Entourage 2008: OOFs coming to the Mac

With the release of Office 2008 for the Mac, Entourage users will be able to use Out of Office messages just like the rest of the world (i.e. Windows users with Microsoft Outlook) have been doing forever. Entourage 2008 supports Exchange Server 2007's enhanced OOF functionality, including the ability to schedule OOF start and stop times in advance, and set-up separate OOF messages for co-workers and external recipients.

Nevertheless, Entourage 2008 doesn't come close to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 as far as features go. There's no capability to schedule resources, and no MAPI (recently rechristened "Outlook-Exchange Transport Protocol"), amongst a long list of other features on Entourage users' wish list. More in Lead Program Manager Andy Ruff's post "Office 2008 Enterprise Series: OOF Coming to Entourage" on the Office for Mac team blog.

HOW TO: Expose original senders and recipients of quarantined messages

The Content Filter Agent in Exchange Server 2007 allows you to quarantine messages above the SCLQuarantineThreshold. Messages so quarantined are delivered to a quarantine mailbox, specified in the Content Filter configuration. [Read previous post for more info, "Exchange 2007 Content Filter: How to move messages to users' Junk Mail folder"]

Messages arriving in the quarantine mailbox look like NDRs. They appear to be sent from the postmaster address of the default domain. As such, you can't easily see the original sender and recipient's addresses, as shown in the screenshot below:



"How to Recover Quarantined Messages from the Spam Quarantine Mailbox" in the Exchange Server 2007 documentation shows how to use a custom Outlook form to expose the original sender - the doc has code that can be copied to a text editor like Notepad and saved as a custom form (QTNE.CFG), which can be used in Outlook to expose the relevant MAPI property as a field that can be added to the view.

This exposes the original sender, but doesn't expose the original recipient of the message. To expose the recipient, you need to modify the form from the above link and add the relevant MAPI properties. You can download the QTNE.CFG file I modified, and save it in the correct Forms folder for your locale.

For US English, the path is: \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\Forms\1033. You can find out the locale ID (LCID) for your locale from KB 221435: List of supported locale identifiers in Word..

What was added in my Modified Quarantine Extension Form:
Under Properties

Property02=OriginalRecipient

After [Property.OriginalSender] section:

[Property.OriginalRecipient]
Type=30
NmidInteger=0x0E04
DisplayName=Original Recipient

Follow the procedure to add the form to Outlook,:

1. Tools | Options | Other tab | Advanced Options | Custom Forms | Manage Forms | Install.
2. Navigate to the path where you saved the QTNE.CFG file, and select the file.



3. Click OK a few times till all the dialog boxes are closed. The form is now installed.

Now let's make those fields show up!

1. In the Outlook messages pane, right-click the column heading on the top | select Custom.
2. In the Custom View dialog box, click Fields | from the "Select available fields from:" drop-down (which says "Frequently-used fields" by default), select Forms [screenshot].
3. Select the Modified Quarantine Extension Form | click Add
4. In the Show Fields dialog box, select Original Sender and Original Recipient | click Add.



5. Additionally, you can remove unnecessary fields and order the fields the way you want [screenshot of fields I have selected].

Once you're done, the Original Sender and Original Recipient fields are displayed as shown in the screenshot below:



When the message list pane is expanded in Outlook, this is what it looks like.



Exposing these fields makes managing the quarantine mailbox easier.

Fixed: Outlook 2007 Performance issues with large mailboxes

If you've been frustrated with Outlook 2007's performance when working with large mailboxes or PST files, Microsoft has a hotfix for you - KB 933943: Description of the update for Outlook 2007: April 13, 2007. The update also fixes a couple of other issues documented in this KBA.

You won't need to call Microsoft support to get the hotfix - you can download it from Microsoft's Download Center.

DST 2007: Is there an Outlook DST "patch"?

There seems to be some confusion about whether Outlook itself has a DST 2007 patch.

