BES synchronization

Deleted messages on BlackBerry are not showing up as deleted in Outlook Inbox and read messages are not showing up as read.

Another common BlackBerry synchronization issue is also when you delete messages on the BlackBerry and the message does not get deleted from your Outlook inbox even if you click on “Reconcile Now” from the BlackBerry menu. Also another common effect is that when you read a message it doesn’t show up as read on the other side and still shows up as a ‘NEW’ message.

This problem usually stems from a DLL mismatch. There are two very important DLL files that are integral to the proper running of your BES server and those are cdo.dll and mapi32.dll. The versions of these DLL files need to be the same on your BES server and your Exchange server. The easiest way to do this is when you are patching your Exchange server you ensure that you patch your BES server with the exact same patches. This will ensure that things are always in ’sync.’ You can check the version of a file by right clicking on it and going to it’s properties and then checking the ‘Version’ tab.

Now if you think you have patched everything and the DLL files are still mismatched, then you can just copy the DLL file from the Exchange server to your BES server and then register the DLL file using the regsvr32 command and then the path to the DLL. For example, to register cdo.dll you would type: regsvr32 cdo.dll ‘C:\program files\exchsrvr\bin\cdo.dll’.

I of course would like to remind you that before doing any of this to ensure that you always have a full backup of the server you are working on in case you blow something up. Also I would not copy DLL’s from the BES server to the Exchange server, that can cause some interesting results and it is probably a path you do not want to go down. Instead make sure you are copying from the Exchange server to the BES server as I had mentioned above.

After the DLL files that have the version mismatch have been copied and registered, then reboot the BES server and test out deletions and read messages again. You should see that things work as intended now.

-RP

Shift deleting of message in your inbox not deleting on your BlackBerry?

Another common BlackBerry question I get is regarding deletion of messages. I could probably write a whole novel about all the different issues you can run into with BlackBerry synchronization but I’ll spare you the pain and just mention a few things.

When people hold the shift key down and hit delete to permanently delete items in their Outlook it doesn’t give the BES server (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) time to process the deletion so the deletion doesn’t synchronize and in turn your BlackBerry still shows the message as available. How do you fix this? You need to turn on “Hard Deletions” in your BES server. What this does is it allows the BES server to process the shift-deletion of emails so they synchronize properly.

You can do this by following the instructions at this Blackberry Knowledgebase Article Doc ID KB14142.

-RP