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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 5, No. 16, of Exchange Messaging
Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and
Microsoft Outlook.
Today's highlights:
- Distributing company holidays
- Offline folder tips
- Address auto-resolution revisited
Regular features:
- New utilities
- Other new resources
Distributing company holidays
If you're looking for a way to put the company holidays for 2001
on everyone's calendar, we have the perfect form for you! At
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/olforms/holiday.htm,
you can download a free custom Outlook message form that reads
appointment details from any calendar folder and embeds key data in
a message you can send to everyone in the company. When users open
the message, they'll be able to click one button to have Outlook
place all the appointments in their own calendar folder.
This form was developed over the past couple of years with input
from many Exchange administrators. However, it does not require
Exchange Server and requires only that users have VBScript 2.0 or
later. If you want to send it outside an Exchange Server
organization, you'll need to follow the rules for sending forms that
we've collected at
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/sendform.htm.
Offline folder tips
For Exchange Server users who sometimes work away from the
office, create any new mailbox folders you need when working
offline. That way, they'll automatically be configured for use both
offline and online.
If you work in an Exchange Server environment and don't want
messages to be delivered immediately after you send them, set up
offline folders and start Outlook in "work offline" mode. Messages
you send will stay in the Outbox folder until you're ready to send
them using Tools | Synchronize. If you use this method, you
might want to have a separate notification tool looking at your
mailbox via POP so that you know when you get new messages. See
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/notify.htm
for suggested add-ins.
Address auto-resolution revisited
I wrote in EMO Vol. 5, No. 12 ( http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2000/up001108.htm)
about how Outlook automatically resolves addresses, rather than
automatically completing them as Outlook Express does. For those of
you using Exchange Server, here's some additional information on how
multiple address lists, including the GAL, affect the resolution
process.
What fields does Outlook use to look up names for address
resolution? It depends on the address list. For the Exchange Global
Address List (GAL), it searches several fields -- display name,
surname, mailbox alias and office (but, significantly, not first
name). This can be changed in Exchange 5.x by editing the schema in
raw mode and setting the Search-Flags property to 2 for the fields
you want to use for name resolution. See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q155/7/15.asp.
For Contacts and Personal Address Book, the search fields include
name and email address fields, but *not* the Nickname field on
contacts.
Name resolution searches only one address list at a time. Use the
Tools | Services | Addressing tab to control the order in
which lists are searched in Outlook 98/2000 in Corporate/Workgroup
mode or in Outlook 97. Let's say you have the GAL set as the first
list, followed by PAB and Contacts. If there are matches in the GAL,
you won't see any addresses from the PAB. If there is no match in
the GAL, then it searches the PAB. If no matches in the PAB, then it
searches Contacts. If you think about performance, this makes a lot
of sense. Searching across all address lists in your name resolution
list could take a very long time.
For example, entering "William" and pressing Ctrl+K might display
a list that includes William Gates, Bart Williamson, and Jane
Williams. If there are no matches in the GAL for William, then you
might also get names from the PAB with addresses like williamg@domain.dom.
The search is always a "starts with" search, looking only at the
beginning of the fields. It would not find
a name like Alice Fitz-Williams because "Williams" here is not at
the beginning of the surname.
If you have multiple contact folders that you want to use for
address resolution, see
http://www.slipstick.com/contacts/oloab.htm. |
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