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Exchange Messaging Outlook
Volume 7, Number 7

Jumpstart your Outlook programming skills -- for power users, administrators, and developers

Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 7, No. 7, 12 Aug 2002, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook.

Today's highlights:
  • SP2 causes problems for some Outlook 2002 users on Windows XP
  • Office XP SP2 and Norton Antivirus
  • Send HTML messages with bookmarks
  • Office and Visual Studio .NET

Regular features:

  • New utilities
  • Updated utilities
  • Other new resources

SP2 causes problems for some Outlook 2002 users on Windows XP

As reported in the last EMO issue, some Outlook 2002 users are having problems after applying Office Service Pack 2. The typical scenario is that Outlook crashes when it seems to be sitting idle doing nothing or when you exit Outlook. Sometimes it offers to send an error report to Microsoft and leaves an entry in the event log. In other cases, Outlook just shuts down without any warning or error message.

We heard from Microsoft today that they have narrowed down the problem to users with POP3 accounts running Outlook 2002 on Windows XP and that a fix is in development. That diagnosis fits with my hypothesis -- that it's related to background scheduled send/receive sessions.

If you have already installed Outlook 2002 and have this problem, try turning off background send/receive: Choose Tools | Send/Receive Settings | Define Send/Receive Groups. For each group, clear the Schedule an automatic send/receive boxes.

Another workaround may be to install Windows XP Service Pack 1, which was released earlier this week -- http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/servicepacks/sp1/default.asp . Many, but not all, people who have reported the Outlook problem in the newsgroups say installing Windows XP SP1 resolved the issue. However, you might want to wait a few days to see what problems surface with the Windows service pack itself

If you are anxious about installing SP2 but don't have Windows XP, it looks like the coast is clear. We haven't seen any notable problem reports related to earlier operating systems.

Office XP SP2 and Norton Antivirus

A broader problem with Office documents and SP2 has already triggered a Microsoft Knowledgebase article. The chief symptom is a "File ... is not available" error message when opening embedded Office documents. The KB article " OFFXP Cannot Edit Inserted Objects After You Install Office XP Service Pack 2" at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q328613 explains that the disabling the Norton Antivirus Plug-in for Microsoft Office should solve the problem. You can still scan documents manually for viruses or rely on normal automatic file scans as documents are saved to your system.

Send HTML messages with bookmarks

Many thanks to Stephen Green for pointing out yet another method of sending relatively complex HTML messages with internal bookmarks via Outlook. His technique is to create an HTML document in Microsoft FrontPage, then use FrontPage's File | Send command. (We tried this in Office XP, but not Office 2000 yet.) The resulting message will include an extraneous two line feeds and horizontal line at the top, but you can easily delete these.

Be careful with your <img> tags if you use this method, because the message uses the exact tag from your document, even if you have Outlook set to embed images in outgoing HTML messages. Therefore, the <img> tags will need to point to files available on the Internet. This, in turn, may annoy people who use dial-up Internet connections, since Outlook will try to connect to try to display the images when the recipient opens or previews the message.

For more ideas on generating fancy HTML for Outlook messages, see http://www.slipstick.com/mail1/html.htm.

Office and Visual Studio .NET

Microsoft last month outlined its development plans for next three versions of Visual Studio between now and 2004 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/roadmap.asp). For Outlook developers, the most interesting version is Visual Studio for Yukon, which promises to deliver support in the Visual Studio development environment for Office development, while continuing support for Visual Basic for Applications. Since Office 11 is nearing beta -- Outlook 11 will be demonstrated at MEC next month -- and should be nearly feature-complete, I think that means that you'll see full .NET + Office development in Office 12, not 11.

Currently, the best source of information on developing for Outlook with .NET is at http://www.microeye.com/resources/index.html. There are definitely some sticky issues -- such as creating a shim to allow you to build a COM add-in that can be trusted with the Admin Pack for the Outlook 2002.

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New Utilities

ATTACHMENT MASTER
http://www.nextword.com/AttachmentMasterProd.htm
Remove attachments from email messages in any folder and save them to a system folder.

CELLLINK
http://www.settingstarstudio.com/
Get notifications of appointments, task due dates, and important e-mail messages on your mobile phone. Does not trigger Outlook security prompts.

ESRA
http://www.c2c.com/products/ESRA/Why_Choose.htm
"Exchange Security Risk Auditor" to audit and change mailbox permissions both for periodic security audits and for common events, such as an employee leaving the company.

