What Is It?

Yesterdays post ( Remove Duplicate Emails and Other Items from MS Outlook with ODIR ) detailed some problems with Outlook duplicating emails if there is a timeout on the Internet connection while downloading your emails from the server. One tip that can help with this problem is to increase the timeout interval for the server connection.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Sets the Server Timeout on a per email account basis

Pros: What’s Good?

• Part of Outlook Account Settings

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Popularity: 22% [?]

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What Is It?

ODIR - Outlook Duplicate Item Remover by Vaita, will search the individual folders in your MS Outlook setup and remove any duplicate items that it finds based on a simple set of rules.

Why Would You Want It?

If the Outlook email download process is interrupted part way through then it does not register that any emails have been received from the server. This can be caused by a crash in Outlook or the operating system, it can also happen due to Internet interruptions or a slow connection timing out. Other causes for duplicate items can be synchronisation with PDAs and mobile phones or the use of synchronisation software. Finding and removing these duplicates manually is a slow and painstaking process, ODIR provides a freeware method of making this much easier.

Note: For maximum safety I would advise that you backup your Outlook files before using this utility

Why Do I Use It?

I first started using ODIR 1 or 2 years ago when  I had some problems with my ISP and several timeouts when downloading emails caused a lot of duplicates to accumulate. Recently I had problems with Outlook crashing ( see Data Rescue Tip - Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files ) and this weekend I had some more problems with timeouts due to my Internet connection misbehaving. This again resulted in a lot of duplicates that needed to be removed.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Simply removes duplicate items in:
  Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 24% [?]

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What Is It?

A POP3 and IMAP4 email viewer and manager. It will allow you to review emails on your email servers for multiple accounts in a tabbed interface. You can then choose to view the full text (but not HTML*) or delete the emails without full download.

*You can view the text portion of the HTML code.

Why Would You Want It?

To check, monitor and delete emails on your email account servers without having to download the complete email or using your email client. This can reduce the load on your Internet connection which can be useful if you are on a capped package or having to use a limited connection, particularly when travelling.

Why Do I Use It?

I use it mainly for quickly monitoring emails when I am away from home. The fact that I can carry it on a USB stick or removable drive or transfer it to another PC/Laptop makes it very useful to me. As removal of SPAM by ISP’s and the major web based mail providers is so good I don’t bother with defining rules, I simply delete manually anything that gets through.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Provides access to email on servers
• Allows email text to be viewed
• Allows emails to be deleted on the servers

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 29% [?]

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What Is It?

If your Outlook email files become corrupted you may not be able to start Outlook, the program may load slowly or unexpected behaviour or error messages may appear when carrying out operations like moving or deleting emails. What you may not know is that Microsoft provide tools to repair your .pst files (and .ost files for “corporate” Exchange Server setups.

Why Would You Want It?

Quite simply (and obviously ) to repair your email file if they have become corrupted. So if you think your Outlook email has become very slow to startup or is behaving strangely it may be worthwhile trying this solution.

Quite interestingly my Outlook 2003 has been very slow starting up for some time. I thought it was all part of the general slowing down of my XP system which needs to be reinstalled as I reported a short while ago (My Current XP OS is Dying (and Holiday Weekend in the UK)). However yesterday I went to empty the “Deleted Items” folder and got an error message saying

“The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the problem persists, start Outlook again.”

I duly restarted Outlook but the same error message appeared when I tried to empty the “Deleted Items” folder again. Now, as you may know Outlook has problems if the .pst file becomes too large, there are also problems with deleting large numbers of files, so I first tried reducing the size of the main folder by archiving emails older than 1 Jan 2008. The archive routine duly produced the folder structure in the new archive.pst I created but wouldn’t move the emails. I could manually move the emails by dragging and dropping but couldn’t empty the deleted items folder. At this point Outlook locked up and I had to terminate it in the Task Manager. On restarting it went through the

“The data file ‘Personal Folders’ was not closed properly. The file is being checked for problems.” checking procedure. However this did not fix the problem (another Microsoft annoyance - why doesn’t it check the file properly ), so at this point I decided to use the pst file repair utility .

