Exchange Messaging Outlook
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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 7, No. 9, 3 Oct 2002, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook. Today's highlights:
Regular features:
AddInMon cures COM add-in shutdown woes Developers of COM add-ins for Outlook face challenges that developers of COM add-ins for other Office programs don't have to worry about. Chief among them is knowing when the user has exited from Outlook, so the add-in can also be shut down. Without a graceful shutdown by the add-in, Outlook will remain in memory. The standard solution, well documented in the Resources section at http://www.microeye.com, has been to use a wrapper class to capture the Explorer.Close event and monitor the number of remaining open Explorer objects. The main problem with this method is that it won't work if an application, such as ActiveSync 3.5 or later, starts Outlook without any folder windows (i.e. Explorers) visible. Micro Eye has come up with a solution in the form of a small executable, AddInMon, that detects when the Outlook user interface is instantiated. It then connects any COM add-ins set to load at startup and shuts itself down. Micro Eye is making AddInMon available free to the Outlook developer community. For download and implementation details, see http://www.microeye.com/resources/res_addinmon.htm. Many thanks to Micro Eye for researching this issue and devising a solution. Office XP SP2 addresses Outlook POP problem A buddy at Microsoft pointed out that Service Pack 2 for Office XP changes the way Outlook downloads mail from POP3 accounts in an effort to fix several problems, including messages being left on the server when they shouldn't be. Details are in the article OL 2002: Mail Retrieval Problems Occur When You Receive POP Mail at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q317945. No changes to your Outlook setup are required. See http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2002sp2.htm#problems for information on some known issues with SP2. Spam a worse problem than viruses I think it's safe to say that junk mail has become a far worse problem than viruses. Most companies and ISPs now seem to be blocking viruses effectively at the server, but spam is a much more elusive target, because the spammers can change tactics so quickly. The number of anti-spam tools -- both client and server -- is growing, but there is no 100% solution. Just as some diseases require treatment with multiple drugs, it may take a multi-faceted strategy to combat spam. Therefore, I was interested to find a new Outlook anti-spam tool, Matador (http://www.mailfront.com), that combines more approaches than other tools I've found -- filters, blacklists, whitelists, and challenges. First, it uses a peer-generated database of spam messages, similar to that developed by SpamNet (http://www.cloudmark.com), and MailShell SpamCatcher (http://www.mailshell.com to detect junk mail. You can fine-tune your anti-spam settings to make the filter more or less aggressive. Second, you can allow or block incoming mail from specific domains. Third, you can allow or block incoming mail from specific email addresses. Matador automatically scans your Inbox to build a list of allowed senders. Finally, for any message that looks like junk mail that isn't from an allowed sender or domain, Matador sends an email challenge message back to the sender. If the sender is a real person and follows the instructions in the challenge, Matador releases the message to your Inbox. Otherwise, it remains in the junk pile. This is the approach used by Email Bouncer (http://www.email-bouncer.com). Matador is still in beta, but might be worth a look if you are trying to find an Outlook solution to the spam problem. Microsoft's recent release of primary interop assemblies (PIAs) for Office XP, noted in last week's issue of EMO, has put the spotlight on .NET samples for Outlook and other Office programs. Here's the Outlook list so far:
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New Utilities |
MATADOR http://www.mailfront.com/ Multi-modal anti-spam tool for Outlook 2000 and later, offering filters, peer junk identification, blacklists, whitelists, and optional challenge messages to suspected spam senders. Beta. OUTLOOK RECOVERY SERVICE |
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Updated utilities |
LOOK.WEB http://www.symprex.com/lookweb/basics.htm Version 2.13 of this tool for publishing Exchange calendars to the web adds better support for basic authentication mode and new configuration settings, plus bug fixes. SYMPREX EXCENTRE AUTOARCHIVE MANAGER SYMPREX EXCENTRE FOLDER PERMISSIONS MANAGER SYMPREX EXCENTRE OUT-OF-OFFICE MANAGER |
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Other new resources |
ADDINMON http://www.microeye.com/resources/res_addinmon.htm Standalone program that works with Outlook COM add-ins to ensure that they load properly in situations where Outlook may have been started without any user interface. Free. OL OVERVIEW OF PROGRAMMING WITH RULES |
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More Information |
ISSN 1523-7990 |
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Updated Jul 30 2006
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