As noted in a previous post "DST 2007: Understanding what needs to be done and how to do it", there's the Outlook Calendar Update Tool - TzMove.exe ("Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft Office Outlook" in Microsoft-speak). This is a tool to rebase existing appointments so they show up correctly on users' calendars after they've applied the time zone update to the operating system (KB 931836). As such, it's not really a patch.

Then there's the Outlook 2003 CDO patch (Outlook 2003 Post-SP2 hotfix) - KB 932962. This is the client-equivalent of the Exchange CDO patch (KB 926666 for Exchange Server 2003 SP2, KB 931978 for Exchange Server 2003 SP1), according to Microsoft's DST 2007 blog.

Do all Outlook users need this? No.

CDO is not installed by default on clients running Outlook, and isn't generally required.

However, some applications that use (client-side) CDO to access Outlook's Contacts and Calendar install this version of CDO on the client. If you're using one of those apps, for instance the contact-management app ACT, you should update the CDO component by applying KB 932962 on the client computer.

This updates CDO.DLL to version 6.5.7651.61 (and updates a few other files as well).

DST 2007: Understanding what needs to be done and how to do it

As we head closer to March 11, which is when the extended Daylight Savings Time kicks in - 3 weeks earlier this time, thanks to the Energy Policy Act, here are answers to some more commonly asked questions.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to DST 2007 (at least as of writing) - I have not covered details of how to run the Exchange Calendar Update Tool (MsExTmz.exe) in this post. The tool is covered quite well by Microsoft KnowledgeBase articles, in particular KB 930879: How to address daylight saving time by using the Exchange Calendar Update Tool, and posts on the Exchange team blog.

Microsoft has updated its guidance in the past few days, and the relevant Microsoft KB articles have been updated accordingly. Keep an eye on the date and versions of the KBAs you refer to. These now include a change log as well - thanks to the folks who thought of including this within the KBA for this time-sensitive issue.

In this post, I’ll talk about the relevant patches/updates and the tools made available by Microsoft. I’ll also take a look at how time works, how appointments are booked, what rebasing does, what specifically needs to be updated, and then go through the order of doing things. Needless to say, the exact order of doing things has many folks in different states of confusion, and as I write the guidance on that appears to have been locked in.

- Through the rest of this post, I will refer to calendar items as appointments - these can either be appointments created for yourself, or meetings where you invite others.
- I will also use the term Microsoft Outlook Calendar Update Tool to refer to the Time Zone Data Update tool for Microsoft Office Outlook, and once again request the marketing folks and product groups at Microsoft to coin names that are no longer than 2-3 words (4 words being the hard limit... :) - you could see the March 11 deadline for DST 2007 fly by you in the time it takes to say the Microsoft name for this tool.

1. KB 931836: February 2007 Cumulative Time Zone Update for Microsoft Windows operating systems:
What this does: Updates time zone information/rules in the Windows operating system. Windows stores time zone information in the registry. This updates those time zones, and tells the OS when the extended DST time will start and end in 2007 (amongst other things).
Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP SP2.
What about Windows 2000 and Windows XP prior to SP2: These OSes are no longer in active support. Refer to KB 914387 - basically you'll have to hack the registry to update these OSes with DST 2007 time zone info.

2. Exchange Server CDO Patch: Exchange Servers have CDO installed. This is used by apps that use CDO - like OWA for instance, to perform functions like creating appointments. Third-party applications like RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server also use CDO. CDO has timezone information embedded in it. As such, it is important to update CDO on Exchange servers. There are 2 versions of the CDO patch available:
KB 926666: Update for daylight saving time changes in 2007 for Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2
KB 931978: Update for daylight saving time changes in 2007 for Exchange 2003 Service Pack 1
Note: Computers running Exchange System Management Tools also have CDO installed, as do app servers like RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). These need to be updated as well.

What about Exchange Server 2007? This is the latest version of Exchange, and it does not require any CDO updates. However, appointments in mailboxes on Exchange Server 2007 servers created using the old DST 2006 time zone rules will need to be rebased.

