Exchange Messaging Outlook
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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 11, No. 3 of Exchange
Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange
and Microsoft Outlook.
Today's highlights: Regular features:
Outlook 2007 Feature of the Week: SearchThere are few users who would disagree with me on this: Outlook's search capabilities are bad. Yes, Advanced Find is decent and QueryBuilder makes it even better, but the easiest search method, Find, is slow and searches backwards - searching older mail before new mail, when most users are looking for recent messages. It searches all common fields; if you want to limit the search to a specific field you need to use Advanced Find. As a result, its very frustrating to many users. In contrast, Outlook 2007's search capabilities are amazing. Thanks in part to an index, its very fast and displays results as you type. Unlike the current Find which searches all of the common fields for your keyword, you can limit the search to specific fields by expanding the search form or typing a qualifier in the search field. For example, to find messages with a specific phrase in the body, either expand the search form and type the phrase into the Body field or type "contents:(search phrase)" in the search field. By default, the six most common fields are listed in the expanded search dialog, however you can add any field to the criteria, including fields from custom forms. The best part: the search terms are highlighted so you can quickly see if it's the one you're looking for. Recent searches are saved in an MRU list so you can quickly rerun a search. The only drawback to the new search capability is the index, or more specifically, building the index. While it's building the initial index you may experience performance problems and until it's completed, Find may not return all of the matching items any faster than the current Find does. Not everyone will notice, like everything computer-related, it depends on a lot of factors: your hardware, mailbox size, other applications that are running. You do have the option of limiting the index to specific data files in your profile, useful if you don't want to index large archives or personal folders. Fortunately, once the index is built, keeping it updated is not intensive and its unlikely you'll know when it's running. If you really miss the old search engine, it's still available. Advanced Find and Contact's Activities tab still use it. While the new one is as powerful as Advanced Find and much faster, there are times when the older, slower search is more suitable, if only because it returns the results in a separate window and you can continue to work in Outlook while you review the search results. Outlook and Memory UsageI often get questions asking about Outlook's resource usage. The story usually goes something like this: they looked at the Processes tab in Task Manager and freaked out when they saw Outlook was using more memory than they thought it should, usually 2 - 3 times what other programs are using. Then they compare it to usage on another computer. Outlook is using much less memory there, so they uninstall and reinstall it on the first computer. They make a new profile and run scanpst. Nothing helps - it's still using more memory than they think it should, so they search for assistance to fix it and find me. While we all know Outlook is a "memory hog", in most cases it's nothing to worry about, especially with newer versions of Outlook. If the CPU usage is low and often at 0, nothing is broken and there is nothing to fix. It's just how Outlook operates. By design, Outlook will take as much of the free memory as it needs and releases it as other programs need it. The more physical memory you have in a computer, the more memory Outlook takes, so on a computer with only 512 megs of ram, Outlook might take 50 or 60 megs. On 2 GBs or more, Outlook may grab 350 megs when it's open on the screen. When it's running in the background, the memory usage may go down slightly; minimize it and usage drops considerably, depending on the amount of memory installed in the computer. When you minimize it to the notification area it releases almost all the memory. If Outlook doesn't release memory or the CPU is usage is running high, then you've got a problem. Restarting Outlook or rebooting the computer should fix temporary problems, but if it happens often something is wrong. Use typical troubleshooting techniques: verify you have all of the latest updates for your version of Office, pay attention to what you're doing when it happens and other what software you have running. You can run Detect and Repair, try a new profile, and disable any Outlook add-ins you have installed. Security Bulletin MS06-015 UpdateIn the last issue Exchange Messaging Outlook I mentioned that the fix for the issues covered in security bulletin MS06-015 were causing problems for some users. Earlier this week Microsoft released an update to the patch that should correct these problems. See MS06-015 for more information. |
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New Utilities |
CONTACTGENIE EXPORTER OUT'N ABOUT! FOR OUTLOOK PINPOINT MARKETING TOOL REPLYBUTLER
SPAM READER |
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Updated Utilities |
OUTLOOKCRM PC IMAIL SPAMAID ZENPRISE |
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New Exchange Knowledge Base Articles |
A PROPPATCH request to update the security descriptor of the public folder appears to succeed, but the update is unsuccessful in Exchange Server 2003 You receive an error message when you try to perform any editing tasks, or you must click to enable the compose frame in Outlook Web Access Description of a software update that configures Exchange 2000 Server to notify you if you try to delete a public folder that contains replicas When users receive non-MAPI messages by using Outlook Web Access, the messages do not contain any information in the body in Exchange Server 2003 Meeting acceptance messages from users in an external domain are not delivered in Exchange 2000 Server How to move a database to another Exchange Server 2003 Some envelope journal reports contain a blank recipient list in Exchange Server 2003 and in Exchange 2000 Server A recurring meeting is not updated on a attendee's calendar in Exchange Server 2003 SP2 when you use a third-party WebDAV program to update the recurring meeting request Event ID: 9409 occurs every time that the Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks service (MSExchangeMTA) starts in Exchange Server 2003 HTML messages that contain many font tags or span tags are not forwarded by Exchange Server 2003 after you configure an e-mail forwarding rule in Outlook Some envelope journal reports contain a blank recipient list in Exchange Server 2003 and in Exchange 2000 Server Nested DocLink is deleted when you use the Exchange Migration Wizard for Lotus Notes to migrate mail from Lotus Domino to Exchange Server FAQ about Intelligent Message Filter All Exchange features are disabled on Active Directory Users and Computers Import/Export process may fail after using Exmerge utility with Exchange 2003 Event ID 9555 is logged without cause in Exchange Server 2003 A user receives an NDR that contains a 5.2.1 status code when the user tries to send an e-mail message to a public folder in Exchange Server 2003 How to troubleshoot MAPI logon script errors in Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 when it is used together with Exchange Server 2003 |
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New Outlook Knowledge Base Articles |
Error message when you use an .odc file to connect to a specific table in a mail merge data source in Office 2003: "Record 'number' contained too few data fields" Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: April 12, 2006 Description of the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 hotfix package: April 5, 2006 Error message when you try to validate Office 2003 or Office XP by using Office Genuine Advantage: "Unable to Validate" or "Error code: 0x8018111" Error message when you use Office Genuine Advantage to validate Office 2003 or Office XP: "Validation Incomplete" or "Error code: 0x8018101" Error message when you try to validate Office 2003 or Office XP by using Office Genuine Advantage: "Validation Incomplete: No Office Products Detected" or "Error code: 0x8018109" Error message when you use Office Genuine Advantage to validate Office 2003 or Office XP: "Validation Incomplete" or "Error code: 0x8018110" Error message when you use Office Genuine Advantage to validate Office 2003 or Office XP: "Validation Incomplete" or "Error code: 0x8018103" Relative hyperlinks are changed and no longer work correctly in a file that is saved in Office 2003 Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: April 10, 2006 Some return addresses are changed when an e-mail recipient tries to reply to all recipients of an e-mail message that you sent in Outlook 2003 Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: April 12, 2006 Description of the Office Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: April 5, 2006 Error message when you start Outlook 2003: "Unable to open your default e-mail folders" You may receive a "Microsoft Outlook cannot provide form scripting support" message when you try to open a custom form in a Terminal Server client session by using Outlook Duplicate appointments appear in Outlook 2003 when you synchronize with a Palm Treo 650 handheld computer |
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