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Exchange Messaging Outlook Volume 11, Number 1Issue Date: Mar 30 2006 |
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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 11, No. 1 of Exchange
Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange
and Microsoft Outlook.
Today's highlights:
Regular features:
Outlook 2007 and Exchange 5.5According to the system requirements for Office 2007 that were recently posted at http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/sysreq.mspx, you'll need to use Exchange 2000 or later with Outlook 2007. This means Exchange 5.5 is not a supported mail server for Outlook 2007, sort of. What it really means is that while you can use Outlook 2007 with Exchange 5.5, Microsoft is not testing this scenario and will not offer support for it, so don't look for any assistance or hotfixes from Microsoft if you discover problems. If there are issues, you're totally on your own. Of course, that's nothing new - Exchange 5.5 sites have been on their own since January 1 when support for it ended and it's really not unexpected because Exchange 5.5 is out of its lifecycle and long since superseded by two newer versions of Exchange. Will Outlook 2007 work with Exchange 5.5 accounts? It should work fine, especially for basic things. I tested it with email and meeting requests and everything works as expected. There may be problems with advanced features or in areas known to be problematic, like meeting requests and address books. We already know there are problems with meeting requests between Outlook 2003/2007 and Outlook 2000, and while they may not affect the Exchange server directly, any site with mixed clients will have problems. The subscription ical feature seems to work fine with Exchange 5.5 in the profile, as it should since Outlook does the processing. Rules might be an issue, but problems would be just as likely with Outlook 2003 as both versions use Unicode formatted rules. I tested a few other scenarios and all seems well so far but many issues won't come up until Office 2007 RTMs and a larger group uses it for their everyday tasks. My suggestion? If you're stuck with Exchange 5.5 but are able to upgrade Office, it's worth testing to see if features your organization relies on continue to work as expected and if they don't, you can decide if the new features are worth some problems. I don't recommend upgrading Outlook only - upgrade Outlook only if you can upgrade the Office suite - it makes for a much better experience all the way around. It's Time to Spring AheadWith spring comes the semi-annual rite of times changes and that keeps help desks busy answering complaints about appointment times moving around. To add to the confusion this year, Indiana is adopting Daylight Savings time for the first time, which means there is a great potential for appointments to display at the incorrect time. Anyone using the Indiana (East) time zone should have changed the computer to the Eastern time zone last fall and included the correct time of the appointments in the notes field, but it's almost too late for that now. Anyone who waited until now to make the change should expect problems with appointment times. Before changing the time zone, I recommend adding a category to existing appointments so months from now you'll be able to easily identify the appointments which were created using the old time zone, should there be any question as to what time the appointment is supposed to be. To do this for all appointments, switch to the By Category view, select all, right click and choose Categories. Create a category such as "Old Time Zone" for these appointments. If you don't have too many appointments you can add the appointment times to the notes field, so you can easily see what the correct time is supposed to be. Otherwise print out or export the calendar to Excel or a text file so that you have a copy of the correct appointment times for future reference - you're going to need them. Once you'd done this you can adjust the appointment times as needed then change the computer's time zone to Eastern. You should double check the times for your important appointments because there is a chance for errors for anyone affected by this change. If you live outside of Indiana and arranged meetings with anyone in Indiana, verify the time with them prior to the meeting. Bottom line: anyone affected by this change who hasn't planned ahead is going to have problems. Even users who planned ahead can expect a few mix-ups. How to incorporate Indiana's time zone change in Outlook e-mail
clients in Exchange Server Outlook 2007 Feature of the Week: Color CategoriesI'm going to highlight one of Outlook 2007's new or improved features in each issue. Because features and methods may change some from now to the final version, these articles are intended to present an overview of the feature and there may be slight changes in the final versions. (I'll do the same for Exchange 12 once it reaches Beta 2.) Last week I told you about the business card view for Contacts. This week it's colored categories and the Quick Click field. These are replacing Quick Flags in an attempt to help you better manage your mail using categories instead of flags. In Outlook 2007, flags are only used for reminders, just like in Outlook 2002 and earlier. (More on changes to flags in a later issue.) When a message is marked with a color category, the color is displayed in a colored block in the message list beside the quick flag column or above the Infobar in an opened message so you can easily see what category the message belongs to. If you apply multiple color categories to a message, the message list block displays the last three color categories assigned; all color categories are displayed on the opened messages. Quick