FILEWAY
http://www.fileway.com/owa.htm
Server components to provide secure remote access to files in your organization using Outlook Web Access as the front end. Works with Exchange 5.5 and 2000. FileWay itself can be deployed standalone to provide browser access to files or incorporated into SharePoint Portal Server with a web part.

FRANKLINCOVEY PLANPLUS FOR OUTLOOK
http://www.franklincovey.com
Integrates FranklinCovey productivity concepts into Outlook task management, allowing you to build a hierarchy of master tasks and subtasks. Provides an overall view of Tasks, Calendar, and Inbox on a single page. Corporations can reinforce company mission statements and goals. Includes synchronization with Palm and PocketPC and print support for all FranklinCovey planner sizes.

HABEAS
http://www.habeas.com/
Unique anti-spam approach that applies a trademarked and copyrighted haiku to outgoing mail headers to identify the message as non-spam. Provider promises vigorous prosecution of any spammer's use of the haiku as a trademark and copyright violation. See Embedding Habeas Headers in Outbound Mail with Microsoft Exchange Server at http://www.habeas.com/support/exchange-outbound.htm for an Exchange 2000 event sink to add the header text to outgoing messages.

MX-CONTACT
http://www.exchangewise.com/products/mxcontact/index.html
Customer relationship management system for Outlook using Exchange public folders, structured like a relational database. Handles contacts, appointments, tasks, journal items, documents, and mail messages, as well as companies and opportunities. Can automatically copy contacts that a user owns from the public folder to the user's mailbox Contacts folder. Includes tool to import into Excel for reporting, plus pre-defined Crystal Reports reports.

NEW MAIL NOTIFIER
http://www.nistech.com/newmailnotifier/
Provides a small display window in the corner of your screen that shows subject, sender, and a small portion of text of an incoming message. You can open, delete, reply to it, etc. or just ignore it, and the "auto-display" feature will hide the window after a little time passes.

PUBLIC2PRIVATEWARE
http://www.diditbetter.com/p2p.asp
Copies data from one calendar folder to another, private or public, on a schedule. Outlook 2000 or later.

READNOTIFY
http://faq.readnotify.com/
Service to provide delivery receipts, read receipts, and other tracking. Also supports self-destructing and unprintable messages and message retraction.

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Updated utilities

ATTACHMENT OPTIONS
http://www.slovaktech.com/attachmentoptions.htm
Version 1.6.16 of this COM add-in for adjusting the attachment security block in Outlook 2002 adds support for new file types blocked in Office XP Service Pack 2 and improves the add-in's operation when running on a system that also has ActiveSync installed.

EXPRESS MAIL@MATE
http://www.express-soft.com/mailmate/
Version 2.5.5 of this email notification program improves the popup notification to add the sender name and subject of new messages. Users can also now configure the number of messages displayed in the notification dialog and the number of seconds it stays on top.

EXTENDED REMINDERS
http://www.slovaktech.com/extendedreminders.htm
Version 1.1 of this COM add-in for firing reminders from non-default folders in the user's default information store improves the add-in's operation when running on a system that also has ActiveSync installed.

ZIPOUT
http://www.microeye.com/zipout/
Version 3.0.3038 of this COM add-in utility for automatically compressing attachments improves the zip engine performance by 35%, provides bug fixes for administrative installations, and improves the add-in's operation when running on a system that also has ActiveSync installed.

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Other new resources

IMPLEMENTING DAVID ALLEN'S WORKFLOW PROCESSING USING MICROSOFT OUTLOOK
http://www.davidco.com/productDetail.php?id=43&IDoption=7
Explains how to use Outlook to enhance personal productivity, making use of built-in features like categories and views.

MAPI BASED PERMISSION ROLES FOR PUBLIC FOLDERS IN EXCHANGE 2000
http://www.outlookexchange.com/articles/goranhusman/mapi.asp
Interesting article on relationship between permissions you can set with Outlook or the Exchange System Manager and the Window permissions on public folder items

MICROSOFT DEVELOPER TOOLS ROADMAP 2002-2004
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/roadmap.asp
Outline of development plans for next three versions of Visual Studio. The interesting one is Visual Studio for Yukon, which promises to deliver support in the Visual Studio development environment for Office.

OUTLOOK WORKBOOK
http://www.calstatela.edu/ats/helpdesk/trainme/outlookwb.htm
18 Outlook 2000 lessons in PDF format. Note that these are for self-training and are copyright by California State University, Los Angeles.

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More Information

ISSN 1523-7990
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Updated Jul 30 2006

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