What about "legacy" Exchange versions, like Exchange 2000 for instance? These versions are not in active support as of now. You should contact your Microsoft Technical Account Manager (TAM)/rep to obtain any support or patches. Yes, there may be costs involved, and it's not the purpose of this post to delve into that, but I have commented about it in an earlier post. Apart from the CDO patch, appointments in mailboxes on these servers will also need to be rebased using either the Outlook or Exchange Calendar Update Tool.

3) The Tools: There are two tools made available by Microsoft.
i) Microsoft Outlook Calendar Update Tool/Time Zone Update Tool for Microsoft Outlook (TZMOVE.EXE): This is the tool that can be used by end-users to rebase their own appointments. We will get into rebasing in a moment.
Downloads: 1) Outlook Calendar Update Tool 2) Update: Hotfix for the Outlook Calendar Update Tool (KB 933146, Revision 1.1, Feb. 28, 2007). Allows force rebasing, rebasing Direct Booking resource mailboxes and Public Folders. Creates an item modification log.

ii) Microsoft Exchange Calendar Update Tool (MsExTmz.exe): This is the tool that can be run by administrators to rebase appointments for a bunch of mailboxes. It's important to note that you shouldn't install this tool on your Exchange servers, nor on computers running Exchange System Management Tools. It requires Outlook to be installed on the computer you run this from. The tool is a wrapper around the client tool TZMOVE.EXE - it calls TZMOVE and updates users' calendars as if they were running the client tool themselves, minus the UI that clients see which allows them to pick and choose which appointments to update.
Download: Microsoft Exchange Calendar Update Tool v2.0 (date: 2/21/2007, all of 253 Kb)

When you download the Exchange Calendar Update Tool, there's an automated configuration tool called MsExTmzCfg.exe that is also part of the package. What does this do? It walks you through the steps of extracting time zone information from mailboxes and creating the appropriate input files for the update tool to run. You can do without this one and configure everything manually, but this just makes it a lot easier, so it makes sense to use it.

How Time Works!

Now let's take a look at how time works, and the problem at hand.

- Time Zone definitions in registry: As noted earlier, time zone definitions, including details like when Daylight Savings Time (DST) will start and end, is stored in the registry.



- Coordinated Universal Time: Most time related stuff is done using what is known as Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. (No, the abbreviation is not CUT, and you can use any web search tools to find out why.... as a sidenote, this was formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT - both refer to the same time at longitude zero. The U.S. Naval Obeservatory site has more info on UT1, UTC and GMT. Not to veer too off-topic, UTC is not supposed to differ from UT1 by more than 0.9 seconds. For the purpose of this discussion, let's treat them as the same given the negligible difference.). Time servers that use protocols like Network Time Protocol (NTP) use this notion of a universal time that everyone and their computers can sync their clocks to.

- My Time Zone offset from UTC: Computers calculate local time as an offset to the UTC time, which can be trusted to be always accurate, regardless of what time zone you're in at the moment. UTC will remain the same.

If you remember setting up a Windows client or server OS, you may be familiar with the locale and time zone questions asked during setup. You can also view this by double-clicking the Windows clock and selecting the Time Zone tab. My time zone is Pacific Time, which during non-DST hours uses an offset of -8:00 from UTC. This means when the UTC time is 8:00 AM, my time is 8:00 AM - 8 hours = 12:00 AM (midnight).



Creating Appointments in Microsoft Outlook

When you create an appointment in Microsoft Outlook, it is created using UTC, which is calculated using the Time Zone information in the registry that would be in effect during that time (e.g. 4:30 PM PST = 4:30 + 8:00 time zone offset = 12:30 A.M. UTC). Before 2007, we have been used to seeing Windows update its time automatically when the time zone rules change - twice a year, as it will this year as well.

Recurring and Single-Instance Appointments: There are two types of appointments as far as Outlook is concerned - those that occur only once, also known as Single-Instance appointments, and those that occur regularly - let's say every week, starting from a particular date and ending on a particular date, called Recurring appointments. Versions of Microsoft Outlook prior to Outlook 2007 have handled these differently.

- Recurring Appointments save the time zone information within the appointment. This makes it much easier to figure out which time zone rules (DST 2006 or DST 2007 for instance) were used to create those appointments.
- Single Instance Appointments: These appointments, which only occur once, do not have any time zone information saved in them.

