Exchange Messaging Outlook
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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 7, No. 20, 20 Mar 2003, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook. Today's highlights:
Regular features:
Outlook 2003 Beta 2 junk e-mail filter Years of anti-spam work at Microsoft Research (e.g. http://research.microsoft.com/~horvitz/junkfilter.htm) have paid off handsomely in the new junk e-mail filter in Outlook 2003 Beta 2. So far, it's catching more than 90% of the spam I receive, with only the rare false positive (non-junk mail mistakenly identified as junk). For many people, this may be the killer feature that induces them to upgrade. When you start using Outlook 2003 Beta 2, the junk filter is automatically on, but I think the default "low" setting is too conservative. I recommend that you use Tools | Options | Junk E-mail to set the filter to "high." All of my false positives have been from newsletters or mailing lists. It's easy to add either the From or To address for a newsletter to the list of trusted addresses. Just right-click the message, choose Junk E-mail, then Add to Trusted Recipients List. You can then choose whether to trust the sender or the To address. Because the junk e-mail filter trusts all your Outlook contacts by default, you may find that it's no longer necessary to maintain large blacklists or whitelists, even though you can import such lists through the Tools | Options | Junk E-mail dialog. In fact, I've heard from a couple of people suggesting that large blacklists may cause the Junk E-mail dialog to take a long time to open or present other performance problems. Other features that I'd like to see:
Does the strength of Outlook 2003's anti-spam filter mean there's no need for third-party anti-spam tools? I definitely think there is still room for such tools, as I explain in the article below on SpamNet. How to get Office 2003 Beta 2 MSDN subscribers can download Office 2003 Beta 2 by logging in and going to the subscriber downloads page. Anyone else worldwide can go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/orderbeta.asp and order the evaluation kit in one of several languages, for a small shipping and handling fee. Microsoft plans to ship 500,000 copies of Office 2003 Beta 2, probably making it one of the largest public betas ever. Cloudmark Spamnet updated for Outlook 2003 The SpamNet COM addin for Outlook from http://www.cloudmark.com is apparently the first anti-spam tool updated for Outlook 2003, which requires some changes to accommodate new security features. (See article below.) I tested both the new 0.9 beta of SpamNet and Outlook 2003 Beta 2's junk filter against 1500 messages that I had received on a very spam-prone account during the past two weeks. Both did an excellent job, with Outlook catching 93% of the spam and SpamNet 94%. Both had a handful of false positives, SpamNet slightly more than Outlook, all newsletters or mailing lists, and therefore easily adjusted with additions to the trusted senders list. What I found most interesting was that both SpamNet and Outlook misidentified 3% of my messages as non-junk when they were really junk mail, but when used together, that figure fell to 1%. Apparently, each tool can pinpoint junk that the other misses, so combining them may help eliminate those last few spam messages from your Inbox. My one concern so far is that SpamNet normally uses its own Spam folder to store junk mail and processes not just the Inbox, but also mail that Outlook has identified as junk and stored in the Junk E-mail folder. That dual processing seems to generate a lot of disk activity moving items between folders. What worked for me was to set up SpamNet so that it uses the same Junk E-mail folder as Outlook. That way, you don't get so much disk activity moving items between folders, but SpamNet can still go through all the junk mail and report spam it to Cloudmark's server to beef up the database of known spam that's at the heart of the SpamNet tool. (See http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=25919 for an explanation of how this reporting works.) Outlook 2003 Beta 2 - some settings to change I covered the Junk E-mail settings earlier, but I think you'll benefit from changing a few other default settings after you install Office 2003. #1: WordMail -- If you use Word as your mail editor (and that's the default in Office 2003, as it was in Office XP), you will probably want to change some of the options that add overhead to HTML messages. In Word, choose Tools | Options, then switch to the General tab and click E-mail Options. You'll find the HTML Options on the General tab. I have mine set to High and Rely on CSS for font formatting. A short message that's 3k when sent in plain text weighs in at just 4k with those settings. However, with the default settings, the same message is 7k, most of that overhead for Word's formatting and smart tags. #2: Read receipts -- Outlook's default is to prompt me every time a message requests a read receive, but I never want to send them. So I