Blank Reading Pane

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Blank Reading Pane
Add-in Express Regions for Outlook 
Andy W




Posts: 19
 Joined: 2017-09-27
Hi,

Currently, some of our users are experiencing issues where their reading pane or entire inspector view is blank.
We believe this issue seems to be happening in users who have touch screen enabled laptops, or at least the vast majority of cases are.

This is occurring when users are opening an email in the inspector whilst the reading pane is turned off, or when they open an email directly from a notification, this happens whether our pane is present or if they are clicking on standard emails where we aren't adding anything.

Commenting out all FormsManager code, this problem goes away, we are just wondering if you have any suggestions or any reports of this before as we are at a loss.

Thanks,
A
Posted 10 Jan, 2018 10:13:08 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18830
 Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Andy,

I'm sorry for the delayed response; I've overlooked your post for some reason.

I wonder if your add-in contains any logic related to showing/hiding panes? Does the issue occur if your add-in doesn't manipulate the visibility of the form(s)?


Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 15 Jan, 2018 09:56:15 Top
Andy W




Posts: 19
 Joined: 2017-09-27
Hi Andrei,

Yes, we do manipulate the visibility of the forms.

This seems to be happening to a lot of our customers, but the one laptop we could reproduce this on is currently unavailable, this doesn't happen on every machine and we are unsure what the common denominator is.

Is there anything we could be doing wrong on our end, or is there anything that we can check to help fix this problem?
Is this something you have seen at all?

Thanks,
A
Posted 15 Jan, 2018 10:08:12 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18830
 Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Andy,

We haven't run in such an issue. Is it reproducible on a new empty add-in? If not, try commenting out blocks of your code to locate the cause of the issue.


Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 16 Jan, 2018 05:34:04 Top
Andy W




Posts: 19
 Joined: 2017-09-27
Hi Andrei,

I have managed to reproduce this in a very basic Add-In that modifies the visibility and touches the HTMLBody.
I have added a link to the project below:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/61x3zi10vb4prjp/OutlookBlankMessageTest.zip?dl=0

100% reproducible by either disabling the Reading Pane and opening the email in the inspector, or by clicking on an email notification.

Like I said before, the issue seems to arise more in machines with touch capability, by disabling the following device, this issue goes away.
https://postimg.org/image/o3os3db7n/

We also came across this post where users were having the same issue:
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1830226-outlook-2013-blank-message-body-but-only-when-reading-pane-hidden

One of the users mentioned it was only happening on computers with touchscreens, and it was related to using the Sharefile add-in, looking at this add-in, it appears that they are using Add-In Express as well.

Any assistance with this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
A
Posted 19 Jan, 2018 06:49:42 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18830
 Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Andy,

We've modified the project a bit; make sure you read all comments. Please test the project and let me know about your result. I'll send an email to you in a minute; the email contains a download link to the modified project.


Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 19 Jan, 2018 07:46:29 Top
Andy W




Posts: 19
 Joined: 2017-09-27
Hello Andrei,

The Add-In was created for the purposes of recreating the bug with minimal code, we do follow best practices in our actual Add-In.

Even with the changes that you have made, the issue is still there, we don't believe this is an issue with anything we have done, but instead is an issue with Add-In Express.

Please find a screenshot below showing how the message body doesn't show, but you can still see the details of the sender.
https://postimg.org/image/5bvr21wz7/

It seems as if just touching the message body and doing nothing with it is causing it to be blank.

Again, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
A
Posted 19 Jan, 2018 11:15:52 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18830
 Joined: 2006-05-11
Hello Andy,

We would like to access an affected machine remotely. Is this possible? If yes, I suggest using TeamViewer; in this case you'll need to send me your session ID and password to the support email address.


Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 22 Jan, 2018 04:40:02 Top