Outlook 2007 & RSS Feeds : RSS Feeds synchronization failed ?

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rss_feed One of my customer and several others, have subscribed to RSS Feeds with Outlook 2007. It was working fine and all of a sudden it showing the error mark in the status bar.

For example, whenever we make a Send/Receive, we get error mark in the status bar saying that “Task ‘RSS Feeds’ reported error (0x8C5C0008) : Synchronization to RSS Feed: […] has failed. Outlook cannot download the RSS content from […] because of a problem connecting to the server.”

Here there might be lot of parameters may play here.

  • RSS synchronization interval with outlook
  • By default, RSS Feeds roam with users from one computer to another. So we need to make sure due to this we’re not getting these issue
  • If you have the latest service pack / latest version / patches can also create this issue.
  • It might be with their older feed entries in some kind of local store.
  • Sync utility might have issue with the new feed entries
  • As you know these RSS feeds are published by their own editors in an XML format. It contains only the latest headlines. The exact number of these headlines is chose by the editor, and, each time a new entry is added in the feed, the oldest one is removed (it's a FIFO behavior).
  • Some RSS clients (like Outlook and the Windows RSS Platform) keep the older feed entries in some kind of local store, so you can always see these entries, but these are no longer publish by their original editors.

You can try these below for workarounds.

1) Workaround # 1:

  • The frequency of RSS updates can be set by the user, but precedence is given to limits set by a provider on how frequently a subscriber can request updates from their site.
  • This helps avoid overloading the provider's server with excessive update requests

2) Workaround # 2:

  • You can use the default RSS folder home page provided with Office Outlook 2007 , or you can create one tailored to your organization. Whether you use the default home page or provide a custom one, users must be connected to the network to view the home page. With both default and custom RSS home pages, you can take steps to ensure that the offline experience is not confusing to your users. When users are offline and switch to the RSS folder, an error message appears, stating that the page is not found.

For users to have a good offline experience, Outlook displays a message explaining the problem instead of simply returning the standard "Page not found" error when it determines that a folder home page is being loaded.

When users are offline, there are two requirements for Outlook to display the explanatory message instead of a standard error:

· A string must be included at the end of the title on the page used for the folder home page.

· The folder must be created with a new Outlook folder type.

To meet the first requirement, you add the following string to the end of the title of the custom RSS home page you create: (Outlook Homepage). The string and anything after that string is not displayed in the title of the page. When a user is offline, the explanatory message is displayed. When a user is online, the folder home page is displayed with the string removed so users do not see the string in the title.

The second requirement—a new Outlook folder type—ensures that the explanatory message for the RSS folder home page is not displayed for other folder home pages when users are offline. The standard Outlook folder type is IPM.Folder. The new folder type for RSS folders is IPM.Folder.OutlookHomepage

Note: For more information, you can find more information from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179173(TechNet.10).aspx