permanently turn off read receipts with Tools | Options | E-mail Options | Tracking Options | Never send a response. #3: Address book sort order -- I am mystified as to why Outlook defaults to a First Last sort order for contacts listed in the address book, rather than using the File As property, which most people have set to use Last, First. Unfortunately, the setting to change this is about as buried as it can get. Choose Tools | E-mail Accounts | View or change existing directories or address books. Select the Outlook Address Book, then click Change. Finally, you'll see the sort order options at the bottom of the Microsoft Outlook Address Book dialog that pops up. Does Outlook 2003 have other default settings that you think should work differently out of the box? Let me know at emo@slipstick.com? Developer gotchas in Outlook 2003 Developers need to be aware of several significant changes in the "object model guard" security in Outlook 2003. Overall, the changes mean that users should see fewer security prompts. However, existing tools may require substantial changes. Microsoft has added Body and HTMLBody, the two properties that represent the main content of a message or other Outlook item, to the list of properties that trigger security prompts, because message bodies often contain address information. Anti-spam and other tools that scan message bodies will definitely be affected, but so will many other applications. At the same time, however, Microsoft has changed direction on what environments should restrict access to such guarded properties. Published Outlook forms, Visual Basic for Applications code, and properly constructed Outlook COM add-ins will no longer trigger security prompts for standalone users. Yet, Exchange administrators can still choose to manage Outlook security through the Outlook Security Settings folder and form. Our hat goes off to Microsoft for finally recognizing that when a user publishes a form, writes a VBA macro, or installs an Outlook COM addin, they've made a conscious choice to use that application and should not be hindered by security prompts. Programs that use the Outlook object model, but are external to Outlook, however, will continue to exhibit prompts if they use the guarded properties. Furthermore, Outlook developers will need to construct their COM addins in a particular way in order for those addins to avoid the prompts. Fortunately, this is not really a change, because the same construction is required for COM addins designed to be trusted by the Exchange security settings form. For a detailed explanation, see my article at http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=38375 . You'll also find other articles for Office 2003 at the new MSDN page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dno2k3ta/html/ODC_Office2003Page.asp. I have confirmed one other potential "code breaker" in Outlook 2003 Beta 2, related to the new "search folders" feature. I love search folders' ability to show you a constantly updated view of multiple folders, based on your own filter criteria. However, if the user is viewing a search folder, Application.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder returns Nothing, rather than a valid MAPIFolder object. I think that is likely to break some applications, especially those that count on being able to perform operations on all items visible in the current folder. 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. One of the things I enjoy most about visiting it daily is that I learn something new all the time. This week, Peter Schnellman provided a tip (with sample code) on using a change in a control's background color to get the user's attention when they need to change a value on an Outlook form. You can read about it and add your comments at:
This is a free site that welcomes everyone interested in Outlook programming, from absolute beginner to seasoned expert. |
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New Utilities |
2XCHANGE http://www.diditbetter.com/default.asp Query Outlook address lists, SQL Server, Access, and other databases to create distribution lists that can be automatically updated. DL information can also be exported to Exchange public folders. Once a DL query is run, users can send to recipients in the results by the best available method -- email, fax, or printed letter. AREA CODE UPDATE BACKUP FOR WORKGROUPS CHOOSEFROM FOR MS EXCHANGE 2000 CONTACTXCHANGE OUTLOOK SPEAKS! READ RECEIPT REMOVER FOR EXCHANGE 2000 TELEMESSAGE MS OUTLOOK PLUGIN |
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Updated utilities |
MAILFILER http://www.mailfiler.com/ Version 1.3 of this tool for organizing, managing, and tracking your Outlook messages adds task reminders linked to mail conversations and notifications sent to your pager, SMS, or other mail account. OUTLOOK REDEMPTION SMARTNOTE |
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More Information |
ISSN 1523-7990 |
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Updated Jul 30 2006
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