Affect of unarchiving/archiving emails saved as a .msg file

[karmakoma]

Hello,

We are experiencing issues with some emails saved as .msg files on our file servers.

User receives the following pop up message when they attempt to open the file using Outlook 2003-

"The operation failed due to a registry or installation problem. Restart Outlook and try again. If the problem persists, please reinstall."

The error corellates (spelling)  with the known issue described in this Microsoft KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948074 however the messages do not exceed the max number of recipients or attachments.

I installed the patch and made the recommended registry changes but this has not fixed the issue.

We have also unarchived the file and this has not made a difference. The only way we have been able to successfully open the email is by restoring it from backup prior to it being archived or by using Outlook 2002 (XP). We cannot open them using Outlook 2003 (SP2)

Note, we do not have the above patch installed on our EV server (and we are running Outlook 2003 SP3 on the EV server) so I'm wondering if not having this patch affected the files in any way when they were archived.

I've logged a call with Microsoft but I'm wondering if it is an EV issue especially since the file is fine if we go to a backed up version prior to archiving.

Cheers.

[Darren_Locke]

You don't say what version of Enterprise Vault you are on. I'm guessing it is prior to EV 2007 SP5. This is an EV error resolved in SP5. From the release notes:

FSA did not display recalled .msg files correctly [Ref 755120, E1423120]

When you recalled from its shortcut an Outlook .msg file that FSA had archived, the recalled file did not open successfully. The following message appeared:

Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Access is denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write protected and that the file is not being used.

This has been fixed. FSA now archives an .msg file as a file saveset, not a MAPI saveset. Note that the fix results in the following changes in behavior:

* The item is not a candidate for single instance storage unless it is an exact copy of an .msg file that FSA has archived. Single instance storage does not occur with the same message that was archived from an Exchange mailbox or PST file.
* The item is not fully indexed with respect to message properties. Specifically, the message does not have any recipient properties, or sent and received dates.

Note: To avoid this problem with .msg files that you archived before applying this service pack, restore the files by using Archive Explorer or the FSA Utility.

Darren

[karmakoma]

Thanks Darren.

Yes I was using 2007 SP2 prior to only a couple of months ago. Now running SP5.

The error is not excatly the same but perhaps the cause is. The issue now is even after the file has been unarchived, It is corrupt.

I'd logged a call with Microsoft and sent them an example of one of the .msg files and this was their response:

This file was corrupted, thus it’s impossibility to be opened. I have tried myself opening the file with outlook 2003 and outlook 2007, and received the same error message in outlook 2003, plus in outlook 2007 the following: “cannot read the item”. You might be thinking now, why is this msg file readable using outlook 2002? Well that’s a very good question, and the reason for this would be that outlook 2002 uses a different reading mechanism than outlook 2003 and outlook 2007. The corruption in the msg file is located in a part of the e-mail where back in the days of outlook 2002 it was not implemented, and thus outlook 2002 ignores this part, being able to read the content.

Not super technical in nature but you get the idea.

[karmakoma]

Anyone have any suggestions to fix this apart from giving users access to Outlook XP (2002) or a third party .msg viewer?

[MichelZ]

karmakoma:

Darren already  gave a solution for this, I think:
"Note: To avoid this problem with .msg files that you archived before applying this service pack, restore the files by using Archive Explorer or the FSA Utility."

I think with FSAUtility you can restore only a single file extension, this would probably be your best bet.

Cheers
Michel

[karmakoma]

Than using an AV scan to restore files from vault but this is working!

So after I recall all the .msg files from the fileserver how would I delete all the old entries from the archive in order for the files to archive again correctly?

[Paul_Grimshaw]

This is the technote regarding the issue:- http://support.veritas.com/docs/314411

So as you can see the fix is not retrospective so I preume first thing is to 100% clarify that this is your issue. So I would do the following:-

1. Upgrade to EV2007 SP5 or wait for SP6 which is due for release next week
2. Restore a couple of your broken messages files to another folder.
3. Setup a test folder and place these files in there and archive them
4. Test that they can now be successfully retrieved
5. If they can then as you say you need to delete the items already in the archive and you would do this via one of the search applications. It is a lot easier if all MSG files are affected as you can do a block search then delete. There is not really another option apart from if you do not have a lot in this archive you can bulk restore all other items then delete the entire archive and then archive all items again. Without knowing the scale of your environment or issue I do not know what is best but there are the options.

Maybe somebody else has some brighter ideas but cannot think of any myself.

[karmakoma]

Thanks Paul.

I think it will be easier if I assume all .msg files are affected as there are over 4000 of them in archive.

So I think my steps are:

1. Set .msg files to not vault
2. Run fsautility against my fileserver to restore .msg files
3. Use Archive explorer to search for .msg files in the vaults and delete them (this is going to take forever!)
4. Set .msg files to vault again.

Unfortunately there is a lot of other item types in these archives so restoring everything is not an option.

Thanks!

[Paul_Grimshaw]

Your problem may be that FSAUTILITY does not work as the archived item itself is missing information so you are going to restore that "corrupted" item

[karmakoma]

.msg files that I previously could not open.

[karmakoma]

If I recall .msg files and do not delete them from the archive will they revert back to placeholders and at what point will this occur?

Yesterday I set .msg files to not archive. Run fsautility on a folder containing .msg files and confirmed they are not appearing as archived when I view them in windows explorer.

Today they have reverted back to the placeholders.

I checked the filesystem archive report from last night and confirmed .msg files are being excluded from archiving. These files are not appearing in the list however so I assume EV knows they are already archived.

I guess I need to remove the files from vault before whatever task runs that flicks them back.

urrgghhh!

[Paul_Grimshaw]

The files will be reverted to placeholders when the fsa run is next performed. You can set a registry key to stop this but it will stop all files from being reverted back to placeholders so I am guessing that you do not want to do this.
And yes we already know the item is archived so we just change it back into a placeholder. So what you would need to do really is onc these items have been restored then delete them from the archive before the next FSA run.

[karmakoma]

files from archiving. This will give me time to remove them from the archive before I enable it again.

[MichelZ]

Thanks for letting us know karmakoma!

Could you mark a post as solution once it's solved?

Thanks & Regards
Michel