Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure & Resource Center

Product Summary

Product: Outlook Version: 97 Category: Compliant* Operating System: 32-Bit Win Language: Chinese - Traditional Release Date: 25 Apr 1997 Operational Range: 01 Apr 1601 - 31 Aug 4500 Prerequisites: Office 97 Service Release 2 for Outlook 8.0 - 8.03 users and O97dtfix.exe for the Outlook 97 Import and Export update Product Dependencies: Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 3.51 with Service Pack 5 or greater, or Windows NT 4 (no specific Service Pack is required, though Service Pack 2 or higher is recommended) Clock Dependencies: Operating System Clock Last Updated: 16 Jun 1999

Product Details

Product Maintenance: While Microsoft continues to recommend that customers install the most current Service Pack/Release for non-Year 2000 reasons, we understand that, for many reasons, this may not be possible. In order to aid our customers' Year 2000 efforts, Microsoft intends to maintain Office 97 Service Release 2 as compliant through January 1, 2001. Newer Service Packs are also to be maintained as compliant, and may include additional non-Year 2000 updates. This is intended to minimize the Year 2000 as a reason to upgrade. Prerequisites: OUTLLIB.DLL version 8.04 for Outlook 8.0 - 8.03 users. This patch is available in Office 97 SR-2, which can be downloaded at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/Articles/sr2fact.htm. The changes in Office 97 that were made in SR 2, including Y2K updates, are listed in http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q151/0/20.asp. All Y2K issues reported as fixed in SR2 exist in SR1 and in the base Office 97 product. The issues addressed by this update exist in all Office 97 releases, including SR 1 and the base release. The Microsoft Outlook Support for Lotus cc: Mail from the Outlook 97 ValuPack is Year 2000 compliant only with the update obtained from the Office 97 SR-2 Patch. Importing or exporting text files with dates formatted with two-digit years may result in some years being designated in the wrong century. For more information on these issues and to download the 097dtfix update please see Knowledge Base article Q197237. How the product handles dates: Storage. Dates in Outlook 97 are stored and manipulated as full dates. Dates are integral to the productÆs operation. The system clock is used for current date and time data Formatting. Dates are displayed in short date format (2-digit years) and long date format (4-digit years) specified in the Regional Settings applet in the Control Panel. The Regional Settings applet can be set to use the Gregorian Calendar date format, in either Chinese or English, or the Republic of China (R.O.C.) era year date format. For these three calendar formats, date entry fields parse and accept inputs that follow the formats specified in the Regional Settings applet. Parsing on date entry. If Outlook 97 version 8.0, 8.01, 8.02 or 8.03 is being used, obtain the Office 97 SR-2 Patch to properly handle short dates when scheduling events that span the century boundary. If the user has Microsoft Outlook 97 Service Release-2 (version 8.04) or Microsoft Outlook 98 (version 8.5) then this update is not needed since the fix is already included in those versions of Outlook. When using the Gregorian calendar, Outlook employs a two-digit date window that spans from 30 years prior to and 70 years forward from a reference date. Each date fieldÆs reference date is either the current date or a related date field. The date range for printing an Outlook calendar is set to 30 years prior to and 70 years forward from the current date. When using the R.O.C. era calendar, dates are parsed into the corresponding R.O.C. era years. The current year is the number of years from the start of the R.O.C. era, 1 January 1912, with year 1912 being R.O.C. era year 1. For example, Gregorian year 1998 is R.O.C. era year 87. When using the R.O.C. calendar, 1-, 2-, and 3-digit year entries are unambiguous and are interpreted as is. That is, if using Y/M/D format, "87/3/12" is R.O.C. 87 March 12th (Gregorian 1998) and "105/3/12" is R.O.C. 105 March 12th (Gregorian year 2016). Note that the Import/Export Wizard only accepts dates in the Gregorian calendar format.   