I'm frequently asked about message recall, specifically, they want to know why it doesn't seem to work at all.

Several things need to happen for recall to work. You need a blue moon on a warm starry night, then throw a pound of salt over your left shoulder… and once you do all that, it still probably won't work. Yeah, I'm just kidding on those steps, but I’m not kidding when I say that recall really only works under certain very specific conditions.
The first and most important is that it only works on Exchange server and only if the sender and recipient are in the same server organization. It won’t work on messages that are delivered through the SMTP connector.

Assuming this condition is met and both the sender and recipient are using the same Exchange server, the recipient can't be sitting at Outlook reading their e-mail since recall fails once the message is opened. They can have Outlook open to the mailbox, but since it takes up to two minutes for the recall to automatically process, they are more likely to read the original message before it is recalled. If by chance they happen to read the recall before the message, it will process and remove the message.

The best solution? Don't use recall. If you have the habit of accidently sending messages before they are finished, add some random characters to the CC field. They won't resolve and you'll be able to cancel the send. Some users purposely misspell the first word in the message, but I feel this is risky and you can end up sending a message with a misspelling. Entering random characters in the To field will stop the send every time, unless a contact has a name or email address that uses that string.

If you send messages but have second thoughts soon after sending a message, create a rule to hold messages in your Outbox for several minutes before sending it to the server. In Rules and alerts, choose an After sending rule and set the Action to defer delivery by a number of minutes, up to 120 minutes. Either of these methods is much better than sending a recall that probably won’t work.

Do you want to empty your Deleted Items folder automatically? You can use an option built into Outlook to empty the deleted folder on exit (Tools, Options, Other tab, Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting), but it can slow down the exiting process. It's an all or nothing process - if it's enabled, it will empty the folder every time you close Outlook. You can't have it only delete items that are older or over a certain size. And if you accidently delete something you need to keep and close Outlook before retrieving it from the Deleted Items folder, its history. You can't recover it unless you use Exchange server and deleted items recovery is enabled.

Fortunately, there are other options. The first, which any Outlook user can use, is AutoArchive. Set it to run every few days (or even daily) and configure the Deleted Items folder to have items older than 1 day old (or more) deleted. You can also configure the Junk Email folder to be emptied every few days as well.

The second option is used with Exchange server accounts only and is controlled by the Exchange administrator, not the user. The administrator can configure Mailbox Manager to delete items from any folder by age, size, or both, and set exceptions for specific message classes. This is a good way to insure the Deleted Items and Junk Email folders are emptied routinely or that messages with large attachments are removed from the mailbox once they age. As with Autoarchive, each folder can have different settings, for example, Deleted items are deleted if older than 2 days, but Junk email stays for 5. Typically, Mailbox manager is run once a week, often on Saturday or Sunday night. Because different mailbox manager policies can be applied to different groups of users, it's a good way to keep mailboxes small when a user is off work an extended period of time, without disabling or deleting their mailbox.

Configuring AutoArchive:

Open the AutoArchive dialog by going to Tools, Options, Other, AutoArchive. Enable AutoArching every 14 days. The default is 14 days, but you'll probably want to lower it to 5 or less days. You can leave the other settings the default, but note that if you click the 'Apply these settings to all folders' button, it will apply the settings to all folders, including calendar or any folder you may store old important messages in. You'll need to disable autoarchiving or change the archive period on these folders individually.

Next, right click on the Deleted Items folder and choose Properties, then AutoArchive tab. Choose the option to 'Archive this folder using these settings' and pick a number. My preference is to set AutoArchive to run every 2 to 3 days and delete items older than 2 or 3 days. This provides some insurance, should I need to recover something from either folder.

For Deleted Items and Junk E-mail folders, you'll want to select the option to permanently delete the items. If you applied the Autoarchive settings to all folders, you may want to change the setting for the calendar or other folders.

Configuring Mailbox Manager

Open the Exchange System Manager's Recipient Policies container. You can add a mailbox manager policy to an existing address policy or create a new recipient policy, keeping in mind that only one policy is applied to each mailbox. To create a new policy, right click on Recipient Policies and choose New, Recipient policy. To add a Mailbox manager policy to an existing Email address policy, right click on the policy and choose 'Change property pages'. Add a checkmark beside Mailbox Manager Settings and click OK. Create a filter on the General tab and select the folders and edit the size and age conditions as needed on the Mailbox manager tab.

Admins can apply the policy to any folders in the mailbox, provided they know the folder name and path. To do so, click the Add button and enter the folder and path in the form of 'Inbox\subfolder' and set the size and age limit.

Enable mailbox management and configure the times it runs from the server's property sheet by browsing to the server under the Administrative groups container.

It's been a frustrating month. I planned to move to a new location and had phone service and DSL turned on well in advance of the move so I could be sure it was working correctly before moving my servers. It worked great on nice days, but at night or on rainy days, the DSL kept cutting out, connecting then almost immediately disconnecting. The few times it stayed connected, the speed was well below the daytime speeds as reported by the modem interface. Around 9 am it would start working fine again until early evening, except when it rained, when it didn't work during the daytime either. By my logic, when it didn't work on rainy days or on damp, foggy fall nights, it was because of water in or on the lines. It made a lot of sense to me, but not to tech support.

I called CenturyTel support and told them it seemed like it was water-related since it happened on rainy days and at night. They said they'd send a repairman out to check my lines. I wasn't around when he supposedly came out, but when DSL still didn't work right at night, I called tech support again. They said the lines checked out fine and it was something inside, maybe the security system, the satellite dish, a light or appliance only on at night. The first two are not installed and I insisted it was weather related, not electrical interference. They offered me two options: pay $140/hr for a repairman to check their lines or $400/mo for a T1 with guaranteed uptime and they'd test them for free. I called Time Warner instead.

When I called to have the DSL disconnected because daytime-only business class DSL wasn't meeting my needs and they wouldn't fix it, the customer service agent talked me into trying tech support one more time. Once again, I told tech support the symptoms and suggested the problems seemed to be weather related. The response this time? "The modem is bad. It's still under warranty; we'll send a new one." My reply: "It better be under warranty, you sent it to me 30 days ago. Is it common for modems to fail at night or on rainy days but work fine during the day?" After a very long pause he decided maybe another repair ticket was in order.

I made sure I was around when the repairman arrived to check the lines. He opened the green box out by the street and guess what he discovered… WATER! Water pooled around the base and the plastic shield that is supposed to prevent shorts was loose and wet. Why oh why didn’t tech support listen to me the first time.

The repairman also told me the modems have a very low failure rate but that doesn't stop tech support from replacing them and hoping the problem goes away for the customer. I already knew that; I threw out a box full of modems Sprint sent me over the years. I kept them, just in case a modem actually failed (but none did). I suppose I can be happy they didn't tell me to reformat or "write zeros", the tech support cure all.

Now that the box is dried out, the DSL works fine but it's still getting disconnected as soon as Time Warner installs their service early next week. Here's to hoping Time Warner works as advertised all the time.