Sending via Outlook 2016 freezes

delphi package - automated exception handling
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obones
Posts: 66
Joined: Fri May 15, 2009 11:47 am

Sending via Outlook 2016 freezes

Post by obones »

Hello,

I have an issue here which is a bit odd and only occurs with recent versions of Office.
Here is what happens when a bug report window is shown:

The user clicks send
The send wizard steps are fulfilled
The user clicks "Send now"

What we expect, and are seeing with most of our user installations is that an email with attachments opens up inside the mail client. In 99% of our users, it's Microsoft Outlook that gets started. Once they see the email, they can "send" and Outlook does its job.
However, on the workstations where Office 2016 is installed, here is what happens when a bug report window is shown:

The user clicks send
The send wizard steps are fulfilled
The user clicks "Send now"
Nothing happens, the bug report window is still there, Outlook does not open
The user clicks on "Display bug report", nothing happens immediately
After about 20 seconds, the bug report window shows the stack traces as usual, but in the background, we have an Outlook email without any attachment but the bugreport content as text.

This is very surprising to us and we don't see what we could have missed here. Has anyone seen this?

For reference, here are the options we have set in the .mes file:

Code: Select all

SendInBackground=0
MailAsSmtpServer=1
MailAsSmtpClient=0
MailViaMapi=1
MailViaMailto=1
SmtpServer=
SmtpPort=25
SmtpAccount=
SmtpPassword=
Thanks in advance for any comment/suggestion
madshi
Site Admin
Posts: 10754
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:25 pm

Re: Sending via Outlook 2016 freezes

Post by madshi »

The bug report not being attached but being in the email body usually means that MAPI didn't work, so madExcept has to use mailto/shellmail instead. Which is an inferior email client API.

You may have to google for how to make Outlook 2016 do MAPI properly? I'm not sure. Or alternatively you could look into HTTP upload as an alternative bug report sending method. It's more complicated to setup, though...
obones
Posts: 66
Joined: Fri May 15, 2009 11:47 am

Re: Sending via Outlook 2016 freezes

Post by obones »

madshi wrote:The bug report not being attached but being in the email body usually means that MAPI didn't work, so madExcept has to use mailto/shellmail instead. Which is an inferior email client API.
Thanks, I did not know about the difference between the two, that clears things up.
madshi wrote:You may have to google for how to make Outlook 2016 do MAPI properly? I'm not sure. Or alternatively you could look into HTTP upload as an alternative bug report sending method. It's more complicated to setup, though...
Thing is, this is also happening at client's and we can't ask them to do any special configuration in Outlook or their outbound firewall rules.

What I'm really trying to understand is the origin of the delays we are seeing and why displaying the bug report seems to break a lock.
madshi
Site Admin
Posts: 10754
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:25 pm

Re: Sending via Outlook 2016 freezes

Post by madshi »

It's all about MAPI. It's an API that is specified by Microsoft, but the mailing application (e.g. Outlook) has to implement it properly in order for madExcept to use it. If Outlook's MAPI API refuses to work, there's really nothing madExcept can do about it. I don't know if Outlook maybe has an option somewhere which enables/disabled MAPI support?

Edit: After a quick google search I found this:

https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/outlo ... il-client/
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mso ... 745?auth=1
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