Be sure and stop by Cabana 9 and say hello and if you don't have a "Don't Worry be MAPI" button, ask for one. I have a limited number still available for newsletter subscribers, but you will need to ask for it.
Sue Mosher's Birds of a Feather Outlook Power Users session was great and I picked up lots of pain points to cover in future versions of EMO. Thanks to everyone who attended.

The big news in the Exchange server world is the upcoming release of Exchange 2003 SP2 and a feature that will be removed from a "next version" of Exchange Server.

Exchange Server 2003 SP2 will be available later this year and includes some wonderful improvements. One of the best will be an increase in the store size for Exchange standard and Small Business Servers. The 16 GB limit is being increased to 75 GB. Thanks Microsoft! On the user side, this could mean administrators will raise the mailbox limit for users and reduce the need for autoarchive to PSTs.

Smartphone and Pocket PC users will have a better experience, with mailbox items being pushed to the device over an HTTP connection. Administrators will be able to remotely wipe a lost device and control the number of failed logon attempts. For more information on SP2, see http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads/2003/sp2/overview.mspx.

It's been rumored for several years that the "next version of Exchange" would replace public folders with Sharepoint. That "next version" has finally on the board - Exchange 13 is not expected to have public folders. Migration tools will be available to help make it be less painful, but as a site with many mail-enabled public folders hosting mailing lists, I'm not sure at this point if Sharepoint will be the best solution. Shared calendars and contacts work well in Sharepoint because you can subscribe Events (Calendars) and Contacts lists to Outlook. In fact, if you have Sharepoint and Outlook 2003, you should begin migrating to it.

If you're not familiar with Sharepoint's capabilities in this area, take a look at XSOLive.com. Login using visitor as the username and password and you'll be able to add new contacts or calendar items in Sharepoint and download the calendar and contacts to Outlook 2003. It even supports email alerts when new items are added. (Yes, the site is named for Exchange server vaporware.)

One of the great things about TechEd is that it gives me a chance to pick up great ideas for future columns, both from attending sessions and talking to attendees in the Cabanas Ask the Expert areas. The Outlook table is in the Portals cabana and we're getting lots of great questions.

One attendee had this problem:
"We use Outlook 2003 and my users aren't very good at adding email addresses to the Contacts folder and rely heavily on the autocomplete cache, but it gets replaced often. Why does it seem so fragile?"

First, I'll explain how the autocomplete cache works. The autocomplete cache is also known as the nickname cache and is stored as a hidden file in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\<profile_name>.NK2 if you use Outlook 2002/2003. It has a limit of 1000 addresses, and new addresses are not added to it until you end the current Outlook session. There is a registry key you can edit to control the size of the nickname cache in older versions of Outlook, but it doesn't work with Outlook 2003.

If the users are losing addresses of people they recently replied to, it's because Outlook crashes or does not close properly and the changes are not written to the NK2 file. The existing *.NK2 shouldn't be replaced by a clean *.NK2 if this happens, but new addresses you've sent new mail to or replied to won't be saved to the file. Less used addresses are replaced by new addresses when the NK2 contains 1000 addresses, but if something is corrupt, Outlook replaces the current NK2 with a new, clean one.

If you have a mistyped address in your cache you can use the arrow keys to select the address and press Delete to remove it. You can also delete the existing NK2 file to completely clear the cache and start with a clean cache.

Microsoft doesn't provide a tool to edit the nickname tool, however, if you need to view or edit the NK2 file, a third party utility called Owtlook is available. This tool allows you to edit the NK2, capture the addresses and create contacts, or populate it with frequently used addresses. Owtlook is especially useful for corporations that need to capture all addresses employees correspond with.

If you're using the autocomplete cache as your address book because it's too much effort to right click on an address and save it as a new Contact, you should use a utility that creates contacts from all addresses you reply to, as the autocomplete cache is not a good substitute for contacts. You can find a list of utilities at http://www.slipstick.com/addins/contacts.htm#data

Note: If you use an older version of Outlook, much of the above information applies, but the nickname file for older versions uses the extension .nick.

Owtlook
http://www.dcs-imaging.com/products.htm

Reduce the Number of Names in the Nickname Cache (Outlook 2002)
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=293032

Another question that came up involves the maximum number of autoformatting rules available in a view:

In Tools/Organize, you can choose a color to display a message from a specific sender when messages are received in Inbox. I'm getting the message: "You can not add another color rule because you have extended the maximum number of rules in this folder."

There is a limit of 50 autoformatting rules per view. If you need more, options include combining the rules what use the same color or use some other method to keep the number of rules below 50. Because autoformatting creates a rule in Views, you could create several different views and switch between them. If you show the Advanced toolbar, you can use the Views tool to quickly switch views.

The answer to last week's question, "Can you set colored flags (besides red) on non-mail and post Outlook items?"

Yes! Outlook 2003 supports colored flags on all items types. You can't use the Quick Flag field but you can still apply a colored flag to Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Tasks, or Journal items. It's easiest if you use a table view: add the Flag Status field and enable in-cell editing. The answers were split about 50-50 (probably in part because I didn't specify Outlook 2003) and as winner Darryl Hendricks will discover, Outlook 2003 Inside Out wasn't updated after Outlook RTM'd, and it says you can only use colored flags on Mail and Post items. (Microsoft exposed colored flags on all items between Beta 2 and RTM.)

This week's question will be an opinion poll, in part because I'm spending too much time partying to think of a good question. (Ah, the life of a TechEd attendee.) I want to know what you think of one bit of news that came out of the Exchange sessions at TechEd.

What do you think of Microsoft's plan to remove public folders from Exchange 13?

Update: Post your comments to the forum at slipstick.com.
http://www.slipstick.com/CS/forums/22/ShowForum.aspx  (Forum registration required to post.)

Send your thoughts to answers@slipstick.com. You have until Wednesday, June 22, 2005 to be entered in this weeks drawing. We'll share your responses in a future version of EMO.

All entries have a chance to win a book, including those who ask "What in the heck are public folders and why should I care?" The prize will be your choice of Jim Boyce's Outlook 2003 Inside Out or Digital Press's Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange 2003, written by Jerry Cochran.