Two-digit shortcut handling: To interpret 2-digit year entries while using the Gregorian calendar, Outlook employs a date window that includes 30 years back and 70 years forward from a reference date. If a date is entered that does not match the systemÆs short date format, a standard algorithm is used to attempt to discern what the user meant. Only when a valid date can not be interpreted is an error generated. Certain features in Outlook are designed to use different parsing algorithms that better fit their particular context. The Birthday and Anniversary fields employ a window that includes 95 years back and 5 years forward from the current date, while the Inbox Assistant and Out of Office Assistant's Advanced rule settings use the range of 1980-2079. As mentioned above in the Parsing on date entry section, 1-, 2-, and 3-digit year entries are unambiguous and are interpreted as is when using the R.O.C. era calendar. Importing or exporting text files with dates formatted with two-digit years may result in some years being designated in the wrong century. For more information on these issues and to download the 097dtfix update please see Knowledge Base article Q197237. Common date usage errors: In versions prior to 8.04, Outlook parses dates that are entered with 2-digit years as 20xx. For example, if you enter 12/25/99 into a date field, the date will be parsed and stored as 12/25/2099 (not 12/25/1999). There are two areas of Outlook in which this parsing behavior commonly manifests itself: Several places in the Outlook User Interface parse date entries and will show this behavior. For example, in the calendar module, if the user choose "Go To Date" from the Go menu and type in "12/25/99", Outlook will go to the day 12/25/2099. Because two-digit years are parsed in this way, if the user has custom forms that make calculations based on dates, these calculations may appear to be incorrect. When a date is entered and displayed using only 2-digit years, there is no visual prompt that the date has been parsed to the next century. For example (again, when the system clock has a year of 2000 or greater), suppose a form allows a user to enter a purchase date, and then uses script to calculate a warranty date 1 year in the future. If this form only shows two digits for the year entered, then the user can type 12/1/99 in the purchase date and the warranty date is calculated as 12/1/2100. This is because the original date was parsed as 12/1/2099. Since the form only shows 2-digit years for dates, both dates appear to be correct and display as 12/1/99 and 12/1/00, however, the dates are stored and evaluated internally as 12/1/2099 and 12/1/2100. The updated OUTLLIB.DLL version 8.04 from Office 97 SR-2 changes the parsing behavior to the expected results. For end-to-end compliance when using Outlook 97 as an e-mail client, the user needs to use a Year 2000 compliant mail server, including Exchange Server 4.0 Service Pack 5 or Exchange Server 5.0 Service Pack 2 or greater. Note that other parts of e-mail connectivity also need to be Year 2000 compliant, for example client transports, server connectors, gateways, etc. The Microsoft Outlook Support for Lotus cc:Mail from the Outlook 97 ValuPack has no known Year 2000 issues with the installation of the update referenced in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q190884. Testing guidelines and recommendations: In general, avoid testing in a production environment because one cannot predict side effects with other non-compliant products. Interoperability testing with other Microsoft Office products and with Exchange Server can be conducted safely. The system clock should be advanced to future dates to properly test features, such as appointments and tasks that use the current date as reference dates. Note that reminders for future appointments may be set off during this testing and will not re-notify when date is set back. Additionally, users should enter dates using 4-digit year information (Gregorian calendar) or specific R.O.C. era year information (R.O.C. era calendar) instead of using a truncated 2-digit year format. Furthermore, developers should use these specific year formats on form controls to help ensure the correct/desired date is entered and recorded. If the user uses Outlook to send or view Microsoft Exchange Forms Designer (EFD) custom forms, please note that the Microsoft Exchange Forms Designer is a Visual Basic 4.0 16-bit application. It will default 2-digit dates to the century of the current system date. The 2-digit year and 4-digit date fields on custom Exchange Forms Designer are stored as string values. These custom date fields will not sort or filter as expected. Please see the Visual Basic (16-bit) Product Guide for details on Visual Basic 4.0 compliance issues. See the Microsoft Exchange Server Product Guide for details on server date handling characteristics. If Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0x is installed, please see the Internet Explorer Product Guide for details on Internet Explorer date handling characteristics.

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