omtidyu question

[kanderson]

I did a migration this past weekend where we moved several people to a new physicel server. We used oncpoutu and omcpinu to facilitate the data movement, since the FQDN had changed.

2 users came forward with issues today, 1 weird, and 1 time consuming.

User1 sees 2 wastebaskets. Outlook shows 2 folders both named Deleted Items. One has a folder icon beside it, the other is a normal garbage bin. I cannot delete either, as both seem to be system folders. I tried "outlook.exe /resetfolders", but they're unchanged. I also tried "omscan -U User1 -f -x" but that didn't fix it either. So I THINK I want to use omtidyu to delete one of them, but I'm unsure how to delete a top level folder completely.

User2 is similar. Their drafts folder was messed up, and although resetfolders fixed it, they didn't mention it as a concern for several days, so they now have literally hundreds of Drafts folders. Again, I'm sure there's a command with omtidyu that would allow me to delete them all in 1 action rather than spending a full day deleting them in Outlook. But I don't know the command, and I'm a bit scared to try it.

Can anyone tell me the syntax of the command to delete a top level folder, rather than items in the usual intray, pending, etc folders. I want to nuke the folders themselves.

Thanks in advance.
Kev.

[Richard Hall]

Hi Kev,
It is not possible to delete folders using 'omtidyu', only the contents of folders :-(

User1 sees 2 wastebaskets. Outlook shows 2 folders both named Deleted Items. One has a folder icon beside it, the other is a normal garbage bin. I cannot delete either, as both seem to be system folders. I tried "outlook.exe /resetfolders", but they're unchanged. I also tried "omscan -U User1 -f -x" but that didn't fix it either. So I THINK I want to use omtidyu to delete one of them, but I'm unsure how to delete a top level folder completely.

I'm guessing that the omcpinu process has somehow resulted in 2 wastebaskets or Outlook's information about which folder is the wastebasket does not match the server's view - so Outlook won't let you delete its version of the WB and the server won't let you remove the other one.

To delete the folder use omcontain (have you used this command line tool before?)
I think you will find 2 folders named IS_WASTE BASKET in the Filing Cabinet. One (or posiibly both) with have the WASTE_BASKET flag set:

Code: Select all

Content Flags: 0x20000000, 0x40001002, 0x00000000
IS WASTE BASKET
NO_SUB_FOLDER

Remove the one that does not have this flag set - if they both have it set then remove the one that does not match the Outlook Deleted Items folder. You may have to run outlook.exe /resetfolders again.

User2 is similar. Their drafts folder was messed up, and although resetfolders fixed it, they didn't mention it as a concern for several days, so they now have literally hundreds of Drafts folders. Again, I'm sure there's a command with omtidyu that would allow me to delete them all in 1 action rather than spending a full day deleting them in Outlook. But I don't know the command, and I'm a bit scared to try it.

Do you have a theory for why there are so many Drafts folders? Does this user get a new Drafts folder every time they login? Did they appear at the same time? Does this user have any Outlook plug-ins active?

Once again 'omcontain' will help to remove these - it can be used to delete multiple (consecutive) items with the multipel delete (md) command. (I'm assuming that all these extra Drafts folders are grouped consecutively in the Filing Cabinet.)

Cheers - Richard

[kanderson]

I haven't used OMContain before, but I'll create a useless account and play before I give it a go in on a real user.

As for the multiple drafts, I don't know WHY they happen, but they seem to be a regular occurance when moving from one server to another as I did here. What I did was use omcpoutu, to dump all the users. I SCPed them to the new server, then I used omcpinu to reload the users. On the desktop, we created them a new Outlook profile. About 10% of the users had this issue.

We typically do server changes this way when we need to change the FQDN of the server for any reason.

The reason the Draft folders are created is that as someone is typing in a message, it autosaves the message to drafts periodically. They get an error, and Outlook tries to create a new drafts folder to save the message into. This also fails, but the autosave returns no error, and simply waits until it tries to autosave again (about 5 mins or so (based on "feel", rather than timing)). This particular user left Outlook running for several nights, with several "in process" messages. They also didn't report any problems for several days. Generally, we see 2 or 3 duplicates, and can easily fix it. This user was a bit unique. :)

Thanks
Kev.

[mikethebike]

If you are not comfortable with omcontain (using it to list MAPI properties to show which folders are MAPI folders, then don't do it :-)

If you use outlook, you should only be able to delete to non-MAPI aware folders (the "delete" option will be greyed out on the correct folders).
Move th eocntents to the correct folder, and delete the rogue one.

In future, when performing an omcpinu, use the "-e" option to merge folders rather than create duplicates.

Mick

[kanderson]

The problem is that there are hundreds of Draft folders, so deleting through outlook would take forever.

With omcontain, I'm happy to play and learn. I'm aware that it's dangerous.

With the Deleted Items, both show as system folders, so Outlook can't delete either one.

Thanks
Kev.