OL2000: Current Owner Status of a Task May Not Get Updated (199531)

SYMPTOMS

When you assign and reassign tasks in Microsoft Outlook, the current owner of the task may not be updated in the task lists of all previous owners of the task.

RESOLUTION

To work around this issue, each time a new owner accepts the task the new owner must open the task, make a change to the details or add comment to the body of the task, and then save and close it. To ensure that all previous owners of a task are updated with the new owner status, all owners of a task must follow these steps:

When you receive a new task request in your Inbox, open the task, click Accept, and then click OK.
On the Outlook Bar, click Task.
Double-click the task that you accepted in step 1.
Make a change to the details or add a comment to the body of the task.
Click Save, and click Close.

If this task is reassigned to someone else, all of the previous owners of the task will be updated with the new owner, assuming all previous owners have followed the previously listed steps.

MORE INFORMATION

This example further describes the issue:

User A assigns a task request to user B. After sending the request, if user A opens the task, the owner will be listed as user B.
User B accepts the task request. The task lists of user A and user B will have user B listed as the owner.
User B reassigns the task to user C. Now the task lists of user B and user C will list user C as the owner; however, user A will still have user B listed as the current owner.

This chain of events can keep reoccurring with any number of users with the only updates occurring for the last person reassigning the task and the person accepting the task. All previous users are not updated with current owner status.