Auto-forward Deletes Headers (OE6.00.2900.2180 - XP SP2)

[jackosullivan]

In KB Article 217311, "Auto-Forwarded Messages Do Not Contain Appropriate Mail Headers", Microsoft described my problem exactly: "When you set an Inbox Assistant rule that auto-forwards mail messages, mail headers may not be included in forwarded mail. Auto-forwarded mail appears to come from you rather than the original sender."

They also admitted that "Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Outlook Express. " And they offered no other information or even hope that this would ever be fixed.

That was supposed to apply to OE 5.0, and the latest review was July of 2004. Well. now I'm in OE6.0 and experiencing the same problem. Two days of Web searching was totally fruitless -- almost nobody is asking about this, and nobody has answered it.

Does anyone here know how to fix this?

My guess is that there is probably some Registry key that "allows" you to not forward header information, and that MS in their usual imperious wisdom has declared that the default should be the wrong one.

<img src=/S/confused3.gif border=0 alt=confused3 width=45 height=45> Problem is: How does one find out what Registry Keys, Values, or Data items are involved? And what should be the correct values?

Thanks for whatever help you can provide.

[unkamunka]

I very seriously doubt that your guess (about the Registry) is correct. You are probably assuming far too much an "overhead" burden. Remember OE is very much a "bare bones" add-on to IE. All abilities were designed to be stripped down to the very minimum. I would not be surprised to find that the header stripping on forwarding is "by design". MS may even explain it in today's environment as being a security measure (preventing successful hijacking by spam robots). MS have been attempting to build the OE functionality directly into the Longhorn Desktop. This could mean that it remains unlikely that header stripping will remain a "feature" of forwarded OE mail for the foreseeable future. HTH

[jackosullivan]

Thanks very much for the comment, Mr U
I does seem strange that a non-automatic -- i.e., manual -- Forward does not strip the header info. To me this implies that the auto-forward has some extra steps in it.
The Registry keys under Identities {whoever}RulesMailActions have value words available for Flags, Type, Value, and Value Type, where Value is the email address being forwarded to. Is there any way to find out what the Type of Action might be? The automatically inserted value was 2, which implies there might be a 0 and 1 (at least). And just maybe a 1 would mean don't strip??

Are these kind of data published anywhere?

Thanks again and ...

[unkamunka]

As you have pointed out, MS have merely confirmed that this is an "issue". Naturally, they have the ultimate choice - since they designed the software - in publishing the information. The following Google Search - which excludes the MS site produces 13,500 hits.

auto forward mail header "outlook express" -site:microsoft.com

Perhaps someone, somewhere may have posted the results of their own research.

HTH

[jackosullivan]

Thanks again.

[BerylM]

The only thing I can think of (it's a while since I used OE) is that I seem to remember that there are actually two auto-forward options in the Inbox assistant - 'forward', and 'forward as attachment'; the latter would include the header info, of course.

I may be wrong, but I use auto-forward a lot and have done since before converting to Outlook, so I must have found a way round it!

<img src=/S/crossfingers.gif border=0 alt=crossfingers width=17 height=16>

[jackosullivan]

Beryl,
Thanks for the response. It appears that our wonderful Redmond masters have decided you can only Forward as Attachment if you do so manually. The rules "wizard" no longer offers the choice.
Thanks again and ...