Outlook Extension Prerequisites and Limitations

Supported Environments/Prerequisites

For Outlook Extension, the following table identifies the supported Operating Systems and Outlook versions.

Outlook Extension Prerequisites

The following are required to use the Outlook Extension:

  • Outlook must be in cached mode to use Email Continuity features.
  • Cached mode is not required to use Email Archival features, but is encouraged for better performance.
  • Users must have administrative permissions to install the Outlook Extension. See the article How to allow users who are not administrators to install MSI packages (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259459) for additional information.

Outlook Extension Limitations

Known limitations of the Outlook Extension when compared with Email Continuity webmail:

Limitation

Status

Outlook Extension does not support more than one instance of Outlook on the same machine.

For customers planning to upgrade from 32-bit Outlook to 64-bit Outlook, administrators must uninstall Outlook Extension while still on 32-bit Outlook, and then install Outlook 64-bit, followed by re-installing the Outlook Extension.

If the above upgrade procedure is not followed then the user is likely to encounter following error message: "Microsoft Outlook is a prerequisite of AMS Outlook Addin (x86)" when upgrading or uninstalling the Outlook Extension.

If the user encounters the error message described in the limitation section, the user should downgrade to a 32-bit Outlook version, uninstall Outlook Extension, and then install 64-bit Outlook version, followed by installing Outlook Extension.

When an active user (on Outlook 2010) replies to a meeting invitation (from a user on Exchange 2010) and includes text in the body of the response, the recipient (on Exchange 2010) does not receive the response message text.

This was confirmed as a bug with Exchange 2010.

The recipient user needs to have one of the following installed to resolve this issue:

  • Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (KB2582113)
  • Service Pack 2 for Exchange 2010.

If two instances of Outlook Extension attempt to access the same mailbox at the same time, each instance will pick up different messages. This can confuse users who will not see all messages in both instances.

Use the workaround: Have only one instance of Outlook Extension running against a mailbox at any time.

Use Continuity Webmail if you need to access a Continuity mailbox from a different machine while Outlook Extension is running.

Meeting requests sent using the Outlook Extension in the Active State do not show meeting details when accessed on the Access Email Archive page. Only regular text messages can be rendered on the Access Email Archive page.

Under investigation for a future release.

During an activation, read/delivery receipts require user to click Send/Receive button in order to be delivered.

During an activation, read receipts are generated and sent when a user clicks the Outlook Send/Receive button. If a user does not click Send/Receive, the receipts are delivered after recovery.

During an activation, the New Mail icon does not display in the task bar.

Under investigation for a future release.

Because of the way Microsoft encodes new lines in the Description field, meetings created using the Outlook Extension sometimes display n characters in the text when they are restored by the RecoveryManager. This is purely a cosmetic issue.

For example, instead of Meeting Request for Monday 4/23 - 11:00 -11:30, the invitation reads \nMeeting Request for Monday 4/23 - 11:00 -11:30\n.

Under investigation for a future release.

When creating meeting invitations, you can choose conference rooms as recipients (required or optional) but cannot assign them as resources until Outlook is back online.

Outlook cannot process resource requests while offline.

The data center validates email addresses when attempting to send a message. If the address is invalid per RFC-822 specifications, the data center fails to send the message, and it remains in the Outlook Outbox during an activation. By contrast, Exchange itself would attempt to send the message even if the address did not conform to RFC-822.

This is an expected difference in behavior between the Outlook Extension and Exchange on the primary mail server.

If a client-side rule (such as move a message from a user on Exchange to a folder) is based on an Exchange address, the rule may not be processed consistently. Rules must use SMTP addresses to behave as expected.

Under investigation for a future release.

Outlook’s All Subfolders button does not apply to Outlook Extension Search. Outlook Extension Search searches only the selected folder in the Aurea Archive Store folder structure. If the currently selected folder happens to be the root Aurea Archive Store folder, the entire archive is searched.

After enabling a user for Folder Synchronization, archived email messages may not be immediately available in Outlook Extension Search results. Changes to folder structure and message location are synchronized on a schedule established by AMS administrators. Day to day changes to hierarchy or message location may take 24 hours to appear.

In order to minimize impact to the Outlook, mailbox folder hierarchy changes are only made on start-up. Changes to overall folder structure will not be updated in Outlook until Outlook is closed and reopened.