Using Thread Compressor

Problems with Thread Compressor:

1) You have to manually locate the first email you want to start each thread.

2) Threads are identified by the subject line, so if the subject line changes, or someone later starts a new thread with the same subject line, you get unpredictable results.

3) Emails might be placed in the newly compressed thread out of order.

4) Links at the front of the newly compressed thread might refer to an email that was dropped and not present in the newly compressed thread.

5) The newly compressed thread has the timestamp that it was created, and not the timestamp of the original starting email in the thread.

Nice try, but not really useful.


frankl2 July 14, 2005 (Article Rating: )

Since Frank's comment came 3 years after the original article, I feel I can riposte it just over 2 years later :)

I wrote Thread Compressor originally for Outlook 2000, as a COM addin. That is the version which Evan talked about here, although there was a VB sample called Thread Compressor which was published on MSDN, is completely unrelated to my version, and isn't as good.

To answer Frank's comments:
1) No, you don't. TC compresses the conversations within a folder - all you need to do is tell it what folders to compress.

2) No, they aren't. Threads are identified based on the conversation index and are completely unaffected by subject line changes.

3) No, they won't. Since it uses conversation index, TC identifies replies to messages so handles "forking" of threads, successfully keeping the last messages in each fork, regardless of date/time.

4) Possibly; if someone replies to a message and alters the original content of the message within their reply (ie they reply, and delete chunks of what the original message said within the text of their reply), then that modified version stays. This is the principle risk of running TC.

5) There is the option of keeping the original mail - ie the mail which started the thread, and all the mails which finished each of the forks within the thread. TC doesn't build a single view of the thread, it only removes the spurious replies within it.

I suspect Frank may have been commenting on the MSDN sample, but thought I'd respond anyway :) TC is, according to the thousands of users inside MS, very useful indeed. One day, Outlook will hopefully include something similar but more robust, taking into account the concerns with point 4) above.

See http://blogs.technet.com/ewan/archive/2007/04/23/thread-compressor-for-outlook-do-you-want-it.aspx for a bit more detail, or http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=threadc4.zip for links to where you can download the older version.

Ewan

ewandmsft October 03, 2007 (Article Rating: )