click works just like Quick flags - simply click in the quick click box to quickly set a category for that item. To use Quick Click, first choose a default color category and when you click in the quick click box, that category is applied. To assign a different category or additional categories, click on the Category toolbar button or right click on the message and choose Categories and choose the category from the list. You can also assign shortcut keys to color categories so you can quickly apply your favorite categories. One of the big complaints about Quick Flags was the inability to create more flags or change the flag label. Color categories doesn't have that limitation - you can create as many categories as you need and assign one of 25 colors (or no color) to the categories. Color categories can be used on all Outlook items including Notes, but note that when categories are assigned to Notes, the category color is used for the note body, replacing the default note color chosen in Tools, Options, Note options. So what happens to categories and quick flags on existing items when you upgrade? Items flagged with Outlook 2003's colored flags are assigned a color category in Outlook 2007 and the quick flag converts to a regular flag. As with quick flags, Outlook assigns each category a color and converts your categories to color categories, so the change is pretty seamless. Color categories assigned in Outlook 2007 are just plain old categories in older versions. |
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New Utilities |
AD BULK CONTACTS AUTO REPLY MANAGER FOR OUTLOOK ETUBE HYPEROFFICE MESSAGELOCK OUTLOOK DUPLICATE ITEMS REMOVER OUTLOOKSMS OWA SUITE SEND2 FOR MICROSOFT OUTLOOK |
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UUpdated Utilities |
ATTENSA FOR OUTLOOK
CLEARCONTEXT INBOX MANAGER
CONTACTREE
LUCATEC MASK
PLAINSIGHT DESKTOP CALENDAR
ZENPRISE |
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Other Resources/h3> |
FREE EBOOK: TIPS AND TRICKS GUIDE ON SECURE MESSAGING |
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New Exchange Knowledge Base Articles |
When you access a server that is running Exchange Server 2003 or
Exchange 2000 Server from a remote site, the server may stop
responding Meeting acceptance messages from users in an external domain are not
delivered in Exchange 2000 Server Error message when you run a CDO program that uses the
GetRecurrencePattern method to retrieve information in Exchange 2000
Server: "MAPI_E_NOT_FOUND (0x8004010F)" How to change the email domain name in Exchange 5.5? How to incorporate Indiana's time zone change in Outlook e-mail
clients in Exchange Server Error message when you try to use the Microsoft Exchange Server
ActiveSync Web Administration tool to delete a partnership or to
perform a Remote Wipe operation on a mobile device in Exchange
Server 2003 SP2: "(401) Unauthorized" Event ID: 1080 occurs every three seconds when you are using
Exchange Server 2003 SP2 in a clustered environment Users may not be replicated to the Lotus Domino server when you
synchronize the directory from Exchange Server 2003 to Lotus Domino Exchange Server 2003 may generate NDRs for messages that are routed
to another organization when you connect Exchange Server 2003 to
multiple organizations by using X.400 connectors Event ID 1362 is logged in the Application log every five minutes in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=914370
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New Outlook Knowledge Base Articles |
A meeting location in an exception is overwritten when you accept an update to a recurring meeting in Microsoft Outlook http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=916108 Availability of the Microsoft Outlook MSG iFilter Add-in for Microsoft Windows Desktop Search http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=917402 Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: March 10, 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=915486 The Internet Free/Busy information for a recipient is unavailable when you add the recipient from the global address list in Outlook 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=916654 Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: February 7, 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=914141 Outlook message data is sent over the network unexpectedly http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=908625 Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: February 16, 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=915380 Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: February 24, 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=900459 Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: February 27, 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=915058 Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: February 14, 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=914446 Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: February 23, 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=915403 Description of the Outlook 2003 Junk E-Mail Filter update: March 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=913161 Error message when you install Business Contact Manager: "Error 1406 Could not write value to key \SOFTWARE" http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=913559 How to incorporate Indiana's time zone change in Outlook e-mail clients in Exchange Server http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=915577 Description of the updates for Office 2003: March 14, 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=913571 Description of the update for Outlook 2003: March 14, 2006 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=913807 |
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