Exchange Messaging Outlook 17 Mar 2005

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Exchange Messaging Outlook
Volume 9, Number 25

Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 9, No. 25, 17 Mar 2005, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook.

Today's highlights:

Sender Filtering with Exchange 5.5
Exporting Automatic Formatting Rules
IPM.Post form is Used for Email in Public Folders
Sending Email Using Quoted-Printable Encoding
Outlook tip: Truncated Folder names
Outlook Trivia

Regular features:

New utilities
Updated utilities
Other Resources
New Exchange Knowledge Base Articles
New Outlook Knowledge Base Articles

SENDER FILTERING WITH EXCHANGE 5.5

In the last issue, I told you how to configure Exchange 2000/2003 to filter senders addresses, using wildcards to reduce the number of addresses you need in the filter.
As many Exchange 5.5 administrators discovered, Exchange 5.5 doesn't support wildcards. It supports filtering by full email address or partial addresses using "@domain.com" format. Unlike Outlook's sender filters, you can enter a domain in the format of @domain.com and mail from all hosts under that domain will be filtered: @something.domain.com, @mail.domain.com as well as @domain.com.
To set up Message filtering, open the Exchange 5.5 Administrator, then Connections, Internet Mail Connector. Click on Properties and Connections tab, then the Message Filter button. (If you don't have a Message Filter button, it's a sign you need a new administrator, as message filtering was added by service pack released several years ago.)
If you enter an incorrect address format, you should be alerted that it's an invalid format, but keep in mind Exchange 5.5 will accept some invalid formats without telling you and filtering will fail.
If you want to archive messages dropped by the filters, create a folder called TurfDir in the root of the drive where the Exchange system files are installed, usually C:\. Remember to remove the checkbox from the option on the Message Filter dialog. You probably should archive these messages for a few weeks, just to confirm the filters aren't catching "good" mail. You can view the messages in notepad or any text editor.
After making changes to the message filter list, you'll need to restart the Internet Mail Connector service in Administrator Tools, Services snap-in.
While this is a quick and dirty way to block some spam and unwanted mail that always comes from the same email address or domain, it's not a substitute for a real anti-spam filter, in part because it's limited to filtering by sender's address and spammers tend to send using faked addresses.

EXPORTING AUTOMATIC FORMATTING RULES

Once you've created automatic formatting rules to color code your messages, you may want to share them with coworkers or use them on another computer.
While it's possible to make copies of views, it's not as easy as exporting rules from the rules wizard or saving custom forms as templates. It takes a few steps to move these rules, in part because they aren't associated with Rules created by the Rules Wizard, but are a part of Views and Outlook doesn't include a simple method for moving views.
First some background on Views. Views are stored as hidden messages in the folders in your message stores. If you use a *.pst, you can copy your data store to another computer to move the views. If you use an Exchange server mailbox, the views are in your folders. Global views are stored in the top of the data store and are available for use in all folders of a specific type. Views created for 'this folder only' are stored as hidden messages in that particular folder.
The easiest way to move views between computers is by making a copy of the pst and deleting all items from the pst (but not the folders that contain custom views visible only in this folder). You now have a small pst with copies of all of your custom views. Open the pst on another computer, select a folder in the empty pst that contains a view you want to copy and open the Define Views dialog. Select it and then click Copy. Choose the option to make it available to all folders to add it to the main view cache on the new computer.
If you have a few views you'd like to copy, you can create a new pst and copy views to it. Select a folder in the new pst and open the Define views dialog. Select a view to copy, creating a view for 'this folder only', so that it's added to that folder's view cache. When you open the pst on another computer, Copy the view and choose the option to make it available to all folders so that it's added as a global view in your mailbox.
While this works for both Exchange and Standalone Outlook users, Exchange mailbox users have a second option for copying views between their folders: Copy Folder Design. This option is found on the File, Folder menu and allows Exchange users to copy permissions, rules, and forms, along with views from one folder to another folder in their profile. It's quite a bit faster than copying views back and forth between data stores, but is limited in that it only works with folders in your profile.

IPM.POST FORM IS USED FOR EMAIL IN PUBLIC FOLDERS

When mail enabled public folders receive email, Exchange 2000 and 2003 use the IPM.Post form to display the message, not the IPM.Note (email) form.
There is a hotfix available for both versions of Exchange, see Knowledge base article "Update to permit the caching of incoming SMTP messages as IPM.Note" for more information and instructions on obtaining the hotfix.
This hotfix won't allow you to reply by email to messages sent to public folders when using OWA. To reply or forward public folder messages using OWA, your organization needs to configure front-end and back-end Exchange servers.

