I needed a newsreader, so I attempted to set up outlook express to read
microsoft.public.excel.misc. I connect without any problem, but the
threads which are downloaded are incomplete. e.g. Often I will see a
response but not the original posting. It is not a timing issue. I'm
missing perhaps half of the postings and there is no obvious pattern as
to which parts of a thread will be downloaded.

I also tried Free Agent with similar, although slightly better results.


The ISP (Bigpond) says the connection is there so it is not their
issue. Microsoft didn't suggest a cause, a solution or a path to
investigate.

Any ideas on how to fix or to identify the cause?

View | Current View. Check: Show All Messages & Group Messages By
Conversation.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Noel" wrote in message
oups.com...
I needed a newsreader, so I attempted to set up outlook express to read
microsoft.public.excel.misc. I connect without any problem, but the
threads which are downloaded are incomplete. e.g. Often I will see a
response but not the original posting. It is not a timing issue. I'm
missing perhaps half of the postings and there is no obvious pattern as
to which parts of a thread will be downloaded.

I also tried Free Agent with similar, although slightly better results.


The ISP (Bigpond) says the connection is there so it is not their
issue. Microsoft didn't suggest a cause, a solution or a path to
investigate.

Any ideas on how to fix or to identify the cause?

Go to Tools | Options | Read and uncheck the option to download xxx headers
at a time. That will give you all the headers on the server.

steve

"Noel" wrote in message
oups.com...
I needed a newsreader, so I attempted to set up outlook express to read
microsoft.public.excel.misc. I connect without any problem, but the
threads which are downloaded are incomplete. e.g. Often I will see a
response but not the original posting. It is not a timing issue. I'm
missing perhaps half of the postings and there is no obvious pattern as
to which parts of a thread will be downloaded.

I also tried Free Agent with similar, although slightly better results.


The ISP (Bigpond) says the connection is there so it is not their
issue. Microsoft didn't suggest a cause, a solution or a path to
investigate.

Any ideas on how to fix or to identify the cause?

Thanks, Bruce and Steve,

Useful suggestions but not my specific problem.

Under View | Current View, I had already checked "Show All Messages &
Group Messages By Conversation."

Under Tools | Options | Read I had already unchecked the option to
download xxx headers at a time, (downloading over 20,000 headers), as
well as trying limited downloads. I also sorted by date, & traced the
date and time of the missing postings and there were plenty of postings
received on both sides, but not the identified missing postings.

When you post a news message, it is initially only available on the news
server that you used. Depending on how busy the news server is, it
might take a few seconds, a few minutes, or a few hours before the
message is available for reading. And only people who use the same news
server can read your post, at that point.

Periodically, the news server contacts one or more other news servers.
It passes on any new posts that it has in public news groups and in turn
receives any new posts that the other servers have. If the received
posts are for a news group that the server carries, the server keeps a
copy. In this fashion, a news post is propagated to other news servers
around the world. This is not entirely reliable. It can take days for
a message to make it to another news server. And many messages
disappear into the Internet bit bucket. If you post 5 messages on news
server "A", posts 1, 2, 4 and 5 might make it to news server "B" and 1,
3 and 4 might make it to news server "C".

If the owner of a news server is interested in getting most of the news
posts, they will make sure that have news feeds from multiple other news
servers which also have multiple other feeds. Some news servers
routinely get only about 50% of the news posts. A better news server
would get more than 90%. There is no way to guarantee 100% coverage.

The owner (system administrator) of each news server decides which
newsgroups to carry. It is impractical for a news server to carry every
newsgroup (there are tens of thousands of news groups with millions of
new messages every day totally gigabytes). The newsgroups carried is
based on the news server's target audience. Also, the administrator
determines how long the messages should be kept. This often varies by
newsgroup. Discussion groups tend to be several weeks, whereas binary
groups tend towards several days due to their larger disk space
requirements. Also a news server may filter out messages based on size
and/or content.

For best results, use the "msnews.microsoft.com" news server for reading
and posting messages regarding help with Microsoft products. This is
the news server that most of the regulars use. You'll get more timely
messages, and miss fewer of them.

To set up an account for MSnews in OE
http://www.insideoe.com/resources/co...tm#setupmsnews


--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm


"Noel" wrote in message
ups.com...
Thanks, Bruce and Steve,

Useful suggestions but not my specific problem.

