Exchange Messaging Outlook
Volume 7, Number 22

Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 7, No. 22, 16 Apr 2003, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook.

• What Is Exchange?
• From our Inbox: Advanced Find & filters
• Deleting appointments
• Export mail received date
• Custom form printing

Regular features:

• New utilities
• Updated utilities
• Other new resources

What Is Exchange?

A visitor to my web site recently asked for an explanation of Microsoft Exchange, highlighting how much we sometimes take for granted that people who use Outlook know what Exchange is all about. Given some of the messages I've seen in the public newsgroups, I doubt that even all the organizations that have installed Exchange know why they're using it, so perhaps an explanation is in order.

First of all, Exchange is a mail server. It can handle POP, IMAP, and web clients, as well as its own preferred client, Outlook.

But as just a mail server, Exchange is a rather expensive and complicated choice. It's the collaboration features that make Exchange more than a mail server. Exchange allows people to share information, either using Outlook on the desktop or to a lesser extent, Outlook Web Access through a browser. Typical collaboration scenarios include maintaining shared address lists that everyone can contribute to, scheduling meetings that include not just people but also conference rooms and other meeting resources, and sharing other types of information either in public folders or by granting access to folders in your own Exchange mailbox. You can also use Exchange to store a central library of commonly used Outlook forms. In fact, if you require maximum collaboration potential with Outlook clients, Exchange is your best choice.

So why doesn't everyone who wants to share data with Outlook just install Exchange? The answer is: cost and complexity. Exchange is a server-based application and requires an Active Directory infrastructure in place before you can even run setup. It costs considerably more than a shareware POP server and takes more effort to configure, especially when you want to support such features as access to Outlook Web Access from the Internet. Exchange may look awfully complex to a small organization that just wants basic mail and collaboration, but that complexity includes features essential to supporting hundreds of thousands of users on a global network of Exchange servers.

From our Inbox: Advanced Find & filters

The rest of this issue of EMO deals with some of the interesting recent questions from our Inbox, starting with a couple on using the results of Advanced Find.

Q: Do you know how to mail merge contacts from the results of an Advanced Find search?

Instead of using Advanced Find, try using a filtered view of your Contacts folder. You can use the same criteria in the filter as in Advanced Find. (If you haven't created a filter before, start with View | Current View | Customize Current View | Filter to add a filter to the current view.) Once you have the folder filtered, select all the contacts, then start the merge with the Tools | Mail Merge command.

Q: Is it possible to display the Advanced Find results in a detailed address card view?

No, but again, the most likely solution is to use a filter instead of Advanced Find. Start with an address card view, then add the filter you need.

Of course, a filter can't show you multiple contacts folders in your mailbox or Personal Folders PST file like Advanced Find can. If you need to use the results from multiple folders, you could try copying all the items in Advanced Find to a new folder. Select them all, then choose Edit | Copy to Folder.

Deleting appointments

Q: How can I delete all the items in the calendar up to a month ago?

Filters are a good tool to use for this task, too. Filter the calendar in a table view to show the old items, then choose Edit | Select All and press Delete. Note that a table view includes the master item for recurring appointments, not the individual recurrences. Unless the recurrence period for the appointment has ended, don't delete the master item or you'll be removing future recurrences as well as those in the past.

Export mail received date

Q: I am trying to export messages from Outlook into an Excel spreadsheet that depicts the sender's name, the subject, and the date received. When I use Outlook's wizard, the received date is not in the list of fields I can export.

I've never heard a good reason why Outlook can't export the key date information for messages, but at least there's a workaround for this simple export task. Rearrange the view to show the Sender, Subject, and Received date. Choose Edit | Select All, then Edit | Copy. Now switch to Excel and paste. This little trick works for any table-format view.

Custom form printing

Q: I am a newbie when it comes to printing Outlook forms. Isn't there a way to print the form as it appears on the screen?

Well, no, there isn't, unless you count using the PrtScn key to copy the screen image. Microsoft has a little tool called ExPrint, but it has so many limitations that I usually don't recommend it. What works best is to write some code behind the form to either generate a new HTML-format message or post and print that or, better yet, to generate a Word document from a template that has form fields matching the Outlook fields. For samples and other resources, see http://www.slipstick.com/dev/customprint.htm.

New Utilities

ELLA
http://www.openfieldsoftware.com/
Tool to organize your Outlook mail, learning by example as you sort your mail into customizable categories, such as Spam and Later. Outlook 2000 or later.

EPHPOD
http://www.ephpod.com/
Windows application for connecting to an Apple iPod device. Can perform bulk import of Outlook contacts as a vCard file for use on the iPod.

MXORB
http://www.customermagnetism.co.uk/product.php?product_id=3
Exchange 2000 SMTP protocol event sink for spam filtering. Supports white list, black list, and RBL filters.

PUBLIC OUTLOOK
http://www.outlookstore.com/
Share Outlook data over a local network using a data store based on an Outlook .pst file. For Outlook 2003, supports the expanded Unicode .pst store.

Updated utilities

HIPEREXCHANGE
http://www.seasidesw.com/products/index.htm
Version 1.5 of this tool for improving performance and adding offline access to Outlook Web Access adds support for most corporate proxies and SSL access to the Exchange server, speeds up performance, and adds new offline features.

OUTLOOK HELP DESK
http://www.outlookhelpdesk.com/Products.htm
Version 3.0 of this help desk system built on Outlook and Exchange public folders adds an integrated knowledgebase, reusable report templates, and special handling for urgent tickets. It can also copy tickets to a user's personal Tasks folder for synchronization with a PDA. For Exchange 2000, the ticket conversion feature uses an event sink instead of a script.

Other resources

USING REAL-TIME BLACKHOLE LISTS FOR FILTERING EMAIL
http://www.outlookexchange.com/Articles/JohnYoung/article1.asp
Includes information on the different RBLs' policies for adding addresses, to help you evaluate which to use.

More Information

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Updated Jul 30 2006

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