You (or users at your firm) may encounter an “Unable to retrieve email from Exchange or a conflict exists” error sporadically when contributing emails into your FileSite document management system. This affects users of FileSite 8.2 and FileSite 8.5. While the issue can sometimes be resolved by reinstalling FileSite, it’s nicer to know why it might occur… as well as having a fix which displays a little more finesse. I’ll tell you about both.
Scope of the problem
This can occur with all versions of FileSite 8.2 through FileSite 8.5. It is not always firm-wide: it can be triggered on one person’s machine while other desktops continue to be fine. The message would appear when the user contributes email to the DMS.
It’s been my experience that one percent of desktops may not upgrade successfully from one FileSite update to the next. So, even after you have upgraded to FileSite 8.5 SP2 Update 4, you should keep this tip handy.
How to troubleshoot
If this error is reported, it’s worth troubleshooting this scenario even if you think you fixed it before.
Confirm that the problem desktop has the correct FileSite dll version. If iManExt.dll is out of date, force the update again.
Also inspect this registry setting described a few sections below.
The Cause
This error was a known symptom of Redemption conflicts prior to FileSite 8.5 SP2 Update 4. In particular, the cause was the absence of Unicode support in Redemption versions prior to 4.x. FileSite attempts to pass a Unicode email through Redemption and <zap> you have the error.
The culprit would be the installation or update of any number of Outlook add-ins, either by an IT update or an end-user individually. These other add-ins can introduce the incompatible Redemption.dll.
The Fix
If you need some help determining which situation describes you, contact me. Helping people with this is what I do.
Longer term – get current: As of FileSite “8.5 SP2 Update 4, [iManage intends to resolve] the problem by ensuring that the “correct” version of Redemption.dll is loaded for use by FileSite.” This update is available for download by current customers from the iManage support portal.
Immediate workaround: If you are using an earlier version of FileSite and are receiving user complaints of this error behavior, you can avoid it by disabling the use of Unicode on that machine by turning off the registry setting ‘CreateUnicodeMessageFile‘. Documentation of this setting is provided in the FileSite 8.2 SP1 P5 release notes.
Modifying the registry can cause serious system instability. Do not make changes lightly.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREInterwovenWorkSite8.0FileSite]
DWORD CreateUnicodeMessageFile
Default value 1
Set to 0 to avoid the Redemption 3.x error.
Contact me for assistance in deploying this fix at your firm. Or, if I have already helped you with enough info to fix it alone – ping me with a comment! I love hearing about good results.
from a longer post by iManage’s Chris RuBert in the Troubleshooting WorkSite blog.
2 thoughts on “On errors and Redemption | FileSite close-up”
Up through Spring 2011, I’ve seen WorkShare updates cause the error as well.
Summation, specifically, can cause this error. See Conflict with iManage email filing and Summation.