Additionally, it's important to note that as stated earlier, all time stuff works (or should work) based on UTC time. Both recurring and single-instance appointments are saved using UTC time.

The following screenshot shows MAPI properties of a recurring meeting that occurs at 4:30 PM PDT on March 12th. As you can see, the start and end times are UTC - 12:30 AM - 1:00 AM on March 13th! Single-instance meetings look somewhat similar - besides the recurrence, they don't have the TimeZone saved in the item as recurring meetings do.



How Outlook renders an appointment on your Calendar: When you view a Calendar in Microsoft Outlook, it looks at an appointment's Start and End times - and as the screenshot above shows, those are in UTC. It then looks up the time zone information from the registry of your computer, and determines your time zone's offset from UTC - let's say UTC -8:00, and renders the appointment at 4:30 PM on your Calendar. This allows folks from different time zones to schedule meetings with each other, and ensure those meetings show up at the correct local times in their time zone, not at 4:30 PM for everyone.

Dealing with DST: If the appointment were to occur at 2:00 PM during normal DST hours - which used to start on the first Sunday in April, Outlook would look up the DST rules in registry and be able to determine that. As a result, it would still show the appointment at 2:00 PM on that date - it would know that come first Sunday in April, the time zone offset from UTC would be -7:00 and not -8:00.

The good part is, we are used to dealing with this change every year, so it's not something unknown, like the Y2K bug. Further, it's not really a software bug as such - at some point the United States Congress decided it was a good idea to move the clock forward by one hour (i.e. UTC -7:00 for those in Pacific time zone, known as Pacific Daylight Time) three weeks ahead of time (and also move the clock backward by one hour - i.e. UTC -8:00 for Pacific time zone, known as Pacific Standard Time - a week later than usual), so we have more daylight and hopefully we'll end up using less energy. All well-intentioned stuff, I'm sure. What IT folks would have to go through to make this transition wasn't something that was on their minds at that point. :)

DST 2007: So, come March 11th, we will move our clocks forward by an hour. The Pacific Daylight Time, which would have otherwise started on April 1st this year, will start on March 11th instead. Similarly, it will end a week later - on November 4th this year, instead of October 28th. What are the implications of this?

1. Tell Windows operating sytems about this change occurring 3 weeks sooner and ending a week later. This is what the Feb. 2007 Cumulative Time Zone Update does, for Windows Server 2003, and for client operating systems like Windows XP SP2.

2. Rebasing Appointments: With the above in place, we should be OK, shouldn't we? Well, not really! This will work for all new appointments that we create using Outlook, but it does nothing for the existing appointments that we've already created using the DST 2006 rules, which assume DST will start on the first Sunday in April, as usual.

We will need to go back to all our appointments we created in our Calendars, and update them with this change. This process is called "rebasing".

In the above instance, (before rebasing) our appointment at 4:30 PM on 3/12 had a start time of 12:30 AM to 1:00 AM UTC on 3/13. Using DST 2006 rules, that would be rendered using UTC -8:00, and show up at 4:30 PM. However, after updating our computer's time zone for DST 2007, we would be at DST -7:00 on March 11, and the appointment would've been rendered at 5:30 PM instead. The following screenshot shows how rebasing the appointment adjusts the start and end times so it gets rendered correctly - the start and end times were changed to 11:30 PM on 3/12 and 12:00 AM (midnight) on 3/13 - UTC.



Let's take a look at what appointments will look like when created from a computer that has (old) DST 2006 rules, and how they will be rendered by Outlook once you do apply KB 931836 DST 2007 time zone update to the OS.


Click here to see the complete image if it's cut-off.

As you can see, appointments created on a computer with the old rules appear an hour behind on the computer with DST 2007 time zone rules.

After rebasing these appointments, here's how Outlook will render them:

Click here to see the complete image if it's cut-off.

The reverse is true if appointments are created by users with new DST 2007 rules, but are viewed by meeting invitees or the organizer on computers with old DST 2006 rules.

