Calendar Event Has Begun Appearing in Drafts every few minutes

Using Outlook 2010 against Exchange 2007.

A couple of weeks ago I found my drafts folder was filling up with dozens of copies of a calendar item. This was not a meeting request, just a reminder on my calendar.

I could not stop it, so I deleted the even hoping that would resolve the problem.

However, the problem begain immediately with another calendar item.

The will add over 150 items in my draft folder each day. Any solutions?

August 16th, 2012 3:27pm

This has just started happening to one of our users as well within the last few days. It has been happening on multiple events. Same thing where we deleted the event causing this and it starts doing it from another event. I have googled this and this post is the only thing I have found even mentioning this.

New virus?

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August 16th, 2012 6:48pm

Hi guys,

I would confirm whether you setup your hotmail account on your Outlook? I was received some reports that some hotmail users meet the same issue as you.

For the issue, you may improve your security level for your hotmail account. Change your password first!! If you sense with those request message as spam, block those sender. Refer to this link to block the sender. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/add-names-to-the-junk-email-filter-lists-HA010355043.aspx

(You may also adjust the security setting on web access.)

More information:

Do not reveal your email address on website, some security tips, read this blog. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/securitytipstalk/archive/2010/08/06/how-do-spammers-get-my-email-address.aspx

Hope these help you.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
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August 20th, 2012 1:50am

I do not think this is the issue for me. I have not put my Hotmail account in Outlook. The event showing up in drafts is a real even on my default Outlook calendar though the initial events came from a second calendar I created in Outlook. I am connecting to Exchange 2007.
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August 20th, 2012 3:26am

Well. You may start Outlook with the command line "Outlook.exe /safe" to check if you still receive the issue.

If you install any third party sync software both on client or server, please disable it. And turn off your firewall/AVG, especially mail scanner module for further testing.

Feel free to post back. Thanks.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
________________________________________
Come back and mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.


August 20th, 2012 9:32am

No Hotmail here either - No third party synch software.

This machine is part of a corporate network all running the same basic setup as far as firewall, AV, etc. goes - but this is the only machine so far reporting this issue.

I ran Malwarebytes on it thinking it might be virus related, but the scan came up clean.

Everytime we delete the offending event from the calendar and delete all the draft messages, it starts up again on a different random event on the calendar. Cannot pin down anything special about these events - totally random, but once it starts kicking out drafts, it just keeps generating them every few minutes until we delete the event. Makes over 100 per day.

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August 20th, 2012 9:32pm

Thunderpup -

Any new leads on this? I have come up with nothing, and still when Googling - this is the only discussion about it I can find.

We can't be the only 2 people in the world to have seen this....  My user had it stop for a couple of days, but now today it has started back up on a different calendar item.

very puzzling.

August 23rd, 2012 4:16pm

Not a thing on my end either. I ran Outlook in safe mode and made sure I was not logged in through Outlook on any other machines and I thought it helped but it did not stop it. It is very odd to find so little (nothing) info on a problem like us. Maybe we can have the syndrome named after us. lol
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August 23rd, 2012 4:59pm

You are not alone. Started for me about a week ago. Asked our network admin guy and have not gotten a response.
  • Edited by ejw123 Thursday, August 23, 2012 6:45 PM
August 23rd, 2012 6:45pm

Hello guys

This is a quick note to let you know that we are performing research on this issue.

Cheers,
Tony Chen

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August 24th, 2012 10:09am

Thanks for the update Tony!

Let us know if you have anything you want us to report on or test out. As I mentioned - I have this happening on only 1 reported machine on a corporate network of over 1000 PCs running Outlook.

August 24th, 2012 1:10pm

This just started happening on one reported machine here as well. Same symptoms: draft folder filling up with a calendar event. This machine is on a corporate network.
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August 28th, 2012 6:17pm

If it were just the draft folder filling up I could deal with it. It's the constant work interrupting pop-ups on the screen that are driving me crazy!
August 29th, 2012 1:58pm

Hi,

This issue seems to be machine specific. Here i would suggest you to open support case with Microsoft to deal with this issue.

You can contact customer central on 1-800-936-4900 or you can create online case by visiting website http://support.microsoft.com/oas

Thanks

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August 29th, 2012 8:07pm

For those who are experiencing this problem, what mobile phone do you use and do you have it connected to Exchange?
August 29th, 2012 8:35pm

I don't see how it can be machine specific as far as the client is concerned. This happens even when Outlook is not running on any of my devices. In that state, where only my iPhone is getting mail I continue to get multiple copies of a calendar item the draft items folder. Maybe it is an Exchange issue or a mailbox corruption issue. My mailbox will be moved in the near future, I'll see if the problem survives that.
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August 29th, 2012 9:11pm

This same exchange account is accessed on four devices: iPhone 4S, iMac, Mac Book Air, Dell desktop.
August 31st, 2012 4:28pm

Hi

You are not alone!

Exactly the same, started about 2 weeks ago and sending me crazy as well. Running Outlook 2010 client with hosted Exchange 2007 (Cobweb Solutions in UK).

