[ACJones]

Hi guys. I've been asked to look into some issues that are being experienced by users in another part of our Company (with a completely separate AD/Ex2003 infrastructure to our own). One of the issues is as follows: when a mail account has a Blackberry enabled against it (through BES), there is an intermittent issue that prevents the users saving changes to their email items. I have had a search around various forums and sites but I can't find anything concrete about this. Here is a blow-by-blow description of the problem from the end user:

PA's need to leave electronic notes at the top of emails in their own inboxes and in their bosses inboxes for the purposes of reminders or updates. I personally must need to do this at least 15-20 times every day.
Intermittently the system will not let you do it. You add the note, go to save the email and exit, and the following message comes up
"The item could not be saved because it has been changed by another user or in another window"
The only way around this is….you must copy the note you have added, exit without saving, go back in and add the note again. Then usually it will save the email.

Here are some specs:

BES 4.1.4 MR4, Exchange 2003 SP2 (plus numerous hotfixes) running Trend AV. All Windows Server 2003. Versions of CDO.dll and MAPI32.dll are confirmed to match. Users all on Outlook 2003 (most on SP2, one or two on SP3) not in cached mode.

I have found the following article on RIM's knowledge base, but I don't think either of the listed scenarios apply (not every time this happens, at least):

BlackBerry Search Results

Any suggestions are very welcome!

Thx - Adam.

[hdawg]

Adam -

Does this only happen to BB users? It is entirely possible that BES has an item open and is performing some locking on the object, preventing it from being modified ...

Does your antivirus solution also scan messages on access? It is possible that it also is locking the object and preventing access to it.

[ACJones]

Hi hdawg, thx for replying and for the suggestions!

I am led to believe that BES users are the worst affected, but I haven't been able to confirm for definite whether users without BBs have this problem at all. More testing needed methinks! I must admit the AV is my other suspicion, as well. If I can prove that users with no BB also have the problem (even if to a lesser extent) then I guess it is really the only other possibility. I know they have recently updated Trend to the latest version on all of their servers, but I don't really know much about it. It'll be nice if I can rule one or the other out for definite, so I can get a fault raised against whichever company is relevant!

PS something I forgot to mention: Outlook 2003's cached mode does help with this problem, due to the fact that the item it is modifying is not live on the Exchange server (rather the update is sent to the server after a short period). Of course this will only work for the cached mailbox, and not attached ones, but at least it's a start!

Thanks again,

Adam.

[ACJones]

Just wanted to post my findings, in case this helps anyone. Turning off the AV did seem to help, but the issue still occurred (with a BES-enabled acct). It turns out that the problem seems to be caused by the switch of a message from unread to read. If you open an unread message and leave it open on the screen (while the change from unread to read is synchronised to Blackberry), you cannot then edit it and save changes because the synchronisation has changed the item on the Exchange server. Anyway the user has been switched over to cached mode, and seems much happier!

Cheers,

Adam.

[gibson_hg]

This occurs because when the email is received in Outlook and you have it open or in the preview pane and then you receive it on the BB the BES tags it with a reference ID. At that point the message is changed but you just don't see it. Then when you try to modify it Outlook will tell you the emial has been changed.Then when you move off the email in Outlook and open it again you are now looking at the modified email and now you can add things to it/change it.

This is normal BES behavour and there is no way around it except to display the preview pane in Outlook.

I had many a call about this when at RIM. I even had Microsoft on the phone with me and the customer and had to explain that we cannot stop the BES from adding a reference ID.

Hope this info helps.

[ttcfcl2]

Thanks for explaining this issue! I had the same problem, and I believe the culprit is BES. In my tests, I avoided the message by waiting for the email to appear on my BB (or doing a Reconcile Now) before editing the message or attachments. If I opened and edited the message right away after receiving it (before it appeared on my BB), when I went to save and close I would get the error message. Looks like the only way around is to not be so quick to respond

PS it does not matter if the BB phone is on or off. The message always goes to the BES first, and then to the phone.