Let's walk through the rebasing process and the impact it has. We will use the Outlook Calendar Update Tool (TZMOVE.EXE) for this exercise - the Exchange Calendar Update Tool also calls this client tool to actually perform the updates.

1. Install TZMOVE.EXE on a computer with DST 2007 time zone update (KB 931836) applied


2. TZMOVE finds appointments.



Notes:
- Recurring meeting using new DST 2007 time zone at 12:00 PM does not get picked up by the tool - recurring meetings have time zone info embedded, the 12:00 PM meeting was created using the correct DST 2007 time zone.
- The old recurring meeting created using DST 2006 time zone does get picked up, and will get rebased.
- The single-instance meeting at 9:00 AM created using DST 2007 rules also gets picked up and rebased!

How long should you wait before applying the DST 2007 time zone update to all client computers and rebasing appointments. If you wait too long, here's what could happen - clients will inadvertently end up creating new appointments in the affected extended DST period using the new DST 2007 rules. When you rebase, these appointments get rebased as well. Here's what this could look like after rebasing:

Click here to see the complete image if it's cut-off.

Update: The Outlook Calendar Update Tool can be patched with a new hotfix (KB 933146) discussed earlier in this post. The patched tool can then detect when the OS was updated with DST 2007 time zone info and only rebases appointments after that time, using the /ONLYCREATEDPREPATCH command line parameter. Alternatively, only appointments created before a certain date & time - expressed in UTC - can be rebased, using the /ONLYCREATEDPREPATCH:(utc time here) command line parameter.

The take aways from this:

1) Once new time zone rules are applied on client computers, we will need to rebase the old appointments so they are rendered in the correct time slot by Outlook.
2) Any new appointments created on an updated computer (with DST 2007 rules) should not be rebased

3) To avoid #2, it's best to rebase appointments as soon as users get the DST 2007 time zone update applied on their computers (else they may create new appointments using new DST 2007 rules before rebasing is done, which may result in the newer appointments being rebased wrongly!)

4) As seen in the above examples, simply having users insert the correct time in the meeting subject makes these appointments stand out if they're off by an hour or two - if possible, have your users do this. It will be of great help in getting through this process.

5) Going a step forward, at least for important users like execs, have their assitants or the users themselves print out their calendars for this extended DST period (3 weeks from March 11 to April 1, hopefully you would have worked out the kinks by the time you get to the end of the DST period in the last week of October.

Which items will we rebase? Appointments created using old DST 2006 rules that occur during this "extended" DST period, which is the 3-week period prior to the first Sunday in April (i.e. March 11 - April 1), and the 1-week period between the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November (October 28th - November 4th).

Where do these items reside?
1) The default Calendar folder in user mailboxes on Exchange Server
2) Other "non-default" Calendar folders or sub-folders in user mailboxes
3) Perhaps in PST files, if users use them. Important to note that Exchange knows nothing about content in your PST files.
4) In Public Folders, if you have created any to store appointments.
5) Resource Mailboxes: Resource mailboxes are mailbox-enabled user accounts created for booking resources like conference rooms, projectors, et al. These are set up to be booked automatically when users invite them to meetings as resources. When rebasing appointments, if a resource is booked back-to-back, the rebased appointments will conflict with other appointments on the calendar through the rebasing process. It makes sense to configure them to accept these conflicts during the rebasing process.

There are two ways resource mailboxes can be setup:

- Direct Booking: If using Direct Booking, an admin logs into a resource mailbox using Microsoft Outlook, and sets it up to a) Accept meetings automatically and b) automatically decline conflicting meeting requests. During rebasing, we should configure resource mailboxes to not decline conflicting meeting requests, by unchecking the latter, as shown below:



The patched (with hotfix in KB 933146) Outlook Calendar Update Tool (TZMOVE.EXE) should be run using the /FORCEREBASESUPPRESSALLUPDATES command line parameter against resource mailboxes that are configured for Direct Booking. Once rebased, you can revert the resource mailbox configuration to decline conflicting meeting requests.