Under View | Current View, I had already checked "Show All Messages &
Group Messages By Conversation."

Under Tools | Options | Read I had already unchecked the option to
download xxx headers at a time, (downloading over 20,000 headers), as
well as trying limited downloads. I also sorted by date, & traced the
date and time of the missing postings and there were plenty of
postings
received on both sides, but not the identified missing postings.

Many thanks, Michael

A thorough explanation that seems to explain my problem (although I
don't understand why this would cause additional missing threads using
Outlook than Agent when both use the same news server).

Michael Santovec wrote:
For best results, use the "msnews.microsoft.com" news server for reading
and posting messages regarding help with Microsoft products. This is
the news server that most of the regulars use. You'll get more timely
messages, and miss fewer of them.

I thought I could use this suggestion above to test whether the problem
is indeed the news server not receiving all feeds.

However, the "msnews.microsoft.com" news server chooses to not support
the microsoft.public.excel.misc group!!!!!!

Pretty unbelievable considering that this is a high volume support site
providing quality support for microsoft excel - and is supported by
MVPs - and is the first forum found when googling "excel forum".

msnews supports the Excel newsgroup. Click on this link:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.excel.misc
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Noel" wrote in message
oups.com...
Many thanks, Michael

A thorough explanation that seems to explain my problem (although I
don't understand why this would cause additional missing threads using
Outlook than Agent when both use the same news server).

Michael Santovec wrote:
For best results, use the "msnews.microsoft.com" news server for reading
and posting messages regarding help with Microsoft products. This is
the news server that most of the regulars use. You'll get more timely
messages, and miss fewer of them.

I thought I could use this suggestion above to test whether the problem
is indeed the news server not receiving all feeds.

However, the "msnews.microsoft.com" news server chooses to not support
the microsoft.public.excel.misc group!!!!!!

Pretty unbelievable considering that this is a high volume support site
providing quality support for microsoft excel - and is supported by
MVPs - and is the first forum found when googling "excel forum".

Bruce,

You (and Michael) are right and I am wrong. Apologies also to
Microsoft. Their news server does indeed fix the problem.

My previous setup of this server for some reason resulted in only a
limited number of microsoft.public.excel groups appearing (and
excluding misc). Microsoft denied knowledge of the
microsoft.public.excel.misc group when I rang them for support, which
seemed to confirm what I had been seeing. I dumped my servers and
started from scratch using Michael's instructions above and the problem
is fixed!!!

Thank you to you both!

You're welcome & glad it's resolved. I'm sure Michael feels the same.
--
Bruce Hagen
MS MVP - Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Noel" wrote in message
ps.com...
Bruce,

You (and Michael) are right and I am wrong. Apologies also to
Microsoft. Their news server does indeed fix the problem.

My previous setup of this server for some reason resulted in only a
limited number of microsoft.public.excel groups appearing (and
excluding misc). Microsoft denied knowledge of the
microsoft.public.excel.misc group when I rang them for support, which
seemed to confirm what I had been seeing. I dumped my servers and
started from scratch using Michael's instructions above and the problem
is fixed!!!

Thank you to you both!

Using the same news server and newsgroup in different news readers
should give the same results.

Some things that could throw that off would be
- the timing of the header downloads (the news server is
deleting/expiring old messages and receiving new ones all the time)
- threading/grouping options
- view/sort options
- program bugs in the news reader determining new messages

--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm


"Noel" wrote in message
oups.com...
Many thanks, Michael

A thorough explanation that seems to explain my problem (although I
don't understand why this would cause additional missing threads using
Outlook than Agent when both use the same news server).

Michael Santovec wrote:
For best results, use the "msnews.microsoft.com" news server for
reading
and posting messages regarding help with Microsoft products. This
is
the news server that most of the regulars use. You'll get more
timely
messages, and miss fewer of them.

I thought I could use this suggestion above to test whether the
problem
is indeed the news server not receiving all feeds.

However, the "msnews.microsoft.com" news server chooses to not support
the microsoft.public.excel.misc group!!!!!!

Pretty unbelievable considering that this is a high volume support
site
providing quality support for microsoft excel - and is supported by
MVPs - and is the first forum found when googling "excel forum".