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Repairs the Outlook email data storage files

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• MS Utility provided with Outlook

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Popularity: 27% [?]

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News

Today I receive a notification box for Google Calendar Sync on my main PC so I duly said yes to the update offer and it installed flawlessly.

I have previously posted Google Calendar Sync Test - Very Good But Not Perfect which gave a review of version 0.9.2.8 which gives details of some of the problems I found. (See the post for details )

A quick visit to the Google Calendar FAQ site didn’t reveal any details of what has been changed but a visit to the Google Calendar Forum resulted in finding a post that listed current issues:

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Popularity: 35% [?]

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What Is It?

Google Calendar Sync provides the functionality that I have wanted for sometime in being able to synchronise a web based calendar with MS Outlook and synchronising Outlook over different computers and hand held devices. Sure there are commercial "paid for" products on the market for synchronising Outlook and some freeware products that will partially do what is required or just import from Outlook but nothing that could synchronise both ways or optionally in only one direction. (i.e. either from Outlook or to Outlook).  The testing I have carried out so far has shown a couple of problems that I have not been able to resolve which may be the Google Calendar Sync program or Outlook. At work we have had some problems with the the corporate Outlook/Exchange Server setup which has resulted in appointments disappearing among other things, so I may have some "corrupted" appointments sitting in my Outlook installations. This post is not intended to be a full review but an explanation of my finding through the installation and initial testing process. I will, however, use the basic review layout and headings that you will be familiar with.

Why Would You Want It?

Having a single master calendar makes sense  and one that you can access from anywhere you have a web connection is ideal for people who need to use a single appointment system system for home and work. The ability to synchronise the master calendar with appointment systems used at home and work as well as mobile devices such a phones and PDAs really is essential for many of us. The icing on the cake is two way synchronisation so you can update the master calendar with appointments entered on one of your other devices.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Synchronises Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook
• Options for two way or one way Synchronisation

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Popularity: 28% [?]

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Firstly Apologies

Apologies to my regular readers who visited the site in the last couple of days, particularly those of you expecting the report on my testing of Google Calendar Sync. Those of you who visited may have noticed some problems with the page layout and missing icons or pictures. What turned out to be a relatively small file in one of the server directories caused me huge problems.

The Problem

I could not access the blog through the Admin interface which is used to manage the blog in all sorts of ways. Posting, managing comments, setting options, adding and removing plugins which provide additional functions, etc. So although readers were seeing minor problems their were major ones behind the scenes. As I though it was a plugin that I had recently added that streamlined the use of the admin interface I started there but had to work through the server file interface rather than the blog admin interface. Anyway, having moved files to temporary folders, deleted files, checked file permissions and done all sorts of other things one of my Google searches turned up an obscure solution. Which pointed me in the right direction. To cut a long story short there was an .htaccess file in the plugins directory with 4 lines in it that was the cause of the problem. I renamed this and hey-presto I had access to the admin panel again .

All then I had to do then was put back together everything as it was before, one step at a time and checking each step in case on of the plugins was creating the rogue file. This took a very long time

In retrospect I should have resorted to installing the last site backup but hey you live and learn .

The Happy Event

My first grandson was born yesterday (I already have two granddaughters). They light up my life.

Other Relevant Posts

GTD - Getting Things Done

News - Google Calendar Sync Released - Sync with Outlook & More

10 Ways to Save & Protect Your Data - Even files You Just Saved or Text You Just Typed

Technorati Tags: Freeware, Getting Things Done, Google, GTD, Impartial Review, Independent Review, Outlook, Pro Reviewer, ProReviewer, Utilities, Windows, Windows XP, Backup

Popularity: 22% [?]

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OK it makes for a good headline but the lack of posting is not entirely due to testing Google Calendar Sync (See News - Google Calendar Sync Released - Sync with Outlook & More). Small events have conspired to eat up the small amount of time I have free in the working week for blogging.

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Popularity: 21% [?]

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