I have the client installed on a another PC (totaly differnt specification PC) and tried this yesterday and had the same problem so it is not machine specific.

The calendar events that cause the problem are in a seperate Calendar to my my work calendar. The events are all multiday all day events.

I have an Iphone/iPad synced via Hosted Exchang and this does not trigger any reminders thank goodness.

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September 1st, 2012 4:25pm

I am have been having the same problem for the last couple of weeks. This is crazy annoying. Hopefully someone comes up with a solution soon!
September 4th, 2012 3:10pm

Sorry I was MIA for a bit - on vacation the last week.

Still no resolution, but in the case here the user has the outlook account tied to an android LG phone. The calendar itself is her main Outlook Calendar, not shared. The events this has happened on have been single day events, but some were time-specific and some were all day events.

Has anyone actually tried opening a MS support ticket on this?

They have marked this as "answered", so I don't know if that means they still watch this thread or not, or whether they will offer something more helpful here.

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September 4th, 2012 4:11pm

I just found this thread. This has been happening on my machine for about a month now. 

What I have noticed is that it creates a draft of an event that I have already have and it doesn't matter if it is all day of for a block of time. I have tried deleting the offending events, but it then switches to another event and starts creating the drafts again. Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is that when the recurring reminder is opened, invite attendees has been turned on.

September 11th, 2012 4:39pm

I had a client who had the exact same issue and like described here it only occured for Calendar events longer than 1 day.

Deleting the calendar event only causes the next day long event to start being spammed to the drafts box.

The client had multiple iOS devices set up to access the exchange, the offender seems to be their MacBook which was the only device set up to sync with their calendar, after removing the accout from the macbook the issue appears to have stopped.

Re-added accounts to the other iOS devices and so far no issue.

Most likely a recent update to OS X has caused this.

EDIT: Our servers are all running Exchange 2007, would be interesting to know if this occurs with exchange 2010 aswell

  • Edited by Captain Krispy Wednesday, September 12, 2012 12:37 AM update
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September 12th, 2012 12:35am

Good suggestion Captain Krispy. I had a hunch it might have been Mountain Lion.

What worked for me was simply unchecking Calendar syncing under my Exchange account in Mail, Contacts & Calendars. I didn't have to remove the Exchange account entirely.

September 13th, 2012 9:26pm

Back for an update: I logged into the Outlook Web Access and went to the drafts folder - cleared that out. Then went to the calendar in OWA and removed the events that keep showing up in the drafts folder.

This appears to have stopped the drafts buildup.

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September 14th, 2012 12:07am

You are not alone.

Corporate machine. Sync'd to iPhone and iPad. I was sync'd to the Macbook Pro (with ML) but I inactivated that for the time being.

Draft stopped for a while and they started back today. My exchange account is still inactive on the Mac.

September 17th, 2012 7:29am

Just got a "new" - sort of related issue occuring with this...

Now in addition to the calendar event drafts, my user has a single email stuck in drafts that keeps refreshing itself every minute. It can be deleted, but in a minute it comes right back. Then as you watch it it deletes/recreated itself every minute.

I just discovered today, contrary to what I was originally told - she DOES synch this account on her MAC at home. Previously I did not know this, but we had her change her password in order to stop the MAC from synching in case it was running.

Even after changing the password to stop the MAC, and turning off Synch on her LG Android, it continues.

Another notable aspect is that this occurs within OWA even when Outlook Client is not runnning.

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September 17th, 2012 4:43pm

UPDATE -

When we changed my users password to make sure her MAC stopped synching with our exchange server - the problem continued for a while - but - now after a while it seems to have stopped.

She has not updated the password on her MAC account and I think what we saw was it continued synching for a while because it took some time for AD to replicate things out the where it stopped authenticating the MAC and during that delay the behavior continued.

I have instructed her to leave the MAC alone and not let it connect to our system for a couple days to see if this stabilizes. Once we know it has stopped, I will have her recreate the account on the MAC and monitor from there.

September 19th, 2012 4:15pm

I installed a system update on the Mac bringing it to 10.8.2. This required a reboot. After I cleaned out my drafts folder this morning, I've gone all day without a single calendar event showing up there. I no longer have my iPhone but I do have an iPad still talking to Exchange. I did not fire up Outlook 2011 on the Mac but instead have used a remote desktop connection for email (usual practice). I'll fire it up and see if the problem begins again but I'm thinking maybe the Apple update fixed the problem.
  • Proposed as answer by blunderdog Monday, October 01, 2012 1:07 PM
  • Unproposed as answer by Thunderpup Friday, October 26, 2012 6:28 PM
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September 28th, 2012 9:58pm

Days later and still no problem with a growing drafts folder.
October 1st, 2012 1:07pm

I'm still experiencing the problem.  I have a MBP, iPhone and iPad all connected to Exchange and I'm still receiving the build-up in my Drafts folder.  Help!
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October 1st, 2012 7:38pm

My need for a solution has vanished - although I'd like to know a good solid answer as well.

But in our case - my user decided it was not necessary to synch with her MAC at home so she just removed the account from the MAC. All problems have stopped.

