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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 7, No. 8, 26 Sep 2002, of Exchange Messaging
Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and
Microsoft Outlook.
Today's highlights:
- Outlook 2002 post-SP2 hotfixes
- Outlook Express has attachment security
- Office PIAs for Visual Studio .Net
- New message management tools
Outlook 2002 post-SP2 hotfixes
Office XP Service Pack 2 is only a month old, but already there
are hotfixes for it.
Microsoft has fixed the issue we reported in the last issue of
EMO, where POP users on Windows XP were experiencing frequent
crashes. The Microsoft Knowledgebase article "OL2002: Outlook Stops
Responding When You Download a Message After You Apply Office XP
Service Pack 2" at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q329349
describes the problem and offers patches for Outlcm.dll and
Outlook.exe. Note that this fix does not change the version number
that you see on the Help | About dialog in Outlook.
The second fix is for developers writing code that attaches files
to plain text messages. The article "OL2002: An Extra Signature Is
Added When You Insert an Attachment Programmatically" at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q327595
describes the problem and the patch. This fix also includes the POP
download fix from Q329349, described above, and updates the version
number to 10.0.4510.0.
These hotfixes are available only through Microsoft Support, but
you shouldn't be charged for an incident if you confine your issue
to just the one listed in the KB article.
One question many people have asked is how SP2 could have shipped
with such a big problem in it. My own experience is that the crashes
were not all that easy to reproduce. They apparently affect only
users with POP accounts running on Windows XP. On my own desktop
system, I didn't start seeing symptoms until I had left Outlook
running for several days straight. Perhaps that's something that
Microsoft needs to include in its testing regimen -- leaving
machines running for several days with automatic send/receive turned
on.
Outlook Express has attachment security
I don't usually write about Outlook Express in EMO, but I think
it's worth noting that the latest update for OE turns on file
attachment blocking by default. This has triggered a flood of
newsgroup messages from bewildered and frustrated OE users.
Strangely enough, while it takes a registry change to loosen
attachment security in Outlook 2002, OE users only need to go to
Tools | Options | Security and clear the box for Do not allow
attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus.
How this all-or-nothing feature is supposed to provide attachment
security escapes me. If attachment blocking is important -- as
Microsoft seems to think it is in Outlook -- why wouldn't OE have a
registry entry like Outlook 2002's to allow users to unblock just
those specific file types that they really need?
In any case, the lesson here for Outlook users is that the number
of recipients with attachment blocking continues to grow. Even if
you can send an .exe or other possibly blocked file, that's no
guarantee that the person receiving it will be able to easily open
the file. It's a good idea to either compress potentially dangerous
files into .zip files or change the file extension before sending
someone a file that might be blocked by the recipient's mail program
(or by their mail server).
Office PIAs for Visual Studio .Net
Microsoft has finally released official primary interop
assemblies for use with .NET languages. You can download these from
http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/sample.asp?url=/MSDN-FILES/027/001/999/msdncompositedoc.xml
and should use these official PIAs instead of the assemblies that
Visual Studio .NET generates at design time. Be sure to read:
Working with the Office XP Primary Interop Assemblies
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnoxpta/html/odc_oxppias.asp
Office XP Primary Interop Assemblies Known Issues
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnoxpta/html/odc_piaissues.asp
The Micro Eye resource page at
http://www.microeye.com/resources/res_outlookvsnet.htm also
includes other key references for .NET developers working with
Outlook.
New message management tools
What a coincidence! In just the past two days, I've run across
two new Outlook tools that address long-standing deficiencies in the
program's ability to organize mail messages.
QuickFile, from
http://www.addins4outlook.com/QuickFile/default.htm, automates
the process of refiling a message into a specific folder after you
send it or read it.
AutoRead for Outlook, from
http://www.techhit.com/autoread/, is a Rules Wizard custom
action that marks as read messages meeting your criteria. What sets
it apart from the "mark as read" rule action that Outlook 2002
includes and from the earlier MarkRead custom action is that it can
also turn off the envelope icon in the system tray. |
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