Exchange Messaging Outlook
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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 6, No. 21, 30 Jan 2002, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook. Today's highlights:
Regular features:
Overcome Email Overload tip: Hide spam Kaitlin Duck Sherwood writes about junk mail (aka SPAM or UCE) this time: In a previous EMO tip (Vol 6, #16 -- http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2001/up011206.htm), I talked about how you can use rules to organize and prioritize your messages. In this tip, I will give some rules for moving suspected spam to the bottom of your priority list. I do not think you should delete spam automatically: your rules *will* make mistakes sometimes. It's better to assign a low-priority category to probable spam (like z-Junk) or to move the probable junk to a folder. In either case, you should skim the subject lines once per week or so and make sure that nothing important got misfiled. You also should not set up rules for spam without also setting up "whitelist" rules -- ones that recognize people you care about. Put your whitelist filters before your spam filters and make sure that what you do with the message includes "and stop processing rules." At a minimum, your whitelist rules should include a rule to catch messages from people inside your company. There are two ways to catch internal messages: either messages from inside the company will have the company name, e.g. "flossrecycling.com", in the sender's address, or, if you're all working on Exchange Server, there will be no "@". For the first case, use the condition with flossrecycling.com in the sender's address For the second case, there isn't a condition for "not in sender's address", but you can create a rule with no conditions (which means it applies to all messages), set the rule actions, and then add an exception:
Now, once you've set up your whitelist filters, one good thing to do is look for words or phrases that frequently appear in the body of spam, including:
The rule condition would thus be
A lot of spam these days has a lot of spaces in the Subject line, e.g.
(I believe that number on the right is a tracking number for the spammer's internal use.) The rule condition would thus be something like
Note that this is an aggressive rule! You want to make very certain that messages you care about never reach this rule. It could be awkward if this rule hits a message from your spouse with the subject
While these rule conditions won't find all spam, they will catch a lot of it. This will let you be more productive by focusing your energies on the messages you care about. This tip is adapted from Overcome Email Overload with Microsoft Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002 by Kaitlin Duck Sherwood. Find out more at http://www.OvercomeEmailOverload.com/outlook/. Outlook's junk and adult rules If you don't want to go to the trouble of listing junk mail phrases in a rule you construct, as Kaitlin suggests, you might try using Outlook's built-in two Rules Wizard conditions for identifying junk mail:
The Microsoft Knowledgebase article "OL2000: How to Filter Junk and Adult Content E-mail" at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q195398 explains more about these. Note that, although Outlook provides a Filters.txt file so you can see what it uses for junk and adult filters, editing this file does not change the way those filters operate. Filters.txt is just an informational file. Developer spotlight: Victor Ivanidze In our continuing occasional series on individual Outlook and Exchange developers, meet Victor Ivanidze who works in Moscow, Russia. His web site at http://victori.hypermart.net/ features many Outlook 2000/2002 COM addins that add key features either for Exchange Server users or for Outlook users with multiple Internet accounts. For example, RightFrom and UniSent assist Exchange users who manage multiple mailboxes by ensuring that the correct From address is automatically used for replies and that messages sent from a particular mailbox are filed into the Sent Items folder for that mailbox. Lately, Victor has branched out into Exchange 2000 event sinks, including a free tool to notify users when a new item has been posted in a public folder. Victor says he began programming with Outlook in 1998, trying to create a banking application using Outlook as part of the interface with additional functionality added via MAPI. The project died, unfortunately, but it provided him with a starting point. Recently, he spent a year as the Microsoft Corporate Mail Solutions division consultant in a large IT development firm. Victor says, "It's hard to say why I became some kind of Outlook/Exchange fan. Maybe boring Outlook form programming reminds me of the good old PDP/VAX command-line era. At the moment I'm working on a utility that will give the Outlook/Exchange user with multiple Internet addresses the ability to choose any one as the From address before sending a message." What's your favorite Outlook or Exchange utility? If you haven't visited the Utilities page at http://www.slipstick.com/addins/index.htm in a while, take a look this week. We've made some big changes that we hope will make that page more useful as you try to find just the right tool among some 500 utilities for Outlook and Exchange that we list. At the top, you'll see a Featured Utility box, where we'll be highlighting favorites submitted by Outlook and Exchange MVPs and other Slipstick.com visitors. This means you! Drop us a line to let us know what tools are really doing the job for you. Also, notice that we've revamped the utilities index to give you a better picture of the breadth of tools we cover. |
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New Utilities |
CALENDWARE http://www.diditbetter.com/calendware.asp Synchronize any number of private calendar folders each with a public calendar folder using this Outlook 2000/2002 COM add-in. COPERNIC SUMMARIZER EXCLAIMER INVITE MAILDEFENSE OSA-SYNC OUTBOOKS POCKET CONTACT SYNCHRONIZER REFLEX SCREENMAIL FOR OUTLOOK |
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Updated utilities |
OFFICE XP ALTERNATIVE USER INPUT UPDATE JANUARY 24, 2002 http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2002/oxpauiu.aspx Update for the handwriting, speech, and East Asian keyboard input routines in Office XP. Does not require Office Service Pack 1. OPROFILE POLICY PATROL |
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Other new resources |
HARMONY FOR MICROSOFT EXCHANGE http://www.compoze.com/hcs_exchange.html Java software components for working with Exchange 5.5 and later. HOW TO USE URLSCAN WITH EXCHANGE OUTLOOK WEB ACCESS OFFICE XP DEVELOPER SERVICE PACK 1 OUTLOOK YEAR VIEW CONTROL |
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More Information |
Click here to subscribe to the Exchange Messaging Outlook newsletter. Exchange Messaging Outlook Newsletter back issues ISSN 1523-7990 |
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Updated Apr 11 2009
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