outlook.com Exchane Server corrupts data Since September 2019

[Filip]

Hi

Pay attention if you have Customized Forms and User-Defined field of "Currency" type.

Approx. since September 2019, after syncing to outlook.com, those fields will be corrupted/zeroed.

I have described it here
Upgraded Exchange server at Outlook.com corrupts data of "Currency" type

And I am frustrated because Level 1 support refuses to send it to Exchange team and wants me to "chat" with MS office team. Nonsense. Microsoft does not care.

I wait when some big company starts to lose their important data because of this error.
Their Exchange version looks to be 15.20.2284.7 .

When I moved data to PST or to other provider, this problem of course is not manifesting.
In PST it is clear since synchronization is eliminated at all.

 

[BeatsMeWhy]

Yes, this is painful. I had to convert my custom 'currency' fields to type 'number' to work around this new bug.
Just thinking - none of the standard Contact fields appear to be of type 'currency'. Mmmm.

 

[Filip]

I was today working on conversion VBA macro. I was just experimenting on a copy of data since I have thousands of items I do not want to corrupt any.
I am almost done with it but I had to find the painful way. Because when you use Item.UserProperties.Add("newName") this kills your Item, it jumps in a size and the form is one-offed in each item. NEVER use Item.UserProperties.Add("newName") !!!

To prevent this, you must first
1. Modify your existing Form, add the requested new User Defined Fields and publish it
2. Then the script can use Item.UserProperties("newname").Value=Item.UserProperties("oldname").Value surprisingly without any issue because the form knows the fields and manages the underlying value itself.

Also getting rid of the old field Item.UserProperties("oldField").Remove is pain in the as* because you have to use small batches because Outlook leaks memory when looping over more than 50 items and freezes. And also you must first determine the right index of it by looping the property Names. The freezing known problem. But after all it is one-purpose macro I have created that even creates a log file in TXT so I dont mind to run it more times when debugged.

I have to be fresh to watch whether there still are some more pitfalls to conversion so I finish for today.

Pay attention, if you have one-offed items, then it demonstrates e.g. by: You modify form, publish it, but the item still is opened with the "attached" own version of the form, so you see old one. And the size considerably increases so draw Size from Field Chooser into the view and watch it

As a checksum, I CTRL+A all items in a view with dragged Fileds, CTRL+C CTRL+V them into Excel. Then bulk Replace " Kč" currency by nothing and then bulk replace hard space by nothing. This allows to make a Sum of such created numbers. By comparing both sums of the numbers you can be sure all items were converted fine.

 

[Filip]

see the migration script link for download is here Upgraded Exchange server at Outlook.com corrupts data of "Currency" type
I think I did it ! OMG sooo complicated this stuff

 

[hirad92]

good tips. tnx.

 

[TerranceM]

What can be the ideal solution in this case? Migrating emails to the other servers is it possible after recovery?

 

[Filip]

What can be the ideal solution in this case? Migrating emails to the other servers is it possible after recovery?

1. When I found this problem, quick and dirty Rescue solution was to move my solution to PST file.
This way you stop loosing the data by sync, but of course you loose you ability to sync between more computers and you have to remember which PST is the last one and carry the PST file with you to the other computers, which sucks.

2. Later I created a migration script that uses "Number" instead of "Currency" type of data. This, however is laborous, required lots of manual work and also I had then to change VBS scripts at forms that used the old Filed names, etc...
See Upgraded Exchange server at Outlook.com corrupts data of "Currency" type and my link to ulozto.cz server where I published my VBA migration script with all the warnings of how to use it.

3. Then it would be possible to return it back to Crippled Exchange - with all your data not in Currency but in Number format- , but look, we have December and Microsoft did not even admit there is a problem, neither started to work on fixing it.
Silence.
So I prefered to pay a different provider with older Exchange to be sure I can be in more stable environment. I never use Currency again but I am scared of the fact that Microsoft abandoned this area of Outlook and seeems to never give a shit about it after 30 years of this wonderful technology exists.

You can consider paid Microsoft Exchange hosting, but I am afraid you have noone to ask about whether paid version will be better. There is noone who can tell you And noone can assure they won't upgrade to version that again starts crippling data.

So after migration of your data you can stay in free Outlook.com and pray to Bill Gates and backup, backup, backup to PST periodically. This backup by the way can be done via VBA elegantly with automatic naming of PST files according to date token for example. So you need not pull it via mouse and connecting PST to profile manually.

Can someone explain by the way why after 30 years it is not possible to doubleclick PST and connect it to mail profile automatically ? There must be some sado-masochistic reason for that.