Outlook 2010 - Names in "From" field empty

Question

I’ve searched online and on ServerFault, but cannot track down any explanations or solutions. In Outlook 2010, in a folder under the Inbox, the name in the "From" field is empty, even though other messages from that same person have the name populated in the From field. The user said she may have moved some of these from out of the Sent items folder, but I am unable to reproduce it. Is there a way to reproduce, or provide a procedure for avoiding this from happening again? The messages were sent from the user reporting the problem, and it's ticky-tack but I need to find a solution.

Screenshot here:

Headers are of course blank when she sends to another internal user on Hosted Exchange - Below is the properties of a sample message w/out a name in the From field:

The only way I was able to reproduce the problem was that I created a draft, then before sending the draft, I moved it to a different folder and there I found the From field was blank:

So I do think that perhaps this user hit reply, then saved/closed the message before sending, and then moved the email to the separate folder from drafts.

Solution 1

Outlook leaves the From field blank on drafts until they are sent. Any chance these messages were written as drafts, then deleted/moved out of the Drafts folder before sending?

Solution 2

Can you post the headers of an email in question (obscuring privacy info)?

Sometimes the way an email is sent/processed can determine if a field shows up blank in Outlook. For instance, you might find that the same email has a From field just fine on an Activesync device (mobile device), but Outlook shows it incorrectly.

Comments

[JasonC]

So I do think that perhaps this user hit reply, then saved/closed the message before sending, and then moved the email to the separate folder from drafts.

[JasonC]

I think it’s also possible that the user did a search for messages with a common subject, Outlook found the messages in your drafts folder and they then moved those into the separate folder. To avoid this in the future, I suppose just look at your drafts folder once in a while and keep it cleaned of messages.