- Using the Auto-Accept Agent: The Auto-Accept Agent is an add-on server-side tool that Microsoft released as a web download after the release of Exchange Server 2003. Unlike using Direct Booking (as shown above), which uses the resource's Free/Busy information, the Auto-Accept Agent actually looks up the resource mailbox' Calendar to determine if a resource is available or not. It also has additional functionality like stripping attachments, dropping non-calendar items, amongst other things. The Auto-Accept Agent uses an xml file for configuration - AutoAccept.config.xml. By default, this resides in \Exhsrvr\Agents\AutoAccept.

The patched Outlook Calendar Update Tool (TZMOVE.EXE) should be run using the /FORCEREBASESUPPRESSALLUPDATES command line parameter against resource mailboxes that are registered with the Auto-Accept Agent.

3. Updating Exchange Servers: Next, we will need to go and update our Exchange Servers. They will need the new time zone update rules for Windows Server OS (KB 931836), and the Exchange CDO patch - depending on the version of Exchange Server you're on (KB 926666 for Exchange 2003 SP2, KB 931978 for Exchange 2003 SP1, and as stated earlier - patches for any previous versions of Exchange that may be in use in your organization, if you 've obtained them from Microsoft).

The Order!

Having talked about the issues, and I hope you understand them by now, let's take a look at the order of doing things. The guidance related to this has evolved and changed over the past few weeks and days. With that in mind, let's look at the order that Microsoft recommends we make these changes in, going by the recent guidance.


1. Update Windows Servers (update: including Exchange servers) and Windows client operating systems with the February 2007 Cumulative Time Zone Update (KB 931836 for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP SP2).
2. Rebase Appointments
3. Exchange Servers: Apply the Exchange CDO patch to update the time zone embedded in the CDO components on Exchange servers (KB 926666 for Exchange Server 2003 SP2, KB 931978 for Exchange Server 2003 SP1)

HOW TO: Modify Display Template to make default email address appear in Address Book/GAL

This was an interesting question posed in exchange.admin today, and it's been a long while since I made such changes so it took a while to figure this out.

When you go to a recipient's properties in GAL/Address Book in Outlook, the (default) email address - something you want to find quickly and many a times cut & paste somewhere - does not show up on the General tab. When you go to the E-mail Addresses tab, you see all the recipient's email addresses - these reside in the proxyAddresses attribute of the recipient. The default address appears with an uppercase SMTP:. However, you can't cut and paste anything from this tab.

To modify how these things appear, you need to modify the Display Templates. This topic in general isn't documented very well or as extensively. The Exchange Server 2003 Administration Guide has a little HOW TO procedure documented here.

So let's get this done!

Open Exchange System Manger | Recipients | Details Templates | English (or choose your locale here) | User [screenshot] | right-click | Properties.

Display templates contain a "Label" - which is the text displayed next to the field, and the actual field itself which displays the data. The location of these objects on the actual form that's displayed to the user is also shown as X and Y co-ordinates.

Locate the Alias field - the Label for this is called A&lias (X,Y = 189,30). The & tells the UI that the next character is to be used for the keyboard short-cut. Change this to E-&mail:

Next, locate the accompanying field at location X=259, Y=28 - it's an Edit field, and it shows the attribute ms-Exch-Mail-Nickname [screenshot]. You need to change this to the attribute "mail" - which is the default address of the recipient.

Here's what threw me off - the UI doesn't list the ldapDisplayNames of attributes! The ldapDisplayName mailNickname logically maps to the ms-Exch-Mail-Nickname attribute. But I could not find anything in the list that would logically map to the "mail" attribute.

I ended up using LDIFDE to dump the attribute with ldapDisplayName=mail - it is called E-mail-Addresses. Going by the name of the attribute, one would think this is for proxyAddresses - there's only one default email address that shows up in the "mail" attribute, and the attribute itself isn't multi-valued!

So, let's go ahead and complete this by selecting E-mail-addresses [screenshot] instead of ms-Exch-Mail-Nickname.

Once you're done, you can click on the "Test" button to see how it looks.

