Outlook 2010 Bug Creates Monster Email Files

Julie188 writes with this snippet from Network World "Office 2010 is still in beta and a patch is already out. Microsoft is trying to fix a bug in the email program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space. The Outlook product team has offered a bug fix for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems that fixes the problem going forward, although previous emails will remain super-sized. This could be a problem for email programs that limit message sizes, such as Gmail or BlackBerry."

A bug in a beta?

[Evro]

Oh my heavens! A bug in a beta? What is the world coming to?

Stop the presses!!!

[gad_zuki!]

A bug in beta? From an MS product? Thanks slashdot!

Re:A bug in a beta?

[nametaken]

Exactly! So what? Isn't the point of a beta to identify bugs before the software goes into regular use?

I mean, unless you're Google, who seems to use it like a marketing term for "exclusive!".

Problem

[iamavirus]

This could be a problem for email programs that limit message sizes, such as Gmail or BlackBerry.

I'd say this this is a problem for programs that don't limit sizes. TFA doesn't state any numbers, but I wouldn't want my BlackBerry to try and open files with thousands of lines of redundant CSS code.

Size Limits on Email

[sanjacguy]

More than just free email limits size. Size limits are one of the variables you can set in Exchange 2003, and I believe the default maximum email size is 5MB. Given that most private organizations do not have unlimited email space, setting a limit on size is just as important as monitoring the size of the Information Store. (Fair warning, I may be wrong about the specific default max email size for exchange 2k3.)

Re:How did this reach beta?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this kind of thing is why you have beta testing. It's only February and I think we already have a strong contender for "Non-story of the Year" here.

Re:How did this reach beta?

[bloodhawk]

No this is the kind of thing a BETA is supposed to catch, i.e. bugs that were not caught by internal testing. The entire purpose of a beta is to find these sort of bugs.

Beta?

[msauve]

You mean the fact that Outlook "creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space" is new?

Silly me, thinking 3K of HTML/header overhead to send a one sentence email fell into that description, because Outlook has done that forever.

Re:A bug in a beta?

[grcumb]

Oh my heavens! A bug in a beta? What is the world coming to?

Indeed, though a story about recursive dependencies in any product does introduce a little welcome schadenfreude into my day, it's a pretty trivial issue.

What I found infinitely more newsworthy about the article was this:

With Outlook 2010, Microsoft is trying to take yet another stab at one of the most perplexing issues for computer users -- e-mail sprawl. Microsoft has introduced "conversation arrangement" features in previous versions of Outlook -- as have other e-mail program makers -- in which messages are saved based on the participants in the "thread" and in the order in which messages were received.

Microsoft, the company that single-handedly destroyed email communications in the 90s by placing replies at the top of the message and refusing to support inline quoting, then relying on Word (WORD!) as the default editor... has finally discovered threading!

It's touching, really. Kind of like watching an autistic adolescent say his first word....

Bug? Or feature?

[Hurricane78]

the email program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space.

Isn’t that expected behavior for all MS Office programs? ;)

Re:A bug in a beta?

[Wayne247]

That's not all. To this day, we still occasionally receive an email consisting of nothing more than an attachment "winmail.dat"

i eventually gave up on trying to tell mail administrators to set outlook clients properly or to set Exchange rules for outbound formating. I've installed "Lookout" plugin on all users' Thunderbirds.

It's really as if Microsoft deliberately tried to break email interoperability so they can attempt to monopolize it. Hmm.....