Exchange Messaging Outlook Volume 12, Number 19

If you use an older version of Outlook and are missing holidays for 2008 and beyond, its and updated holiday file is available for all versions.

If you use Outlook 2003 (or upgraded to Outlook 2007 from Outlook 2003 and didn't add more holidays) you may have noticed you are "missing" holidays for 2008 and beyond. If you want to believe it's a conspiracy by Microsoft to force you to upgrade, I have a bridge to sell you, but the truth is that when they release the versions they feel 5 years was far enough out to provide in the holiday file.

You can download the Outlook 2003 Holiday update from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924423. This is the same file that is included with Outlook 2007.

While users can Add Holidays by double clicking on the Outlook.HOL file to open the Add Holidays dialog, you should replace the original outlook.hol file at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\xxxx (where xxxx is the 4-digit language code for your language) folder so that its available if users decide to add additional holidays later. Otherwise, the Tools, Options, Calendar options, Add Holidays dialog will not contain the updated holiday list.

If you need updated holidays for older versions of Outlook, see Missing Holidays. 

Several people complained about the inability to always open documents attached to an email messages. They were always presented with the Open or Save dialog and the option to "Always ask before opening" was disabled for all file types. Others removed the check so Outlook 2007 never asked but wanted to restore the dialog.

In Outlook 2007, the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\[file type]\EditFlags binary value holds the 'always ask' value. A data value of 00 00 00 00 means Outlook will always ask if you want to open or save the attachment, while 00 00 01 00 opens it without asking.

If the EditFlags value does not exist, create it with 00 00 01 00 data to eliminate the dialog and open the message.

Word 2007 DOCX extension is controlled by this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Word.Document.12

Adobe PDF is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\AcroExch.Document

Word's DOC extension is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Word.Document.8

So what controls whether an attachment opens read only? Attachments opened from the preview pane are always read only while attachments opened from opened messages are editable.

See Restore (or Hide) the Open Save Dialog for more information.

Exchange MVP William Lefkovics wrote in the November 29, 2007 EMO about Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 and many of the changes included in the service pack. You can read that article in the EMO archives at http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2007/up071129.htm.

One of the additional changes for administrators is that service pack 1 has been slipstreamed into the base release. That means that the service pack 1 installer includes the base release and it is not necessary to maintain separate installation media for the service pack and for the RTM release. This is new for Exchange Server and will help to simplify the deployment and update options for Exchange Server.

Read the complete article at Using Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1

When newly created meetings default to the current date and time, regardless of day or time selected, it usually means the view is corrupt. Open outlook using the /cleanviews switch and all should be well. (Close Outlook and at the Start menu, Run command enter Outlook.exe /cleanviews)

If you have a lot of custom views you don't want to lose, you can try resetting the current view before resetting all views, but if it doesn't fix the problem you'll need to use /cleanviews.

Outlook 2007 has a lot of calendar printing bugs, which I suppose, is why they released a Calendar Printing Assistant. Some were fixed in SP1. Others are just coming to my attention, probably because I don't print calendars.

The newest bug involves printing a series of full month calendars. If you start the series in a month that spans 6 calendar weeks, each monthly calendar contains 6 rows but the names of the months at the top of the print out will be screwy: "Dec", then "Dec - Feb", "Jan - Mar" etc. When you begin printing the calendar in a month that spans 5 weeks every month will span 5 weeks and drop the last couple of days if they extend into the 6th week. At least the months are labeled correctly: Jan, Feb, March; too bad they are short a day or two.

The Calendar Printing Assistant always uses 5 weeks and addresses the problem by "compressing" the days in the 6th week into the blocks of the 5th week. If you prefer to use Outlook's native printing capabilities, you'll need to print the longer months separately.

Older versions of Outlook correctly draw either 5 or 6 rows, as needed.

For links to the Calendar Printing Assistant and other tools that will print the months correctly in 5 or 6 rows, see
Calendar Printing Tools for Outlook 

For more information and screen shots, see
Outlook 2007: Month Calendar Printing Bug

Remotely managing Exchange Servers over the years seems to fall into one of two options, with some variations. First, either install the management tools components on your local workstation or second, use terminal services (RDP remote desktop) to access the console. In this overview, I will look at those options and other adaptations.

Continue reading... Remotely Managing Exchange Servers

If installing the ESM (2000/2003) or the EMC (2007) seems to you to be a hassle, well, you are far from alone. Thankfully, Microsoft provides a Remote Desktop feature allowing access to the Exchange Server desktop from the workstation without installing any Exchange components locally. In Windows 2000 this was referred to as Terminal Services - Administration Mode. It is now much more common and included in all business Windows operating systems as Remote Desktop. Other applications can serve the same function, but they introduce their own set of costs, administration and security issues. These remote administration tools include pcAnywhere and Virtual Network Computing (VNC).

The client executable for RDP is mstsc.exe in the %systemroot%\System32 folder. It has a couple of parameters that you can use. You can edit a shortcut to include parameters for the window size, server name, or even log into the console. The /console switch logs the administrator into the actual console. What the administrator sees in his RDP session is exactly what he sees if he logged in directly at the server. For a server name E2K7-MB-02, an administrator might run the following from the run line in the start menu of his workstation:
>mstsc /v:E2K7-MB-02 /console
Run mstsc /? For the list of parameters.

For companies of 75-250 employees, I recommend using an Administration Server or station. This is a secure Windows 2003 R2 server which hosts your management applications. This may include Antivirus management console or Windows Software Update Services (WSUS). I would install the necessary Exchange Management Tools on that server and use RDP to access that using a separate Administrator-level logon. Of course, at your workstation, you are authenticated with the lowest required privileges to perform your tasks. You do not likely need to be authenticated as an Exchange administrator all the time, so using a separate server and username for this makes some secure sense.

RDP has come a long way as well, with various systems able to use Microsoft or third party RDP clients. This includes Windows Mobile, Linux, and MacOSX. I don't know many who administer Exchange from their Linux box, but at least they could if so compelled.

Windows Vista adds another compelling option for some administrators. Vista can host operating systems as virtual clients. This includes Windows XP sp2 which can be used for the ESM tools for Exchange 2003 administration. As we discussed, ESM, needing IIS6, is not supported on Vista; however, it can run on Windows XP sp2 which can run as a guest using Virtual PC on Vista.

-- William Lefkovics