Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 4, No. 1, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, an occasional newsletter about Microsoft Exchange, Windows Messaging and Microsoft Outlook, both for users of Windows 95/98 and NT 4.0 and for organizations using Microsoft Exchange Server.
This issue begins our fourth year of publishing EMO, and as usual, we'll resolve to come out a little more often. During the past two months, I've been putting the finishing touches on not one, but two Outlook 2000 books -- Teach Yourself Microsoft Outlook 2000 Programming in 24 Hours (due in July) and The Microsoft Outlook 2000 E-mail and Fax Guide (due in the fall). That's the explanation -- but no excuse -- for neglecting EMO since March. The newsletter now has 2,150 subscribers, some of them Exchange Server Public Folders reaching who knows how many people.
Today's highlights:
I attended the Microsoft Office and VBA Solutions (MOVS) conference last month in London to see what hot new technologies might apply to Outlook projects and find out what developers using Outlook are concerned about. Database connectivity continues to be a key issue. People ask, "Should I use a database or Outlook Contacts in a public folder? If I decide to use both, can I keep them synchronized? The way to go is ADO -- ActiveX Data Objects. ADO is Microsoft's strategy for "universal data access" -- connectivity with any type of database. You'll find the ADO home page at http://www.microsoft.com/data/ado/, including downloadable components. (Office 2000 includes ADO, by the way.) So you can see how it works, I located an older MOVS conference presentation by Paul Litwin at http://www.microsoft.com/accessdev/articles/movs202.htm that should get you started. You'll find an Outlook-specific sample at http://www.outlookexchange.com/sneville.html.
In general, I found the MOVS conference to be a good mix of networking with other developers, learning new technologies and quizzing the VBA gurus on some particular sticky issues. It's held every spring in the U.S. and also in London. For more info, see http://www.vbaconference.com.
Microsoft Office 2000 -- including Outlook 2000 -- officially debuts June 7, with retail sales beginning June 10. The product is already shipping to some of Microsoft's largest customers. Microsoft has really changed the way it handles international versions of Office, which means that the International English version of Office 2000 will release at the same time as the U.S. English version, with other language versions coming out very soon afterward.
There will be a standalone version of Outlook 2000, but not until several weeks after Office 2000 becomes available. And, no, it won't be a free download like Outlook 98, which was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You can, however, get a free copy of Office 2000 if you bought Office 97 between 1 Jan 1999 and 31 July 1999. See our http://www.slipstick.com/exchange/ol2000.htm page for a frequently updated list of top links for Outlook 2000.
Slipstick site sponsors, search & other news
We're thrilled to welcome two new sponsors to the Slipstick Systems Exchange Center -- Trend Micro with their HouseCall anti-virus scan for Exchange Server (http://www.antivirus.com/banners/hc_slip.htm) and ExchangePlus at http://www.exchangeplus.com, a new Exchange resource site. Please let them know that you appreciate their support for the Exchange Center.
Over the next month, we're going to be incredibly busy at the Exchange Center getting ready for the Outlook 2000 launch. You'll see a completely new look throughout the site. One of our goals has been to make it easier to find the information on Outlook and Exchange that you need. We've already taken a big step in that direction by adding a new search engine. You can now search right from the main http://www.slipstick.com/exchange/ page, using the Search box at the upper left.
Newgroup and mailing list changes
With the release of Office 2000 just around the corner, the Outlook newsgroups on Microsoft's server at msnews.microsoft.com have been rearranged. Here's the new lineup:
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.Calendaring
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.Contacts
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.Fax
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.General
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.Installation
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.Interop
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.Printing
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.Program_AddIns
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.Program_Forms
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.Program_VBA
Microsoft.Public.Outlook.ThirdPartyUtil
Other Outlook newsgroups will shortly be discontinued. You'll want to refresh the newsgroup list in your news reader. Also, you should be aware that some ISPs that provide the Microsoft newsgroups do so in one direction only -- you can read, but your posts to the newsgroups aren't uploaded or take a long time to be uploaded. Or, they might not have the new newsgroups for a while. If you think your posts aren't getting through, you can always read the groups directly from the msnews.microsoft.com server. Most newsreaders these days allow you to point to multiple servers.
We've added a new mailing list at the Slipstick Systems Exchange Center for Outlook developers. The OUTLOOK-DEV list joins the OUTLOOK-USERS list that we opened a few weeks ago. To subscribe to either list, just send a message to the appropriate address below:
OUTLOOK-DEV
To subscribe: mailto:outlook-dev-subscribe@egroups.com
To change subscription details: http://www.egroups.com/group/outlook-dev/OUTLOOK-USERS
To subscribe: mailto:outlook-users-subscribe@egroups.com
To change subscription details: http://www.egroups.com/group/outlook-users/
Both lists are available as individual items, digest or web access. To change your subscription, visit the mailing list's web site, listed above.
