Outlook 2003 SP3: Content of appointments for some users not visible in group schedule view.

[Samovar78]

At our company receptionists make use of group schedules in Outlook 2003. They use them to keep track of the whereabouts of employees. These receptionists at least have review permission to the calendar of all the other users. The problem is that since we upgraded from Outlook 2003 SP2 to SP3 the content of calendar items of some users won' t become visible. (roughly 1 out of every 40 users will not be displayed correctly) Just to be clear on this the freebusy data is displayed (there are no bars with diagonal stripes) but the bars of these users just show in purple and lilac and remain that way while all other users get their bars filled in with the text of the subjects of the appointments and all the individual appointments show.
The problem is not authorization related. I checked and double checked this.
I tried things like removing and adding the delegates. (Just to be sure) . I tried starting Outlook with switched like /freebusy /schedplus on the mailboxes of the users with the problem. No luck so far.
For testing purposes I installed older versions than 2003 SP3, like SP0 and SP2, and the problem didn"t show up with these clients.
The problem also occurs in Outlook 2007. We use Exchange 2003 SP2.
Does anyone know if this is a known issue or how this can be resolved for Outlook SP3?

 

[Ed Crowley [MVP]]

There are two parts to what you see in the availability page. The bars themselves, i.e., the indications whether a user is free or busy, comes from the free/busy data in a system public folder in the case of Outlook 2003. The details, the text part that says what the user is actually doing and where, is called "free/busy details" and is obtained by looking directly into a user's calendar, access to which is controlled by the user himself. That is, a user can restrict access to his calendar, and that can cause the symptom you are seeing. I suggest you rule out folder rights as the cause as your first diagnostic step. Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

 

[Samovar78]

I can be very quick about that. It it already ruled out. This is not a rights issue. Checked this for the users whose free/busy details are not displayed correctly. Also as an administrator i have full rights on all maliboxes. Even from my account the details don't show up for these people on Outlook 2003SP3. They do on Outlook2003 SP0 and SP2. Thanks so far.