In the meantime, if you're looking for offline reading material, Tom Rizzo has updated his Programming Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange book to cover the Web Storage System and other Exchange 2000 features; the new ISBN number is 0-7356-1019-3. The most detailed book on the Web Storage System to date comes from well known consultant and trainer Mindy Martin -- Programming Collaborative Web Applications with Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server (ISBN 0-7356-0772-9). You can order them both through our Exchange and Outlook Solution Center bookstore at http://www.slipstick.com/books/dev.htm.

Those handy little vCard files that make it easy to send phone and address information to all your friends and associates can also deliver an unpleasant payload. According to an article at the Windows IT Security site (http://www.windowsitsecurity.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=15499#), Outlook does not abide by the RFC (Request for Comment) that defines the vCard format. If you open a vCard that contains too much information in one of several fields, Outlook will crash. Fortunately, the problem does not harm your data. The bug definitely affects Outlook 2000; we have not had time to test it on Outlook 98 and 97.

A vCard file is just a text file with a specific layout of fields, delimiters and data, saved with a .vcf file extension. If you want to avoid the problem completely, you can change the default file type association for vCard .vcf files so that they open in Notepad instead of Outlook. (If this sounds familiar, it's because many people changed the file type association for .vbs VBScript files to Notepad after the LoveLetter virus scare.) After you open the vCard in Notepad, you can copy and paste the information into an Outlook contact, field by field. (Personally, I think that's too much trouble for a problem that isn't likely to occur too often.)

Microsoft has lifted the veil of secrecy on the next version of Office, revealing that Beta 1 includes a number of features that match up with items on many Outlook wish lists:

• It will be easier to insert Outlook data into Word documents with the advent of "Smart Tags" that appear on the screen automatically to offer, for example, to insert a contact's address after you type in the name.
  
• Microsoft's Hotmail and Internet Messenger services will be integrated with Outlook.
  
• Outlook will get the AutoRecovery feature that Word users have long enjoyed, to save your work at timed intervals, though I don't understand yet how that differs from the existing AutoSave feature in Outlook that saves items to your Drafts folder.
  
• The next version of Office will include a new design tool for building applications based on Exchange 2000 and the forthcoming document management server code-named "Tahoe."

Microsoft confirms that the functionality of the Outlook E-mail Security Update will carry over into this next version. We still are waiting to find out if there will be some mechanism to allow digitally signed and trusted applications to have full access to the Outlook object model. If not, then Outlook will have reached a dead end as an applications platform.

For the official news release, see http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2000/aug00/BetaPR.asp. If you want a different spin that's a little more revealing (screen shots!), check out Paul Thurott's report at http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/office10_beta1.asp or ZDNet's review at http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2622074,00.html.

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