The Outlook 2003 service pack adds two often requested options to Junk Email filtering, as well as fixes one junk filter annoyance. When an e-mail message contains a HTML MIME part, the junk filter often failed to filter it. It should now work as expected with SP1 installed.

The first new feature automatically adds people you reply to the safe senders list and the second new feature allows you to block International email - either by blocking email from addresses using the top level domains assigned to countries (.us, .de, .ca, etc) or by character set encoding. Both were very popular requests and home or standalone Outlook users should find both options especially useful.

Note that automatically adding addresses to the safe list is probably not a good idea if you receive many one-time messages from people who are not regular correspondents, such as in a support environment. In this situation, only add addresses to the safe list as needed. Businesses will need to be very careful in choosing which countries or languages they block or risk losing email sent from potential clients.

Also remember, when you add individual addresses, domains, or your entire contacts list to the safe senders list, spam with forged addresses will not be filtered by the junk email filter. If you choose the option to trust external content from addresses on your safe senders list, all external content is automatically downloaded, including all external content included in forged spam.

Released at the same time as SP1, an update to the junk email filter appears to improve the accuracy of the filter. Weighing in at close to 4 MG, the new filter should be more accurate than any of the past junk filter updates. To test, I raised the settings on Exchange's IMF filter to 8 on the server and client and set Outlook's junk filter on High. All spam is removed from my Inbox and the false positive rate is surprisingly low. It's doing a much better job than lower IMF client side filter settings.

What does Outlook 2003 SP1 fix and is it worth installing now? I think so. All previously released updates are included in the service pack and the following new issues are addressed by SP1. Note that some, but not all, of the forms cache issues affecting Outlook should be corrected by the installation of SP1. Outlookcode.com has more information on what's fixed with the forms cache and what is still broken.

As mentioned earlier, you'll find new Junk email options in Outlook. SP1 also corrects an issue that has annoyed many Outlook users--attachment names didn't print if the message was HTML. Now, attachment names are printed for all message formats when you print out your email. Another change in printing means you no longer need to open an HTML message to print it, you can select and print all messages from the message list. Also, now only Active tasks should print when you print the Taskpad with the calendar, not the completed tasks.

SP1 removes the Internet Free/Busy option from Outlook 2003. Microsoft is ending the internet free/busy service in October due to lack of use. You'll still be able to share free/busy over the internet but need to use your own site for the free/busy data. For more information on the changes to the Internet Free/busy service, see http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=842166. 

Some of the other, more common problems fixed by SP1 include issues where creating rules in OWA caused Outlook's rules is disappear, or inserting HTML items into an email message only inserted the header. Both of these issues were corrected and your rules and the item body won't disappear.

Outlook 2003 SP1 handles multiple POP3 accounts on the same server better, eliminating timeout problems when downloading new messages. If your POP3 server supports UIDL or TOP, Outlook will now properly delete the messages from the server instead of downloading them multiple times.

Outlook 2003 adds calendar logging to Outlook. For more information on this new option, see http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=841064. Another logging improvement in SP1 is the text "(logging enabled)" is added to the title bar when logging is enabled. Because logging can cause instability, you should only use it long enough to collect the information you need and this serves as a great reminder that you have logging enabled.

Previously, when you canceled the Configuration Wizard, Outlook started in Personal Information Management (PIM) mode, which doesn't have email accounts. This caused a lot of problems and confusion for users. With SP1 installed Outlook brings up a dialog for user to create a profile when they open Outlook after canceling the wizard.

See Slipstick's coverage of Outlook 2003 SP1. A complete list of Outlook 2003 fixes is located at Issues that are fixed in Outlook 2003 by Office 2003 Service Pack 1. For a list of all fixes for all Office 2003 applications, see Description of Office 2003 Service Pack 1.

A reader asks: How do I apply my custom view to all of my folders?

Answer: Outlook doesn't support applying a view to all folders at once, but if you customize the default view for the folder type, it will apply to all of those folders.

1. Before customizing the view, open Outlook using the /cleanviews switch. If you don't, the new view won't apply to folders that were previously customized. Note that it will wipe out all custom views you are using.

   To use the switch, close Outlook and at Start menu, Run, type outlook.exe /cleanviews
    

2. Next, open the Define views dialog. In all versions, Define views is at the bottom of the Views selector on the Advanced toolbar, or browse for it on the Views, Arrange By or Views, Customize menus.
    
3. Select the default view by name, not the <current view> entry. For mail folders, you'll select Messages view.
    
4. Select the Modify button and make changes to the view. Close when finished.

While on a business trip last week I received a frantic call from my daughter because Norton Antivirus kept popping up. She received an email from the postmaster at her college telling her that her email account was used to send spam and instructing her to run the attachment included with the message. The conversation began like this:

"You didn't run it, did you?"

"Yes, it was from the postmaster at JMU."

"No, it wasn't, it was a virus."

"MOM, It was from the postmaster."

