Greetings! Welcome to issue #5 of Exchange Center Update, an occasional newsletter about Microsoft Exchange, both for users of Windows 95 and NT 4.0 and for organizations using Exchange Server.
I'm really sorry it's taken so long to get another issue of the update out. I'm also behind on updates at the Exchange Center web site -- but there is a reason! Actually two.
My family and I moved to Moscow (Russia, not Idaho) last week and are just getting settled. Our temporary residence is about 15 miles outside the city, so I'm wrestling with dreadful phone lines. That should improve when we move downtown in a few weeks.
On the positive side, the weather here is drop-dead gorgeous with sunny days in the 80s and cool nights. Navigating the Metro was easy, so I've already signed up with a local ISP for dialup access.
The other thing on my mind is The Microsoft Exchange User's Handbook. The book is nearly done, and we're going to have a lot of terrific stuff on the CD. For a preview of the table of contents, visit http://www.dukepress.com/titles/xuse.htm.
Windows NT 4.0 has been released to manufacturing, so you'll see it soon on the shelves. The version of Exchange included is called Windows Messaging (like the Windows 95 update) and includes services for Internet Mail and Microsoft Mail. The trades have said that a Microsoft Fax service will be released soon.
Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Exchange Server is available on ftp://ftp.microsoft.com. You can navigate there from http://www.microsoft.com/exchange.
There's a lot in this update, including a Mac client, the addition of binhex decoding for Internet Mail Connector, plus other new IMC features like fixed line lengths and Internet-style quoting.
New client versions, including one for NT on PowerPC, are also included as separate downloads. Note that since these are for export, the downloadable versions have only 40-bit encryption. If you are in the U.S. or Canada and need the more advanced encryption, you'll need to order the service pack CD from Microsoft.
This three-day Microsoft conference in Austin, TX, will include training, application development tips, migration details, a chance to talk to Exchange developers and support engineers, plus the opportunity to take the Microsoft Exchange certification exam at a 50% discount. If you're serious about Exchange, this looks like the place to be. (Anybody want to pay my way from Moscow? <g>)
If you subscribe to the monthly Microsoft Technet CD, you already have some cool Exchange tools to try. There's a preview pane that's a little different from Deming Preview and includes a utility for checking the size of individual Exchange folders.
This new Exchange widget matches up read receipts with the messages you send, giving you a green, red, or yellow indicator to show whether or not all recipients have received them. Get it at http://www.bj.co.uk/correlator.htm.
From the Exchange widget labs at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point:
"We've received many requests from our users about being able to print out members of a distribution list, or even to cut and paste members of that list into another application, but the Exchange Address Book doesn't allow that functionality. Another common problem was not being able to easily print or copy the properties of a mailbox.
"So we wrote a client extension which exports that information to a message you can e-mail to another person, print out, or cut and paste into another application. This free client extension is now available for the 32-bit Windows platforms at: http://ems1.uwsp.edu/client_ext/."
This is the second Exchange add-on from UWSP. You might want to bookmark their site, since I'm sure there will be more.
Que Publishing has put up a searchable edition of Special Edition Using Exchange Server, along with other Backoffice books.
If you downloaded Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, then you may also have Internet Mail and News (which is also available as a separate download to add onto MSIE3).
I wish they'd named it differently, since it causes confusion with the Internet Mail service in Exchange, but this is a nice little mailer. It supports Internet conventions well. And now, you can import and export to Exchange. I use it for my mailto: jobs.
The news reader works with multiple servers, so it's handy for keeping track of both Usenet newsgroups and the Microsoft newsgroups at msnews.microsoft.com.
The latest and greatest ideas:
Three FAQs are available at my Exchange Center site, dealing with three different clients:
The Windows Messaging and Exchange Server client FAQs deal with basic installation, configuration and bug issues. For the nitty-gritty on how different services like Microsoft Fax, CompuServe Mail, etc. work within Exchange/Windows Messaging, you need the big Windows 95 client FAQ. Most of it is applicable to the Windows Messaging client and the Exchange Server client running under Windows 95 (and even in many cases to the Windows NT 4.0 client).
Since the big FAQ is a Windows Help file, you can easily search it. Exchange Center Update reader Willem Bison decided that it belonged in Exchange itself. He found that, by creating a shortcut to Exchfaq.hlp and dragging it into Exchange, he could have the FAQ available directly from within Exchange. (Make sure you use a shortcut, and not the .hlp file itself.) Thanks for the tip, Willem!
Other FAQs of note:
ISSN 1523-7990
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