Today I needed to resend an email I sent a day before – using Outlook 2011 for Mac. It took a while to compose this email so I got quite scared when I looked at my “Sent Items” folder and the mail wasn’t there.

My situation: I’m using an Exchange mailbox is primary mailbox and have a POP3 account for my university email address. The latter I only use to send emails (as the actual university email address is just a forwarding). If you have a similar setup and problem, read on.

On Outlook for Windows, sending an email through this email address/account, moves the sent email to the main “Sent Items” folder – which at the same time is the “Sent Items” folder for my Exchange mailbox.

Not so on Outlook for Mac. Here we have a separate “Sent Items” folder for POP3 accounts (called “On my computer”). I had this folder disabled since (I thought) I only use my Exchange mailbox. The option hide/show this folder is in the preferences under “General”. (I only have the German version of Outlook, so screenshots are in German only; sorry for that.)

Option to show or hide the "On my computer" folder(s).

Now the “On my computer” folder showed up in my “Sent Items” folder and there my mails were.

Sent items on my computer folder

Now, the quest at hand was: How do I get my sent mails into my “Sent Items” Exchange folder. The solution: Create a rule for this.

So, I went to “Settings” –> “Rules” and created a new rule in the “Outgoing” rules section.

Creating a local rule

Here you create a rule with:

• Condition: Account is YourPop3Account

• Execute: Move message to “Sent Items (Exchange)”

Leave the rest as it is and hit “OK”. Now try to send an email from your POP3 account and, voilà, the email you just sent should appear in your Exchange’s “Sent Items” folder.

Manchmal nervt Programmieren einfach. Da hat man folgende Zeile in C++ (bääääh):

PathOption test = mQ1Settings->WorldDir;

Versucht man diese mit Visual C++ 2010 zu kompilieren, stürtzt der Compiler ab. WTF?

Ok, kann ja mal passieren. Also danach gegoogelt. Zu dem Problem gibt es auch schon einen Bug-Report bei Microsoft. Allerdings meint der Verantwortliche dazu:

I can confirm that this is a bug in our compiler. This crash is unfortunate, but … blablabla …, we believe that this is not critical to fix in the next release.

Ein Compiler-Fehler ist “not critical”???

Nach diesem Statement folgt dann noch:

We will keep this bug in our database and will reconsider it for future releases.

Aja. Deshalb hat der Bug-Report auch den Status “Geschlossenes als nicht lösbar”. Klingt natürlich total danach, dass man sich damit später noch mal befasst.

Na gut. Zum Glück gibt es ja die Möglichkeit, seinen eigenen Senf zu dem Bug-Report abzugeben. Dafür muss man sich zwar registrieren, aber einen Account bei Microsoft’s Bug-Tracker könnte man ja evtl. häufiger gebrauchen

Also schnell auf “Registrieren” geklickt, irgendwelchen AGBs zugestimmt, und dann das:

WTF? Das ganze noch zwei Mal probiert, mit dem gleichen Ergebnis.

Schon sichtlich genervt, gebe ich der Sache noch eine Chance. Zum Glück kann man ja Microsoft “hierüber einen Fehlerbericht” senden. Also klicke ich auf den Link, mit der Erwartung, dass Microsoft jetzt über diesen Fehler benachrichtigt wurde. Aber Pustekuchen!

Ich lande in einem MSDN-Forum (mit dem viel-sagendenden Namen “MSDN, TechNet, and Expression Profile and Recognition System Discussions”).

Jetzt reicht’s mir. Wie oft will mich Microsoft denn noch auf eine andere Seite weiterleiten?? Ich wette, ich kann mich auch im MSDN-Forum nicht registrieren (hab ich allerdings nicht probiert). Dann darf ich am Ende einen Bug-Report (Forum) über einen Bug-Report (Microsoft’s Bug-Tracker) über einen Bug-Report (C++ Compiler) schreiben? Nein Danke!

Und dabei wollte ich doch einfach nur programmieren. Danke, Microsoft!

Update (22.6.2011): Das Problem besteht immer noch. Und ich habe inzwischen das Forum ausprobiert; wie erwartet tritt der Fehler hier auch auf, d.h. ich kann nicht mal einen Fehlerbericht im Forum schreiben. Das ist echt ne schwache Leistung, Microsoft!