Fortunately, Norton Antivirus didn't allow the virus to send any email and she had enough sense to turn the computer off and wait for me to return home.

Many of the recent viruses used administrative or generic addresses in the From field such as postmaster@, administrator@, no-reply@, or admin@ in an effort to convince users that the message was from their IT department. It comes as no surprise to me that it works, even after repeating over and over "Don't open unsolicited attachments", because users are worried that they could be sending viruses.

When I first heard about the new variant of MyDoom less than 12 hours before her call, I wondered why so many mail servers are allowing mail "from" internal addresses such as postmaster or administrator in from the Internet. When these addresses can't be used to send email in, users can't be tricked into believing it's from their administrators. These addresses should only be used to send email within the network or out to the Internet, not send email in from outside.

It's easy to blacklist mail from these addresses using Exchange Server, either for the entire domain or just specific addresses. While some administrators will argue that no one in their domain needs to send email in through the gateway SMTP, users have legitimate reasons to send mail using their domain address from an outside SMTP server, but there is little reason for postmaster, webmaster, sales, administrator, or many other generic aliases to send mail into the network from the Internet.

To block addresses from sending inbound mail, configure these settings in Exchange 2000/2003:

1. Open the Exchange System Manager and Expand Global Settings.
2. Right click on Message delivery and choose Properties.
3. Add the addresses you don't want to accept mail from to the Sender Filtering list.

While I haven't discovered the limit for Exchange 2003, Exchange 2000 holds approximately 800 addresses and you can use wildcards in the entries. If you want to block all inbound mail that is sent "from" addresses using your domain name, add *@*smtp_domain_name.com to the filter, otherwise, just add individual addresses.

When you are finished entering addresses, you need to enable filtering on each SMTP virtual server that accepts email from the Internet.

1. To do this, expand the Servers node, then find protocols and expand SMTP.
2. Right click on the SMTP server instance and click on the Advanced button on the General tab. Select the IP address and choose Edit.
3. Enable the filters you want to use on the virtual server and close the dialog.

I'm beginning to dread back-to-school, not because of the checks I write to two colleges or sticker shock when I see textbook prices, but because of the pounding my mail server takes when students hook their infected computers to the high-speed campus network. My small business server received as many as 1000 viruses an hour as students returned to campus last fall. Although some colleges are very proactive about protecting their network, too many others are not and I expect the same level of virus activity this year.

The IT department at the college one child attends sent an email to all students last week which explained how to enable the firewall in WindowsXP and instructed the students to run a spybot scanner before bringing the computer to school. It went on to tell them to download and install a copy of Norton Antivirus, which the college licensed for the students, and reminded all students to install Windows XP SP1 as soon as it's available. The message informed the students that the college would not tolerate infected machines on the network, although it neglected to remind students that they do not email attachments to students when they suspect a computer is infected.

The network at my other child's college had numerous problems last fall with heavy traffic caused by viruses but they haven't done much to prevent problems that I can see. My only question to the IT department is "Why not?" Unfortunately, that question will have to wait; a staff member told me yesterday that several servers were offline for virus removal.

I'd love to see my dream of a virus-free back-to-school season become a reality. If someone you know is going to college this fall and their college doesn't send instructions for safe computing, the information at http://www.jmu.edu/computing/security/startsafe.shtml can help protect their computer and reduce the load on everyone's mail servers. While some of the information is specific to her college (such as instructions for downloading AV software), the general information applies to any computer connected to any network, even home computers that only connect to the Internet.

"It is MUCH easier to take the steps to prevent an incident than to recover from one." - JMU IT, in an email sent to students. This is so true. The steps they outline take just minutes to enable, while cleaning up an infected machine takes hours.

If you need antivirus software, Microsoft teamed up with Computer Associates to offer free firewall and antivirus software to Windows users. See http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft for more information. A free copy was also included in the security CD Microsoft distributed last winter, however the version available at the website doesn't pop up reminders.

Slipstick.com's Ratings Raffle is winding down; if you haven't voted yet, do so now. Choose a category and vote for your favorite utilities in the category to be entered into the drawing to win a book. There will be five winners a week until the prize box is empty.

During the contest, you're limited to one entry person and can vote in only one utility category, but you can vote for as many of your favorite utilities in that category as you like. In a few weeks you'll be able to come back and rate the utilities in the other categories.

For a list of prizes, winners, and rules, see http://www.slipstick.com/books/contest.htm.  If your name is listed and you haven't received the notification, contact me at the address listed on the winners page.

Winners for Weeks 9 and 10:

Les Bessant, UK; David Goggin, Huntsville; Ron Girard, Nova Scotia; Kim Higginbotham, Washington; gary basque, hartford; Mark Wilson, Ontario; Tom Hamsher; Gary Cawley; Glenn Welker; Brian Treitz; Ralph Elmerick, Ohio; Gopikrishna Sandra, Bellevue.

Congratulations Winners!

To vote for your favorite utilities, go to http://www.slipstick.com/contest/default.aspx.