Exchange Messaging Outlook
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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 7, No. 19, 6 Mar 2003, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook. Today's highlights:
Regular features:
"Office Watson" reports generate bug fixes If you have used Office XP for any length of time at all, you've probably experienced at least one crash that invoked the new Office Application Error Reporting, sometimes called "Office Watson," that can send data about the crash off to Microsoft. You may have wondered whether your report does any good or just goes into the bit bucket. Microsoft has said that the new error reporting scheme has made it much easier to find and fix bugs, especially those that might previously have been difficult to reproduce. Specifically, more than half of all Office XP bugs were eliminated with the release of Service Pack 2, largely because of the error reports. But there may be even more payoffs: Where appropriate, Microsoft shares the error reports with providers of third-party add-ins to help them identify and resolve compatibility issues with Outlook and other Office applications. Even though only the XP suite products generate the reports, the problems uncovered often apply to earlier versions as well, so even more users benefit. For example, the MSKB article at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=328872 describes a problem in the SpamNet anti-spam tool that generates an Office Watson report, but has been fixed in a newer release. Other applications for which the error reporting tool has pinpointed problems related to Outlook include WinFax, McAfee VirusScan, V3Pro 2002 Deluxe, PGP Corporate Desktop, Omniva Policy Client, Microgarden Outlook Tools, and certain Hewlett-Packard printer drivers. If you want to know more about what information Office sends to Microsoft during the error reporting process, the data collection policy is detailed at http://watson.microsoft.com/dw/1033/dcp.asp. Organizations can collect the data in-house and forward information on only selected crashes to Microsoft. Microsoft plans to issue a new version of the corporate error reporting tool early next month. In the meantime, articles in the Office Resource Kit (http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/two/adma05.htm) and at http://oca.microsoft.com/en/cerintro.asp explain how to get started with corporate error reporting. Office 2003 Beta 2 coming next week It's been an interesting couple of weeks for the next version of Office. The product formerly codenamed as "Office 11" is now known as Office 2003. Microsoft posted an advance copy of Office 2003 Beta 2 on the MSDN site just long enough for at least a few people to download and start testing it. The official release of Beta 2 is planned for next week, according to press reports, and will include a couple of new applications, including InfoForms, formerly known as XDocs. I can't wait to try out OneNote (http://www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/), a note-taking and organizing tool that takes advantage of Tablet PC capabilities but can also run on other machines. Also coming is a version of Outlook enhanced with customer relationship management features. For an early look at Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager, see http://news.com.com/2117-1001-985778.html. A better date search string A while back, I put together a page at http://www.slipstick.com/dev/finddate.htm explaining how to programmatically search for Outlook items meeting certain date criteria using the Find and Restrict methods. Something that stumped me was how to use a single search string to capture items both on and spanning a date. Slipstick.com visitor David Kennedy showed me how! With his solution, a search for all items in your Calendar folder for today (March 6) uses a search string like this:
In other words, you look for all items that started before the end of the date in question and ended after the beginning of that date. It sounds weird, but try it and see! I also found some cases where a locale-neutral date format like 6 Mar 2003 didn't work in a search string in all versions of Outlook, so now I'm recommending that you try the short date format for your locale. If you're using the Format() function, that's the "ddddd" format, as in:
You can use the feedback form at http://www.slipstick.com/feedback.htm to share any other date issues you're dealing with. New at OutlookCode.com Our newest web site, http://www.outlookcode.com, provides a place for the Outlook developer community to discuss Outlook programming issues and share code. Recent code posts include:
This is a free site that welcomes everyone interested in Outlook programming, from absolute beginner to seasoned expert. |
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New Utilities |
ACTIVENET OUTLOOK COMPANION http://www.infoclarus.com/outlook_comp2.htm Tool to help Exchange users manage attachments more efficiently, especially mobile users on low bandwidth or wireless networks. Can convert many attachments to text, show summaries or portions of attachments, show contents of zip archives, perform remote faxing and printing. Outlook 2000 or later. Exchange 5.5 or later. ACTIVENET OWA COMPANION FONIX ISPEAK MICROSOFT OFFICE XP PACK FOR TABLET PC NEWSGATOR ORFILTER QURB V-SPAN WS:COMPRESS OUT |
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Updated utilities |
OWA PERMISSIONS CONTROL http://www.planetsoftware.com.au/products/opc.aspx Web application for viewing and modifying folder permissions. Combines features of the company's former OWA Delegate Control and OWA Public Folder Control. |
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Other new resources |
ALL CODE SOLUTIONS TO MS OUTLOOK http://www.calvinsmithsoftware.com/outlook.htm Commercial code library for Microsoft Outlook HOW TO USE ADDRESS LISTS TO ORGANIZE RECIPIENTS IN EXCHANGE
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More Information |
ISSN 1523-7990 |
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Updated Jul 30 2006
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