So, I’m working on my WPF application and everything runs fine, but when I close it, I get this error message (together with this doesn’t-say-me-anything stacktrace):

[System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception]	{"Invalid window handle"}
  WindowsBase.dll!MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.DestroyWindow(object args) + 0x11a bytes	
  WindowsBase.dll!MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.Dispose(bool disposing, bool isHwndBeingDestroyed) + 0x8c bytes	
  WindowsBase.dll!MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.Dispose() + 0x14 bytes	
  PresentationCore.dll!System.Windows.Interop.HwndSource.Dispose(bool disposing) + 0x1f6 bytes	
  PresentationCore.dll!System.Windows.Interop.HwndSource.WeakEventDispatcherShutdown.OnShutdownFinished(object sender, System.EventArgs e) + 0x33 bytes	
  WindowsBase.dll!System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.ShutdownImplInSecurityContext(object state) + 0x49 bytes	
  mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.ExecutionContext.runTryCode(object userData) + 0x51 bytes	
  mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(System.Threading.ExecutionContext executionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback callback, object state) + 0x6a bytes	
  mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext executionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback callback, object state, bool ignoreSyncCtx) + 0x7e bytes	
  mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext executionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback callback, object state) + 0x2c bytes	
  WindowsBase.dll!System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.ShutdownImpl() + 0x72 bytes	
  WindowsBase.dll!System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherFrame frame) + 0xe1 bytes	
  WindowsBase.dll!System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrame(System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherFrame frame) + 0x49 bytes	
  WindowsBase.dll!System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.Run() + 0x4c bytes	
  PresentationFramework.dll!System.Windows.Application.RunDispatcher(object ignore) + 0x17 bytes	
  PresentationFramework.dll!System.Windows.Application.RunInternal(System.Windows.Window window) + 0x6f bytes	
  PresentationFramework.dll!System.Windows.Application.Run(System.Windows.Window window) + 0x26 bytes	
  PresentationFramework.dll!System.Windows.Application.Run() + 0x1b bytes	
  GuideDock.exe!GuideDock.App.Main() + 0x94 bytes
  mscoreei.dll!__CorExeMain@0()  + 0x38 bytes	
  mscoree.dll!748c7f16() 	
  [Frames below may be incorrect and/or missing, no symbols loaded for mscoree.dll]	
  mscoree.dll!748c4de3() 	
  kernel32.dll!@BaseThreadInitThunk@12()  + 0x12 bytes	
  ntdll.dll!___RtlUserThreadStart@8()  + 0x27 bytes	
  ntdll.dll!__RtlUserThreadStart@8()  + 0x1b bytes

This problem seemed to appear only randomly until I figured it out today. The problem can be reproduce by this XAML/C# code (together with a WPF window):

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public partial class MainWindow : Window {
  public MainWindow() {
    InitializeComponent();
 
    this.m_touchCanvas.MouseLeave += (s, e) => CrashAppOnClose();
  }
 
  private void CrashAppOnClose() {
    Window wnd = Window.GetWindow(this.m_touchCanvas);
    // This line throws a Win32Exception with "Ivalid window handle".
    wnd.PointToScreen(new Point());
  }
}

Now, when the user closes the window (without using the mouse; eg. with Alt+F4) while the mouse is still in the window, the call to wnd.PointToScreen() (line 11) results in the Win32Exception above. Unfortunately, the doesn’t seem to be any way to check whether this exception will be thrown – I already tried Window.IsLoaded as suggested here with no luck.

What’s more annoying is that the call to PointToScreen() does not appear in the stacktrace. I can’t even imaging how this is possible. That’s why it took me ages to figure this one out.

Btw: I’d like to send a bug report to Microsoft but they haven’t got my account working in three months.

Download the example project

Updates:

• The problem only arises on 64-bit Windows system. A correct exception is thrown on 32-bit systems.
• On 64-bit systems the Win32Exception can’t be caught in a try ... catch block. Both PointToScreen() and the point where the exception is thrown are on the same thread.

• I’ve managed to create a bug report for this problem.

Solution/Workaround:
Given the 32-bit error message – which reads “This Visual is not connected to a PresentationSource.” – I found a way to circumvent this problem. You need to use PresentationSource.FromVisual like this:

private void CrashAppOnClose() {
  Window wnd = Window.GetWindow(this.m_touchCanvas);
  if (PresentationSource.FromVisual(wnd) != null) {
    wnd.PointToScreen(new Point());
  }
}