You would need to make this change to other recipient types - like Group, Public Folder, and Contact. Alternatively, in the templates where you do see extra space, you could perhaps add these as additional fields if you still want to show the Alias.

If your Exchange Org includes servers in different locales with different languages, you will need to make the above change(s) in the Display Templates for all of these.

Cached mode Outlook 2003 clients will see the change once the Offline Address Book is rebuilt - you can do this manually from ESM - right-click on the OAB - select "Rebuild". Go to the Outlook 2003 client and download the Address Book. Now select a recipient from the Address Book and go to properties | General tab. The Alias field is now replaced with E-mail [screenshot]

Outlook on a stick?

IBM's just released Lotus Notes 7.0.2 has a cool new feature that IBM's been touting all over the place - Notes on a stick. It lets you copy your Notes Desktop on a USB stick (or other such devices, including an iPod. Hint: Justification for writing off that iPod as a business expense... it's a storage device.. :).

You can take the USB drive or similar device to another computer running Windows and plug it in - you get your Notes Desktop. You don't need to install any software on the destination computer. While not connected to your network, you have a complete offline copy to work with, and it serves as a connected Notes Desktop with full functionality when you do have access to your vpn.

I'm hoping folks in Outlook/Exchange groups are watching this development and planning something similar.

It would be a great idea to have a complete Outlook environment - including Microsoft Outlook client and your entire mailbox, including your Outlook rules - on a USB drive that you could simply plug into any computer and access your email - offline and online - without having to install Outlook, creating a profile, or copying a PST. When you unplug the USB drive, there are no files or traces left on the destination computer.

As a sidenote, Exchange Server 2007 does have an AutoDiscover feature that automatically configures the Outlook profile - it requires Outlook 2007 client.

New user does not show up in GAL

Scenario: You’ve created a new user (or any Exchange recipient that should show up in Exchange Address Books/GAL), but the recipient does not show up in the GAL in Outlook.

Are you using Outlook 2003/2007 in Cached Mode?

If yes, login using Outlook Web Access and try to send the user an email. Does the name resolve?

If yes, it’s most likely related to the Offline Address Book (OAB) not being updated.

In Cached Mode, Outlook 2003/2007 clients use the Offline Address Book to lookup recipients. By default, Exchange generates the Offline Address Book once a day at 4:00 AM, unless you change the schedule. New recipients do not show up in the OAB till Exchange udpates it.


Figure 1: By default, Exchange updates OABs once a day at 4:00 AM

The options:
Rebuild the OAB
Exchange Server 2003:
- In ESM | Recipients | Offline Address Lists | right-click YourAddressListName | select Rebuild


Figure 2: Rebuilding the OAB

Exchange Server 2007:
In Exchange Server 2007, the OAB can be updated using the following command from the shell:

Update-OfflineAddressBook "Name of Address Book"

To update all OABs:

Get-OfflineAddressBoook | Update-OfflineAddressBook

- On the client go to Outlook 2003/2007 | Tools | Send/Receive | Download Address Book….
- Uncheck Download changes since last Send/Receive
- Make sure Download Full Details is checked
- Click OK, wait for the download to complete (depending on your bandwidth and size of OAL, this may be close to instant, or it may take a few minutes)
- Check if the user appears in the GAL

Modify the OAB generation schedule: The OAB update interval can be modified to have Exchange update it more frequently, depending on your environment.

Alternatively, you can wait till after Exchange has updated the OAB.

Related Posts:
- Offline Address Book: Mystery of The Missing Recipients
- HOW TO: Modify Display Template to make default email address appear in Address Book/GAL

Updates:
- 01/03/2008: Added screenshots and Exchange Server 2007-specific info

Unblock Outlook attachments

Ever found Outlook's long list of blocked attachments annoying? It's one thing to protect users from malicious code, but should someone who knows what they're doing be subjected to the same rules?

Now, there are ways of blocking/unblocking certain file types including registry hacks, group policies, et al. By far the most elegant and easy way for end users is a nifty little utility called Attachment Open written by Ken Slovak (MVP - Outlook).

