.

And "anyone in Outlook support" doesn't include quite a few of us who haunt this venue. You are almost sui generis in your exclusive focus on Outlook. Your client base is NOT representative of the wider world, particularly since (and this part is true for all of us) they're coming to you with problems.

If one were to believe that what's discussed on Technibble, or any random automotive forum, were typical of daily life with computers or automobiles, you'd never want to use either as you'd think they're endless pains in the ass and utterly unreliable. But they're not. Most people, most of the time, are just coasting along, comfortably.

 

[callthatgirl]

Whatever, I just post facts and what is coming. Enjoy your weekend!