259170 - read mail will not start Outlook

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

[Michael Rhanor]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040911 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040911 Firefox/0.10

When the rad mail is selected it will not open Outlook. The new message works fine.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
Open Outlook

Comment 1

[Stan Watson]

cannot get into Outlook Express when trying to READ MAIL off GET MAIL tool bar
icon. This previously reported in Windows 2000. I am using Windows XP - same
problem. Using the new 1.0 version of Firefox.

Comment 2

[Jim]

I also have the same problem. Using Windows XP SP2

Comment 3

[Gordon J MIlne]

I have the same problem with the latest Firefox release (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows;
U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1) and Microsoft Office
Outlook 2003 SP1 on Windows-XP Professional (5.1.2600 Service Pack 1 Build 2600)

In addition, the "Send Link..." menu item does not work for me either. It used
to work with earlier version of Firefox (e.g. 0.8, 0.9) but it has stopped
working now. I suspect that the fault between "Read Mail..." and "Send Link..."
have the same underlying cause.

If anyone can suggest a way in which I can further reduce this problem I would
be grateful.

Comment 4

[Alexander]

I have this problem too. I use a nightly build.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a6) Gecko/20050106
Firefox/1.0+

Comment 5

[Gordon J MIlne]

I had a good look insde the registry and I think that I have found the source of
the problem. In the end I hand-edited the registry until I got rid of the problem.

For me the problem started after we had a company-wide upgrade quite a few
months ago. This was when my "send link" feature stopped working. I think this
was caused by the upgrade of our mail client to the latest version of Outlook.

In the end I searched through the registry for lines with outlook.exe and found
lines like this scattered around here and there

[...\mailto\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\PROGRA~1\\MICROS~3\\Office10\\OUTLOOK.EXE\" -c IPM.Note /m \"%1\""

with the upgrade to the latest version of Outlook these should have read

[...\mailto\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\PROGRA~1\\MICROS~3\\Office11\\OUTLOOK.EXE\" -c IPM.Note /m \"%1\""

i.e. Office11, not Office10

Unfortunately, I did this patching somewhat haphazardly and cannot remember
exactly which registry entries I patched. However, they all had the sub-key
"\mailto\shell\open\command" so they should be easy to search for. In the end I
just looked "office10\outlook.exe" to find the offenders and replaced tham as I
found them.

BTW, if you are a GMAIL user you whouls make sure that the GMAIL Notifier is not
running when you do these patches as it hooks into mailto url mechanism. If you
modify your registry whilst the notifier is running, you will find it restores
the default settings when it exits and your modifications will not be saved.

Comment 6

[Michael]

Outlook 2003 and Thunderbird works for me when they are set as default. However
Outlook Express does not work for me on WinXP SP2 with Firefox 1.0. There is a
utility from:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/defaultmail.htm

That restored the "Tools->Read Mail" operation with Outlook Express. Therefore I
suggest this is a bug with Outlook Express when it sets itself as the default
email client, missing registry entries under HKCU. So I'm recommending this bug
be marked invalid as it's not a Firefox issue.

Comment 7

[Michael]

Ok I've looked into it further and a patch could be in order. Firefox is only
looking at:

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\mailto

And not under Local Machine if it doesn't exist. Both "Tools->New Message" and
Internet Explorer handle this fine. This is important if the user wants to use
global settings as opposed to per user settings. When Outlook Express sets
itself as default it removes that entire Current User key and only sets the
Local Machine making "Tools->Read Mail" unresponsive. Other email clients when
set as default do set the Current User key so they work fine. Owner I suggest
changing the component from Toolbars to OS Integration.

Comment 8

[Michael]

Just did a retest and disovered my previous post is incorrect.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Clients\Mail

This is where Firefox is actually looking for "Tools->Read Mail" functionaility.
When this key is missing Firefox does then look at the Local Machine setting
which is correct functionality. The problem does seem to lie with Outlook
Express as it fails to set the Current User key when it sets itself as default.

One possible change however is if that key exists but has an empty value, which
causes "Tools->Read Mail" to become unresponsive, it could look at the Local
Machine setting to determine default mail program.

Can others test this!

Comment 9

[info]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Just did a retest and disovered my previous post is incorrect.
> 
> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Clients\Mail
> 
> This is where Firefox is actually looking for "Tools->Read Mail" functionaility.
> When this key is missing Firefox does then look at the Local Machine setting
> which is correct functionality. The problem does seem to lie with Outlook
> Express as it fails to set the Current User key when it sets itself as default.
> 
> One possible change however is if that key exists but has an empty value, which
> causes "Tools->Read Mail" to become unresponsive, it could look at the Local
> Machine setting to determine default mail program.
> 
> Can others test this!


"Tools->Read Mail" worked fine with Outlook 2003 until I installed Thunderbird.
When I uninstalled Thunderbird, "Tools->Read Mail stopped working completely.
"Tools->New Message" still opens Outlook and works fine. Apparently Thunderbird
changed something, and the uninstall didn't change it back. Any help would be
appreciated.

Comment 10

[Adam Guthrie]

*** Bug 306470 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Hiro]

"Tools->Read Mail" did remove by bug306453.
I think that this item disappears from the next release by blocking-firefox2+. 
INVALID or WONTFIX?