SENDING EMAIL USING QUOTED-PRINTABLE ENCODING

Using quoted-printable allows you to send long URLs in plain text messages without worrying about long lines breaking, but it's not selectable as an encoding option in Outlook. However, you can configure Outlook to use it when you send plain text email. Note that not all outgoing mail servers support this trick and it may not prevent long lines from breaking with your mail server.
In Outlook's Tools, Options dialog, select the Mail Format tab then International Format button. Disable the option to allow Outlook to autoselect the encoding and choose Western European (ISO).
Tip: If you need to use a different encoding, click the message forms Options button and choose it from the list of available encodings when composing your message.
If changing the encoding doesn't prevent your lines from breaking, you'll need to edit the registry to add the WrapLines key and set it to 0 (zero). Navigate to HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\MailSettings and add a DWORD value name of WrapLines with a value of 0. See BUG: Line wrapping does not appear as expected when you send e-mail messages in Outlook 2003 (823921) for more information.

OUTLOOK TIP: TRUNCATED FOLDER NAMES

If the folder names in Outlook are cut off or otherwise look weird, check your Windows theme or color scheme settings. A color scheme that uses larger fonts is usually the culprit and restoring the default theme (or using smaller fonts) will fix it. In fact, any time dialogs don't look "right" or buttons and text are missing or partially hidden, it's usually caused by your scheme. Using a Windows theme not installed by Windows XP (including themes downloaded from Microsoft.com for Media Center and Tablet PC) may result in display issues both with dialogs and menu color schemes.
It's easy to verify the problem is theme related - switch to the default theme and see if the problem is solved.

OUTLOOK TRIVIA

Did you know...

You can have up to 128 views per folder, with up to 25 automatic formatting rules per view.

When used with Exchange server mailboxes, you are limited to 32 KB worth of rules.

You can add 50 additional mailboxes to an Exchange profile.

The nickname file (*.NK2) holds 1000 entries.

PSTs are limited to approximately 15,000 items in older versions of Outlook. If you enable large table support, it supports approximately 65,000 items per folder. Outlook 2003's Unicode pst format supports an unlimited number of items (and fortunately, it supported unlimited size).

Search folders stay active for 8 days. If you use them less often than every 8 days, you'll need to wait for Outlook to refresh the search folder contents.

The Places bar in Office 2003 can hold at least 150 places.

You are limited to 1000 contacts when using the Outlook connector with an MSN/Hotmail account.

New Utilities

DELETE DUPLICATE CONTACTS
http://www.rsoutlook.com/us/prods/prod11.html
A com add-in used to delete duplicate contacts from Outlook.

IMI GAL EXPORTER
http://www.imibo.com/imidev/Exchange/imige.htm
IMI GAL Exporter for Microsoft Exchange Server is small utility for Exchange Admin to export GAL (Global Access List) to a Microsoft Access 2000 table. Also available is IMI Distribution List Content Exporter, a small add-in used to export the contents of Distribution Lists to an Access 2000 table.

REMIND ME BLANK SUBJECTT
http://www.rsoutlook.com/us/prods/prod12.html
Remind Me Blank Subject is a com add-in that will automatically remind you that you have a blank subject before you send the message and giving you the opportunity to add a subject to your outgoing message.

RESUMEGRABBER
http://www.egrabber.com/promo/slipstick/rg/index.htm
ResumeGrabber is a resume data entry tool that intelligently extracts contact details and resume in any format and creates a new contact in Outlook and attaches the resumes to the contact.

SECUREXCHANGE - IMF
http://www.nemx.com/products/securexchangeimf/index.asp
Version 5.1 provides additional white listing and safe sender capabilities to Exchange Intelligent Message Filter. In addition, SecurExchange IMF provides general statistics and operates with the base or updated version of the Exchange IMF.

YOU PERFORM: SAVE ATTACHMENTS
http://www.yousoftware.com/save/
A standalone a version of the Save Attachments module from the You Perform collection of Outlook utilities. Use it to save space in your Outlook Inbox (or any other Outlook folder) by removing the file attachments off your email and saving them to a Windows folder as the email arrives. Save Attachments supports customizable rules that allow you to save and remove attachments from certain people, only when certain subjects are present, only when certain attachment filenames are used.

Updated Utilities

BELLS & WHISTLES FOR OUTLOOK
http://www.emailaddressmanager.com/outlook-bells.html
Bells & Whistles for Outlook helps users to quickly handle and track emails, by automatically creating personalized email reply greetings, subject tracking IDs, reply counters, text templates, easy mail merge sessions and many more. Users can easily insert their most used text patterns into outgoing emails, such as product instructions, service details, web page addresses, signatures or any other predefined text template. To further increase the productivity, users can create keyboard shortcuts to insert their text templates into email messages. Bells & Whistles works with any version of Microsoft Outlook, from with Outlook 98 to Outlook 2003. Version 2.55

Other Resources

UPDATE FOR OUTLOOK 2003 JUNK EMAIL FILTER (KB892236)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E478799E-074B-4492-A224-257043C975AD&displaylang=en
Released March 8, 2004, this optional update provides the Junk E-mail Filter in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with a more current definition of which e-mail messages should be considered junk e-mail.

WMI SCRIPT TO SET OUTLOOK ADDRESS BOOK ORDER
http://www.outlookcode.com/codedetail.aspx?id=804
The WMI scripting engine's ability to iterate registry subkeys makes it very useful to Outlook profile work. This sample sets the Outlook Address Book order to File As (Last, First) or First Last, depending on your choices.