The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on February 2, 2017.
EMO is a weekly publication. To receive your own copy of EMO by email, subscribe here.
Support Exchange Messaging Outlook Sponsors
Increase Your Productivity!
ReliefJet Essentials for Outlook is a set of more than 160 tools for performing a wide range of tasks in Outlook: processing email messages, contacts, appointments, meetings, tasks and other Outlook items.
Today's Highlights:
Outlook.com Winmail.dat Bug
Some users are discovering that Outlook sends winmail.dat files attached to messages when sending to contacts in their address book. Only Outlook on Windows desktop (all versions) is affected; messages sent from Outlook on the web or the Outlook app do not have the rogue winmail.dat file.
The problem: When sending email to any contacts from your address book in Outlook, some recipients receive a winmail.dat file attachment that shows up in some clients such as Gmail and Yahoo web mail. In Outlook, the attachment icon is displayed but no attachment shown.
The keywords are "address book". If you select a contact and click the Email command on the ribbon (or on the right-click context menu and choose Create > Email) the message does not have the winmail.dat attachment.
As has always been the case, the winmail.dat file is more of a confusing nuisance than anything. The recipients receive an attachment and don't know what to do with it. (Correct answer: ignore it.) I'm told attachments are not wrapped up in this rogue winmail.dat file, so there is no data loss, but my accounts are not affected so I can't confirm.
The usual fixes (listed at Outlook is Sending Winmail.dat Attachments) don't seem to work for most people or are only temporary and the problem returns. This is likely because the address book is the problem, not the contacts specifically.
Recipient receives a winmail.dat attachment when sending email from Outlook with Outlook.com account
Outlook Hangs at Startup
If you are using Outlook 2016 and it hangs at startup, try setting Outlook to always run maximized. To do this, right click on the icon you use to start Outlook and choose Properties. Select the Shortcut tab in the Properties dialog then select Maximized in the Run field. Click OK to save and close the dialog.
If problems continue or you are using another version of Outlook, the first troubleshooting step is to start Outlook in Safe mode. To start Outlook in safe mode, first close Outlook then hold Ctrl as you click on the Outlook icon to restart it. You'll get a message asking if you want to start in Safe mode. Click Ok. If it starts up OK, the problem is a one of the files that Outlook loads on start up, most likely the navigation pane.
Sometimes just loading Outlook in Safe mode fixes the problem, so try restarting it. If it fails again, restart Outlook using the /resetnavpane switch. To do this, press the Windows key + R to open the run command, then type or paste outlook.exe /resetnavpane in the Open field and click Ok. Warning: this will reset the navigation pane to the default. You will lose any customizations and will need to redo the panes.
Contest Ended
My Office 365 software contest has ended and I'll be drawing names and notifying winners over the weekend.
Other Resources
Sharing a Secondary Calendar
How to share a secondary calendar in an Exchange mailbox using Outlook desktop or Outlook on the web.
Undo Send feature in Outlook on the Web
Outlook on the web's new feature: Undo Send. It gives you a few seconds (up to 30 seconds) to change your mind.