"Indexing Status" in Outlook 2007 is not showing any status.

Question

Background: Outlook 2007 is loading a profile containing a third party store provider (non-PST, non-Exchange). The store provider is registered for indexing as mentioned on web site [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb821125.aspx]. Plus, the store provider does NOT expose the STORE_PUSHER_OK bit from the STORE_SUPPORT_MASK, which means it asks the MAPI PH to crawl the store.

Problem: When Outlook 2007 uses this profile, I go to "Indexing Status" dialog, it always shows "Outlook has finished indexing all of your items.", and "New items are indexed when they arrive. 0 items remaining across all open mailboxes." I am expecting to see Outlook starts to indexing messages, because large amount of new messages are added to the store.

I have the feeling that this dialog is not showing the actual indexing status of the store.

I cannot say that the store is not indexed at all, because sometimes the Instant Search does return some results. However, the Instant Search is not working reliably and sometimes either does not return any results or return partial results. In addition, when it does return partial results, it is NOT showing the warning that the result may be incomplete. Note that I have checked the check box for "Prompt me when search results may be incomplete ..." in the "Search Options" dialog.

My question is:
1. Does MAPI PH crawl a non-pusher style store provider?
2. If it does, why the status in the "Indexing status" is not showing any status?
3. On the non-pusher store provider side, what's need to be done to allow it to be crawled, other than register it in the registry.
4. How can I get Outlook to show the warning for "search results may be incomplete"?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi HH,

 

I think you are in a wrong forum for your question, which will make your query untouched.

VSTO forum is target at questions about Office extensibility via Visual Studio Tools for Office.Try to ask in Outlook News Group, which may be more appropriate:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.outlook.general&lang=en&cr=US

 

 

Thanks

Ji

Answer 2

Ji, the Outlook general newsgroup isn't going to be able to help with issues related to the design and behavior of a custom MAPI store, nor probably even the Outlook programming newsgroups. The best place to ask is probably in one of the MAPI discussion groups listed at http://www.outlookcode.com/archive0/d/mapi.htm#discussion

Hai, I see you've already posted some comments on Stephen Griffin's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/stephen_griffin/archive/2007/03/02/outlook-2007-rtm-docs-notification-based-indexing-support.aspx.
He would probably be the person who can answer your questions. Maybe Ji can ping him to request a response on his blog.

Answer 3

Sue and Ji,

Thank you for the response!

Ji, if you would be able to ping Griffin to get an answer, that would be great

It sure would be disappointing that Outlook 2007 offers the great new feature of "Instant Search", but the third party store provider cannot benifit from this...

Hai

Answer 4

Sue, thanks for your reminder of that.

Hai, I sent an email to Stephen. Hope he can see that and give your some help on this.

 

 

Thanks

Ji

Answer 5

The "Indexing Status" feature in Outlook doesn't work against all stores - only the PST and Exchange stores. We don't document the bits you'd need to enable this feature in your store. However, the PH (which operates independently from Outlook) should still index your store.