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 Year 2000 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.
Description of how the product handles dates:
Storage: Dates in Outlook 97 are stored and manipulated as full dates. Dates are integral to the product's operation. The system clock is used for current date and time data.
Formatting. Dates are displayed in 2-digit and 4-digit formats, using the short and long date formats specified in the Regional Settings applet in the Control Panel. Date entry fields parse and accept inputs that follow the formats specified in the Regional Settings applet.
Parsing on date entry. Outlook 8.0x employs a two-digit date window that spans from 30 years prior to and 70 years forward from a reference date. Each date field's reference date is either the current date or a related date field. The date range for printing an Outlook calendar is limited to 30 years prior to and 70 years forward from the current date.
If you are using Outlook 97 version 8.0, 8.01, 8.02 or 8.03, obtain the 8.04 version of OUTLLIB.DLL from the Office 97 SR-2 Patch to properly handle short dates when scheduling events that span the century boundary.
If you are using Microsoft Outlook 97 SR-2 (version 8.04) or Microsoft Outlook 98 (version 8.5.5104.6) then you do not need this update since the fix is already included in those versions of Outlook.
2-digit shortcut handling:
For 2-digit year entries, Outlook employs a window that includes 30 years back and 70 years forward from a reference date. If a date is entered that does not match the systems short date format, a standard algorithm is used to attempt to discern what the user meant. Only if no valid date can be made 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.
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:
1. Outlook originally parsed dates that are entered with 2 digit year components in an unexpected way. If you enter 12/25/99 into a date field, the date will be parsed and stored as 12/25/2099 instead of 12/25/1999. This behavior has been resolved with the patch indicated below. 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 the unexpected behavior. For example, in the calendar module, if you choose "Go To Date" from the Go menu and type in "12/25/99", Outlook will take you to the day 12/25/2099.
Because two digit years are parsed in an unexpected way, if you have 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 clue that the date has been parsed to the next century. For example, suppose you have a form that 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 digits years for dates, both dates APPEAR to be correct and display as 12/1/99 and 12/1/00. Internally, the dates are stored and evaluated as 12/1/2099 and 12/1/2100.
The updated OUTLLIB.DLL version 8.04, available in the Office 97 SR-2 Patch, changes the parsing behavior to the expected results.
2. For end-to-end compliance when using Outlook 97 as your e-mail client, you need to use a Year 2000 compliant mail server, including Exchange Server 4.0 SP5 or Exchange Server 5.0 SP2 or greater. Note that other parts of e-mail connectivity need to be Year 2000 compliant as well for full compliance, for example client transports, server connectors, gateways, etc.
3. 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. The resolved issue is simply that 2-digit shortcuts were assumed to be 19xx dates.
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 instead of using the truncated 2-digit year format. Furthermore, developers should use 4-digit year formats on form controls to help ensure the correct/desired date is entered and recorded. If you use Outlook to send or view Microsoft Exchange Forms Designer 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 Short and Long date fields on custom EFD forms are stored as string values. These custom date fields will not sort or filter correctly. 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 compliance issues.
If you install Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0x, see the Internet Explorer Product Guide for details on Internet Explorer compliance issues.
Outlook 97 uses a number of Microsoft Office 97 shared files for the implementation of task automation, online help, installation, graphics, file find and file I/O. For additional information that is appropriate for Outlook 97, please refer either to the document for the particular Office version that this application came with, or, in the case of a standalone product, to any version 97 Microsoft Office document.