October 1st, 2012 7:48pm

I am having this problem as well in our Exchange 2007 environment. I have a single user with a PC at work, iPad, iPhone, and iMac at home. He uses outlook 2011 for mac on his iMac and events on his calendar are replicating to his DRAFTS folder. Removing his mail from his Mac is not an option though it solves the problem.

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October 12th, 2012 12:44pm

Do you have Outlook web? If so I think a temporary fix would be to remove outlook 2011 from the mac. Then have the user use Outlook web. I am hoping this will be figured out soon for a more permanet fix.
October 15th, 2012 3:54pm

Bad news here. After running for days without the problem, it has returned now. Exact same issue with calendar events showing up in my drafts folder.
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October 15th, 2012 7:20pm

I had the user install the latest updates to office for mac 2011 and for the time being the issue has gone away. we will see if this is a permanent solution.

October 16th, 2012 1:02pm

I have had this issue for a couple of months now. The drafts only appear in connection with calendar events that I created in Outlook 2010, not with calendar events created on my Mac (latest OS). Has anyone had any recent luck addressing this?
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November 8th, 2012 6:26pm

I have a user who is experiencing the same thing with two calendar events on a similar configuration. (We have Exchange 2007, but he is using Outlook 2011 and his asst. is using Outlook 2010. He also has at least one iPad and iPhone.)

Anyway, what I've noticed is that one of the events is creating a draft every 15 minutes.  It has been doing this for at least 12 hours. Prior to that, it was creating one or more drafts at different intervals, including every minute for a short period of time.

The other one creates two identical drafts each time, but the frequency is much lower and not any pattern I can discern.

Both events had been calendar items with pending invitations, which I canceled. Unfortunately, that didn't change anything.  All of this started around the release of iOS6 and mostly ended when Apple released the 6.0.1 patch, but I have no way to prove it's related.

His assistant populates his calendar with about 99 percent of the events, but only these two are currently causing trouble.  I believe my next step will be to delete the events and add them again in Outlook 2011.  Interested to see if that makes a difference.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE ... after a while, the two events for which the pending invitations were canceled stopped generating drafts. However, other random events are now creating drafts. When I checked them in Outlook 2010, they also had generated pending invitations.

I found three more instances locally, and some other techs traced it back to iCal since the release of Mountain Lion. Based on the release date of 10.8 and all the other users on this thread who have Macs involved, this sure seems likely.

  • Edited by HBS Tech Wednesday, December 05, 2012 2:29 PM Update
December 4th, 2012 4:56pm

I too, was experiencing this. There seems to be no indication of a solution anywhere on the web. HOWEVER, I figured it out. 

Here's the solution: Strangely, it's not really an exchange issue, but rather an issue with calendaring on the OSX side. 

So you understand here's the configuration that can cause problems:

  • you are using an exchange server to connect your email/calendar/notes/tasks...
  • You use a PC (or VM PC) for some/most of your exchange/outlook activities
  • You may or may not have MS Office 2011 (Mac) installed.
  • You have one or more Apple devices connected to your exchange account (iPhone, iPad, any Mac)

After installing Mountain lion, you start noticing events being magically duplicated every few minutes in your outlook draft folder. If you delete an event, another one takes its place.

HERE IS THE FIX:

On the apple side (OSX, IOS) you MUST turn on calendar sync in all the exchange accounts on all your devices. I thought I had, then discovered that my MS Office Outlook on my Mac was missing that sync. It doesn't seem to matter which apple device is missing the sync, it only takes one of them. Once you set calendar sync to "on" for all the apple devices that access that calendar, just like magic, the phantom multi event creation stops.

You should check all MS products on the OSX/IOS devices AND all apple devices that allow syncing. I haven't turned on notes sync through the cloud, so that isn't one of the items that cause problems.

If you do this and the multi still appears, you missed something on one of your apple devices.

Sweet!

  • Proposed as answer by Dar1-or-Joe Sunday, December 16, 2012 6:24 PM
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December 16th, 2012 6:24pm

Hi folks

I face a similar situation with mail.app 6.2(build1499)) on (iOS 10.8.2), iPhone mail and Outlook 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2 (Citrix) syncing from an Exchange 2007 server.

The user had every possible option to sync the calendar switched on. I had him switched off these options on his Apple devices, rebooting Mac and iPhone and switching the options on again.

We only had 5mins to test afterwards. It seemed ok now. But I'm only sure it's working again if he reports back tomorrow. I'll keep you updated.

Update:
The user reports, that all is fine now. So, that worked;-)
  • Edited by neocid Tuesday, February 05, 2013 9:34 AM
  • Proposed as answer by neocid Tuesday, February 05, 2013 9:34 AM
January 24th, 2013 3:44pm

None of the above options worked for me.  What I ended up doing was opening the meetings and re-saving them with no changes.  What I am finding is that when my assistant sometimes sets up meetings, (on a Windows machine) there is a conflict where I cannot delete them.  When I set up meetings, she cannot delete them.  There were 3 meetings that were problematic. Once I opened them all (on my MAC in Outlook 2011) and re-saved, the problem went away. 

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September 13th, 2015 6:34pm

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