Exchange Messaging Outlook Jan 5 2006

A user had a question about the private flag:

"I was troubleshooting what I thought to be an issue with Outlook 2003. Outlook was not displaying all contacts on a shared mailbox. I found that Outlook was working as designed by not showing contacts that were marked as private.

However, I did find that Outlook 2003 will show Contacts marked as private on a shared mailbox if you do a search. The shared mailbox is on an Exchange 2000 server. Outlook correctly did not display the private contacts...but when I searched contacts and looked for "a" it showed all contacts Private and not Private that contained the letter "A". I would assume this is not by design?"

Whether another user can see if you have private items during a search depends on the permissions the user has on the mailbox, so this is actually a configuration problem. In this case, the administrator gave users too many permissions on the Security tab of the shared account's property sheets in Active Directory User and Computers. Delegate's aren't able to see private items during a search unless it's enabled on the Delegates tab in Tools, Options, so use delegates to assign permissions when possible.

Otherwise, the behavior is "by design" because you'll see this same behavior with private appointments on the calendar. Those with permission to your calendar need to be able to see if you have something scheduled so Outlook shows appointments marked Private on the calendar but with the subject "Private Appointment". They can't see the actual subject or open it, but know it's there. Because the different modules share some code, the calendar behavior carries over to other Outlook folder types. The only bug in it is that instead of masking the subject field with "Private", the subject (or Contact's display name) displays.

Are they any other ways private items can be seen? Sure. If the item is viewed using a program that doesn't honor the private flag, others will see it. This would typically happen with third party applications that access calendar or contact items. The only way to insure the items will remain private is by testing the capability of any third party programs you are considering using.

After months of waiting, the holiday update for Outlook 2002 was finally made available for download last week. In what is becoming common with holiday files, it contains errors. At this time I believe the only errors are with Thailand dates and are the result of an incorrect date format, ie, the import mechanism expects dates in 2006/10/23 format but the file contains some in 2006/23/10 format. Import will stop on this error and as long as you don't need Thailand holidays on your calendar, you won't be affected by it.

This update installs only on Outlook 2002, not Outlook 2003, which brings up another complaint I have with Microsoft updates: installers which are looking for a specific version of Outlook even though the file or add-in will work with other versions. Many Outlook 2003 users like to plan ahead, well beyond 2007 - why can't this installer update their holidays as well?

Corporations or users with both Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2003 installed can copy the new Outlook.HOL file from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\[4-digit language ID] to computers with Outlook 2003 installed. Because HOL file type is registered as an Outlook file type, Outlook 2003 users can double click on it to install the holidays in Outlook 2003.

Using this file with older versions of Outlook requires a few more steps: Save it as an ANSI format text file and rename to Outlook.txt then replace the Outlook.txt file found at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\[4-digit language ID]. Add the new holidays with the Add Holiday wizard at Tools, Options, Calendar Options.

Because the wizard adds holidays but doesn't look for duplicates or remove existing holidays, you may have duplicates for 2006 and 2007. To easily remove existing holidays, switch to the By Category view and delete the items in the Holiday category before importing new holidays.

Holidays for 2006 through 2012 - Outlook 2002 only.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=910619

A HOL file with the Thailand dates in the correct format as well as ANSI version Outlook.txt file for older versions is available for download at http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/missinghol.htm

Exchange Messaging Outlook
Volume 10, Number 19

Are Private Items Really Private?

Holiday Update for Outlook 2002

New Utilities

Updated Utilities

Other Resources

New Exchange Knowledge Base Articles

New Outlook Knowledge Base Articles

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Updated Apr 07 2008

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Exchange Messaging Outlook Volume 10, Number 19