It provides a COM add-in for Outlook. When you go to Tools | Options, you see an additional tab that lets you select particular (or all, if you really need to!) Level 1 file types and add them to the list of Level 2.
Level 1 file types are completely blocked by Outlook
Level2 file types are those that can be saved to the disk.

You can download it from http://www.slovaktech.com/attachmentoptions.htm

The utility is shareware. If you find it useful, you can donate 10 bucks by clicking a button - a small price to pay for those times when you really want to get to an attachment. :)

A good practice would be to move it back to Level1 (blocked) again after you're done accessing the attachment, unless you receive those file types very frequently and from trusted sources.

If you'd rather control this yourself through registry hacks, you need to add the extensions (followed by semi-colons after each extension - remember, if it's not formed correctly, Outlook will ignore the entire list!) to Level1Remove registry value in:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\VERSION_NO
\Outlook\Security

where VERSION_NO is:
9.0 - Outlook 2000
10.0 - Outlook 2002/XP
11.0 - Outlook 2003


List of attachments restricted by Outlook

Cannot Book Resource - Outlook thinks it's a recurring appointment

Issue: You try to reserve a conference room for a meeting, but get an error - XX Conference Room has declined your meeting because it is recurring. You must book each meeting separately with this resource". But it is a single instance meeting!

Cause: If several people have the resource's calendar open and make changes to it at more or less the same time, their client tries to update the Free/Busy info on the server at the same time. This corrupts the free/busy info.
(In general, clients should not be making changes directly to a resource's calendar.)

Resolution: Change some resource scheduling parameter for the resource from Outlook. For instance, uncheck "Decline conflicting meeting requests". This generates fresh free/busy info for the resource. You can then go back and check it again - the free/busy info will get refreshed yet again.

Source: Microsoft PSS

Seeing Double? (Default Email Folders)

Situation: Upgraded to Office 2003 Professional.
Outlook shows 2 of each default/system folder like Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Journal, Tasks, Junk E-mail, etc. (Not completely sure at what point this happened, but it happened within hours of Outlook 2003 upgrade, so that's the most likely suspect.)

Outlook thinks the new folders are the default, so new items get created in these folders. (For instance, when a meeting is accepted, it gets created in this new folder). The original "old" calendar has all previous meetings.

Tried to copy items from the old folders to the newly created ones - wouldn't work (for most folders).

Tried to delete the new folders - Outlook wouldn't allow it (default/system folders).

Solution:
1. Open the mailbox with MFCMAPI tool, login to mailbox, go to IPM Subtree, locate all new folders (mostly had 0 items in them) and delete.
2. Create new MAPI profile for user

Moving mailboxes and corrupted Calendar

Moving mailboxes from an Exchange 2000 virtual server (EVS) to an Exchange Server 2003 EVS - can't seem to move 1 particular mailbox.

User has a history of corrupted Calendar folder/items - Oultook hangs immediately when choosing the Calendar folder from the folder list. (Lot of 8217s - KB327864: Meetings visible in Outlook may not be visible in OWA or non-MAPI clients).

Errors :
Event ID: 1008
Unable to move mailbox 'ABC'.
Error: The MAPI call failed.
MAPI or an unspecified service provider.
ID no: 80004005-0000-00000000

Event ID: 9172
Failed to copy messages to the destination mailbox store.
Error: The MAPI call failed.
MAPI or an unspecified service provider.
ID no: 80004005-0000-00000000

Event ID:8506
Unable to move mailbox ABC.
A problem occurred while getting the properties for a message.
Internal parent folder ID: e-21F33E; Message ID: 2-30B3DFA; Error code: 0x80004005.
Run ISINTEG to check for any problem in the database "Second Storage Group\Mailbox Store2 (SERVRENAME)".

Reference: KB264119. Suggests ISINTEG. Ran ISINTEG once. Didn't help. (Ran ESEUTIL /p as well... ). No dice. ISINTEG again 4 more times (with only one mailbox the store was already compacted to less than 500 Mb.). Tried mailbox move again to Store 1 in target server, worked. Moved to Store 2 in target server, worked again!