Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 5, No. 18, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook.

Outlook 2000 includes a cool feature to publish any calendar folder as a web page. As our page at http://www.slipstick.com/calendar/olpubcal.htm explains, you need the Web Publishing Wizard to make it work.

It's a manual process, though, and what many people want to do is publish the calendar regularly and automatically, so that they can maintain an up-to-date copy for their intranet. With the help of my fellow Outlook MVP Ken Slovak and some other sources, we've figured out how to do this! The key component is the Webpub.exe file that Outlook 2000 installs when you run the Save As Web Page command from the File menu. We'll be putting up a web page with complete details in the next few days, but you can start using this right now with the script we've uploaded to http://www.slipstick.com/files/webcalpub.zip.

The download contains a script named Webcalpub.vbs that you can run from a command line with Windows Scripting Host. Better yet, run it from your favorite Windows scheduling program to update the calendar once a day or once an hour! The script includes a place for you to set various options, such as the calendar to be published and the number of months.

Hybris/Snow White virus

EMO is never going to overload you with information about every virus in the wild, but one in particular seems to be spreading so fast it's worth noting. The Hybris virus -- also known as Snow White because of the message text it sometimes uses -- sends out mail messages with an .exe file payload. When the unwitting user runs the .exe file, the machine becomes infected.

This is not strictly an Outlook virus, though. Hybris does not use the Outlook address book to propagate itself. Instead, it infects the Wsock32.dll file that Windows uses to communicate with the Internet and "listens" for e-mail addresses in name@domain.dom format, whether they're in mail messages, newsgroup messages or on a web page. It also downloads new, encrypted components for itself automatically and changes the file attachment and subject of the propagation messages, so that it's difficult to detect with simple search methods. Because it apparently sends its propagation messages directly via SMTP, rather than through Outlook, it leaves no trace in Sent Items, and the headers of the virus message offer little clue as to what infected machine sent the message.

So far, it's not destructive, but with the capability to download new plug-ins, that could change. Kaspersky Labs calls it "perhaps the most complex and refined malicious code in the history of virus writing" and says it has become the most frequently seen virus. For more details, see http://www.viruslist.com/eng/viruslist.asp?id=4112&key=00001000130000100044.

As always, we urge you to be on the alert. See http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/antivirus.htm for methods to protect yourself against email-borne viruses. The anti-virus software providers all have updates that can detect and remove Hybris.

One of the most important other protection steps is to make sure you know when you're opening an .exe file, so you can be cautious. In Windows Explorer's View | Options or Tools | Folder Options dialog, set Windows so that it always displays the file extension even for known file types.

More new Outlook code samples

In addition to the calendar publishing script, we've added some other new Outlook code samples for particular frequent tasks:

To automatically set a reminder for birthdays for new contacts
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/code/remindbday.htm
Outlook 2000 VBA code sample

To pop up the Select Names dialog and work with selected names
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/code/selectnames.htm
Two VBScript samples you can use on an Outlook form to add recipients to a message or return a single name.

To recover the password for a custom form
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/code/getformpassword.htm
Outlook 2000 VBA code sample to get the password from a custom form.

Outlook 2001:Mac (revisited)

We've added some tips and tricks for Outlook 2001:Mac (beta) at http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/mac/ol2001tips.htm, including a list of keyboard shortcuts and some ways to get your Outlook 8.2 calendar data into Outlook 2001. Many thanks to Thelma Simons at the University of Kansas and to Microsoft Product Support Services for their contributions.

Thelma has also started a discussion list for Outlook 2001:Mac and the earlier Outlook 8.2 client. Click here to subscribe: mailto:macoutlook-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Irregular appointment recurrences (revisited)

In our last EMO issue (http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2001/up010117.htm), we discussed two ways to handle appointments that occur more than once but not in a strictly regular pattern (say a meeting that occurs on Saturday in some weeks and on Sunday in others). Linda Dolan wrote in to suggest a third method that combines the two that we suggested. She creates a single appointment to recur on Saturdays, then drags the meetings that should be on Sunday to the correct dates. Thanks, Linda!

Notifications from another mailbox (revisited)

Way back in EMO Vol. 5, No. 12 (http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2000/up001108.htm), we talked about ways to get notifications of new items in another mailbox. Tommy Noble wrote to point out another method -- have the Exchange administrator add your mailbox as an alternate recipient on the other mailbox so that all the new items in that mailbox appear in your own Inbox.

In Exchange 5.5, the administrator would run the Exchange Administrator program and go to the Delivery Options page of the other mailbox's Properties dialog. There the admin can set you as an alternate recipient on the mailbox.