Another active forum for Outlook and Exchange developers is provided at http://www.cdolive.com/ask.htm. Look closely, because this one is running as an Exchange Server public folder using a custom interface built with the CDO rendering library. You can also see how it looks as a generic Outlook Web Access folder by following the link found on the same Ask the Experts page.
Finally, the venerable MSEXCHANGE mailing list for Microsoft Exchange Server administrators has officially migrated to the Swynk.com web site. To subscribe, you can send a message to mailto:lyris@ls.swynk.com with subscribe exchange in the body, or you can visit http://ls.swynk.com. This is a very busy list, but full of excellent information. If you don't want to wade through 200+ messages a day, you can subscribe through the web site for web-based access that lets you post and browse messages through the web site.
The fourth annual Microsoft Exchange Conference will take place October 4-7 in Atlanta. Much of the focus will be on Exchange Server 6.0 "Platinum" and Outlook 2000. I'm not going to miss it this year. How about you? Registration for MEC '99 is now under way at http://events.microsoft.com/events/MEC99/. You'll get a small discount if you register by August 31.
New and updated utilities
Enfish Tracker
Tracks contents of all your e-mail messages (including attachments and items in public folders), local files and web pages for quick search, retrieval and information organization.
http://www.enfish.com/products/product.htmlAltaVista Discovery
Indexes your files and e-mail for faster searching. Does web pages, too.
http://discovery.altavista.com/OfficeChat for Microsoft Outlook
Direct conferencing and file transfer from within Outlook. Available in free and shareware versions, both with full session encryption.
http://www.polarlogics.com/officechat/SchedView+
Group calendar viewer, available in English or Danish version.
http://www.cl.dk/schedviewus.html <http://www.sqlsystems.dk/goprod.htmWorkgroupMail
Workgroup mail server with integrated Internet connection. Can work with POP3/SMTP clients or operate as a MAPI transport for Outlook/Exchange/Windows Messaging.
http://www.workgroupmail.com/PriorityView
Productivity tool for Outlook to provide unified view of related items using Priority Management methodology. Also includes database of notes related to contacts.
http://www.prioritymanager.com/PriorityViewProd.htmMove Appointments
Tool for bulk adjustment of appointments to account for time zone changes or unwanted changes related to Daylight Savings Time. Implemented as an Outlook form, so administrators can just e-mail it to users who need it.
http://www.planetsoftware.com.au/MoveAppointment.htmAutoReply
Generates automatic replies to incoming messages in Outlook, even without Outlook running. Also marks replied to messages as read.
http://www.nextword.com/AutoReplyprod.htmOutlook Assistant
Rules-based messaging processing tool that also supports voice recognition and generation with Microsoft Agent; initial version supports only Spanish.
http://members.tripod.com/omateo/OutlookAssistant.en.htmAddToPAB
Free Rules Wizard custom action from Microsoft for automatically adding the sender of a message to your Personal Address Book. Requires Outlook 98 in Corporate/Workgroup mode. Source code is included.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q193/2/85.aspZipMail for Microsoft Outlook and Exchange
Compresses message attachments into a self-extracting file.http://www.mk-net-work.com/us/software/zipmail/outlook/zipmail.htm
ZipOut
Public beta of COM add-in for Microsoft Outlook 2000 to automatically convert file attachments on outgoing messages to a .zip file.
http://www.microeye.com/outlook/EasyMerge
Adds simplified category-based merges and support for merging more built-in and user-defined fields.
http://www.intersoft.bc.ca/easymerge/easymergeintronew.htmlWord-Outlook MailMerge Program (ver 3.0)
Improved speed and selection of mail merge fields, plus new option to create journal entries for documents you create for each contact.
http://www.intouchsoftware.com/Products/Womp/Womp.htmAladdins ~ Envelopes & Labels
Redesigned version of this utility for printing envelopes and labels from Outlook contacts.
http://members.tripod.com/MSSNZ/Aladdins ~ Word Documents (formerly WordGenie)
Updated version of this utility for composing Word documents using Outlook contact data, either one document or a mail merge.
http://members.tripod.com/MSSNZ/ReddFish ListServer (ver 2.1)
Updated list manager for Exchange Server now hides its custom recipients in the GAL. A Migration Wizard is also available to move your existing distribution lists into ReddFish.
http://www.reddfish.co.nz/reddfish/listserver/LOOK (ver 2.03)
Updated version of group calendar utility.
http://www.dansksoftware.dk/look/info.htmCheckCalendar99 (formerly InLook98)
Summarizes your available free time in a simple list that you can send via e-mail or copy to a document.
http://www.dillosoft.com/Email Templates (ver 2.0, formerly Exchange Templates)
Adds support for Outlook 2000, templates for contacts, and overall user interface improvements to this very flexible tool for adding more template-based message-handling actions to Outlook, Exchange or Windows Messaging.
http://www.nsoftware.com/
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