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Moving the scrollbar handle in Outlook 2007's message list doesn't scroll the messages until I let go of the handle. Can I change this behavior? It's pretty annoying, and makes the scrollbar kinda useless.

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Would you be able to show us a screenshot with a helpful arrow to show us which scroll bar you are talking about. If I remember correctly, there are a few scroll bars. (Only asking this to help support your answer.) – David Jan 24 '11 at 19:58
There's only one scroll bar that scrolls the messages. Note the plural. – Ori Pessach Jan 25 '11 at 15:24

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Wow, I was surprised to see that I could duplicate this.

Seems like the only way the scroll bar starts working properly is to do the following:

  1. Select whatever folder you want to see (ie Inbox)
  2. Drag the scroll bar to the absolute bottom of the list
  3. Scroll bar seems to work properly now

Very, very strange. Maybe someone should file a bug with MS and hopefully we will see a fix for this?

I agree that this can't be the intended behavior.

Edit: Scrolling with the mousewheel is probably the best workaround overall.

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Nope... That doesn't work for me. And the mousewheel doesn't let me scroll quickly to the area of the message I'm looking for and then slowly scan for it. As for reporting bugs to MS, I tried that before. I'm willing to let others waste their time now. – Ori Pessach Jan 25 '11 at 15:23
up vote 0 down vote

Outlook is doing more than I believe you think it is.

When you have a folder with a number of messages below a certain threshold (looks to be 99), Outlook will load the entire list of messages and as you drag the scroll bar the message list will scroll.

However, once you are above the threshold, Outlook doesn't appear to load the entire message list into memory. Once this happens, the list no longer scrolls as you drag the scroll bar.

You can see evidence of this by going into a folder with >99 messages, and use the scroll bar down arrow to scroll through the entire list so every message has become visible. Once you've done this, the message list will now scroll as you drag the scroll bar.

This looks like a performance/memory optimization to me. I'd suggest using search (the 2007 and up search is quite good) or have a better organization strategy.

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