Microsoft KB Archive/244334

= OLEXP: "Error: -16999" Retrieving E-mail with Outlook Express 5 for Macintosh =

Article ID: 244334

Article Last Modified on 10/2/2002

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Outlook Express 5.0 Macintosh Edition

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This article was previously published under Q244334



For information about the differences between Microsoft Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook e-mail clients, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

257824 OL2000: Differences Between Outlook and Outlook Express



SYMPTOMS
When you attempt to retrieve e-mail with Outlook Express 5 for Macintosh from a server that does not contain any messages for you, you may receive the following error message:

Error: -16999



CAUSE
This error message is generated when there is no mail on the server.



RESOLUTION
This error message does not indicate an issue. You can safely ignore the error message.

NOTE: This issue is fixed in Microsoft Outlook Express version 5.02.



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.



MORE INFORMATION
Outlook Express 5 for Macintosh uses an UIDL request to determine whether a server has mail. In some instances, the server responds with an empty list if there is no mail.

If there are no messages when a client sends an UIDL request, the server should not return "-ERR." The server should return "+OK" with an empty list (just a period to state "end of UIDL list"). For example:

Send data (6 bytes).

<000000B0> UIDL

Receive data (8 bytes).

<0000007C> +OK

.

Some servers respond with the "-ERR" message, which triggers the "Error: -16999" error message in Outlook Express. The error message does not occur if there are messages on the server.

Keywords: kberrmsg kbprb kbpending KB244334

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