In my world, flames are personal attacks on the ability, credibility, or
character of the poster that have no bearing on the content of the
thread. In whose posts do those occur?

Personally I would not have characterised your post as a flame, but I do
not find it difficult to understand why Scott found it pretty irritating.

FWIW, once I'd seen that the problem had been solved (or even if I
thought it only looked as if it had been solved), and I believed that
there was a better way to do the job, I /might/ have said something more
like...

"For a 97-2003 pst update, normally I would have suggested the process
described at ref because it does this/doesn't suffer this
problem/etc., so it would be helpful to know whether you tried that,
and if so, what went wrong."

That way,
a. you have done the counterpoint job you want to do, whether or not
anyone takes any notice or posts a response.
b. there is no unnecessary suggestion that the poster has done the
wrong thing, nor any implication that the standard procedure/software
will /always/ do the right thing. In this particular case, I think it is
also reasonable to say that even when the .pst is correctly set up
(whatever that entails) and the Address Book correctly hooked up to any
Contacts lists, it is not guaranteed that Word Mail Merge will actually
be able to access the contacts (e.g. because there is a problem with the
Jet provider or the Outlook/Exchange IISAM). Although that problem has
nothing to do with the normal functioning of Outlook, it would still
mean that "A PST file from Outlook 97 would have worked perfectly well"
might not be true.
c. if your posts get a response that describes a new twist, there are
potential gains for everyone.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook] wrote:
I quite agree that migrating PST files is far more difficult than it
should be. To suggest that this is a new or unidentified problem that
has never been addressed is incorrect, however. The problem is very well
known and the solutions to it are well documented. Those solutions do
not require creating a new PST file from scratch nor do they include
importing from an older PST file. Both of those remedies may create more
problems than they solve. Since these are not issues normally dealt with
in this newsgroup, I did not want them to stand without counterpoint
because they could cause problems for users who might assume they were
correct.

In my world, flames are personal attacks on the ability, credibility, or
character of the poster that have no bearing on the content of the
thread. In whose posts do those occur?

Comments about "unsolicited advice" mystify me. How could there be
"unsolicited advice" in a public newsgroup?