"Bill Ridgeway" wrote in message
...
Just one of the various NewsGroups I monitor regularly reports a number of
unread messages which, when I click on the NG to see what's there, is
reduced by the order of 10. This isn't a lot when the reported number of,
say, 20 is reduced to 2 but is a lot when the reported number of 300 is
reduced to just 30.

Does anyone know how this discrepancy arises and why it occurs on only one
NG please?


This news server (and many others) is actually a farm of many servers. Each
message in each newsgroup on the server gets a number. OE calculates the
number not downloaded by subtracting the highest number it has for the
newsgroup from the highest number on the server for that newsgroup, When a
server gets out of synchronization with the others it can have different
message numbers, leading to the discrepancy. OE then calculates the actual
number when it actually downloads the messages and corrects the number of
unread.

I hope I got that clear, but I'm still on my first cup of coffee for the
day.

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM
Do not send mail.