A recent (and long) thread in the Microsoft newsgroups began like this:

"I wrote about the Outlook 2003 CPU usage problem a while back and so far have not found a solution. "

The user moved everything to a new *.pst and it seemed to help. He redid the sync settings for his phone and Outlook began hogging the CPU. It looked like Windows Mobile Device Center is the culprit but removing the phone didn't reduce the CPU usage. He upgraded to Outlook 2007 and the high CPU usage continued.

Thoroughly frustrated, he said "I've tried everything I can find in this NG on this problem to no avail. Looks like Outlook just will not work on Vista Home Premium properly no matter what I do."

I knew this was wrong as Outlook works perfectly fine on all versions of Vista for many, many people. I ask which add-ins he has installed, since many problems are caused by add-ins. After several messages back and forth, the user mentions all add-ins except OutlookAddin are disabled and CPU usage is still high.

Ah, OutlookAddin is the clue I needed to solve the problem. This tells me the user has a Dell and it has Media Direct installed. We see a number of complaints relating to this add-in - the most common is that it causes meeting requests to recur. It is also responsible for the creation of calendar folders in My Documents when users save attachments. When someone mentions either problem, I don't need any other information and often begin my reply with "My crystal ball tells me you have a Dell..."

High CPU usage is not mentioned as much and I often forgot that its caused by the Media Direct add-in. This could be because users have come to expect high CPU usage from Outlook, only a small subset of Dell owners are affected, or because other add-ins, including BCM, can turn Outlook into "a slug" (with apologies to slugs).

To disable it, either uninstall it from Control Panel, Add/Remove programs or disable it in Tools, Trust Center, Add-ins. Select COM Add-ins at the bottom of the dialog and click Go. Remove the check from the Outlook Setup Addin (outlookaddin.dll). In Outlook 2003, go to Tools, Options, Other tab, Add-ins to disable it.

Recurring Meeting Bug
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/recurringmeetings.htm

by Michael B. Smith, MCSE/Exchange MVP

For many years, at least since Exchange Server 5.5, if you needed high availability for an Exchange Server - you built a cluster. Call it a Wolfpack cluster, a NLB cluster, a Windows server cluster - whatever. They are all the same, just by any other name.

Any Windows-based cluster requires, at some level, at least one computer system which is ready for at least one of the other systems to fail. Whether active (currently taking transactions from clients) or passive (sitting there waiting for another computer system to fail). This has meant, in the past, that to properly size your cluster members for performance, you need to oversize (super-size?) your cluster members. As of Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft required all Exchange server clusters to have at least one passive member - that is, at list one cluster member that was not doing anything else in the cluster.

In Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft has enabled a technology known as Continuous Replication. They have enabled this in three different ways (as of Service Pack 1). Those three ways are: Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR), Local Continuous Replication (LCR), and Stand by Continuous Replication (SCR). Each of these replication methods are ways of creating (almost) real-time versions of your Exchange database.

In all versions of Exchange server prior to 2007, the log files that Exchange produced are exactly 5 MB in size (and I mean exactly - 5,242,880 bytes). In Exchange Server 2007, those log files have changed to exactly 1 MB in size (1,048,576 bytes). This change was made, primarily, to support the continuous replication features.

All of the continuous replication methods depend on log shipping. Log shipping is the process of taking each Exchange transaction log, once closed, and transferring it to a continuous replication destination, applying that log file to a destination copy of an Exchange database, and then waiting for the next transaction log. This process allows for a remote destination to have a close-to-current copy of your local Exchange database. A real restriction is that any of the continuous replication methods only work if you have a single Exchange message store within your Exchange storage group.

The initial process of creating a continuous replication destination includes 'seeding' the destination copy. After the initial seed, the copy is kept up to date by applying the log files from the source. In order to keep copies more close to current is the (one of the main) reason why the log files were reduced in size. Any continuous replication solution requires that a storage group only have a single mailbox store associated with it.

CCR is the process of taking a copy of the local database, from a cluster, and sending it to a REMOTE destination. LCR is the process of taking a copy of the local database, from a non-cluster, and sending it to a LOCAL destination. SCR (new in Exchange 2007 service pack 1) is taking a copy of a local database, from a non-cluster, and sending it to a REMOTE destination.

All of these (CCR, LCR, and SCR) can provide improved high-availability to Exchange 2007 installations. In many cases, they can replace third-party products that provide similar capabilities, at a lower cost. If you want to know how to implement these - let us know!

Do you accidently hit send in the middle of composing a message? Have you ever compose an email and sent it, then minutes later regret sending it and attempt to recall it? Would you like to send a reminder to your co-workers before a meeting but always seem to forget? If so, deferred delivery is for you.

Outlook offers two methods for deferring delivery. One method holds messages for a short period of time and is useful when you need to delay sending a message for a short period of time; the other sends the message at a specific date and time.

The first method uses a rule to delay sending the message for up to 120 minutes. This is useful if you think you might want to edit the message before sending it or if you are in the habit of accidently hitting Send. It also works 100% of the time, unlike Recall. You can use criteria to control which messages are held; for example, you might want to hold messages to an important client or your boss but not to others.

To configure a delay rule, open the Rules dialog

1. Create a 'Check message after sending" rule.
2. Either choose the conditions for the rule or click Next if you want it to apply to all messages.
3. Choose "defer delivery for a number of minutes" on the actions screen and enter a number between 1 and 120 for the number of minutes.
4. Enter exceptions if necessary then click Finish.

Now every message meeting the conditions (or all messages if no conditions were selected) will be held in the Outbox for the desired amount of time.

If you use Exchange server or have Outlook configured to Send immediately, the message will be sent as soon as the delay expires. If you send mail on schedule, such as every 10 minutes, it gets sent on the next scheduled send after the hold expires.

The second method to defer delivery holds mail until a specific time and date. You can use this to send reminders but you'll need to have Outlook open at the appointed time, unless you use Exchange server in "classic online" mode.

To use this method, select the Options dialog before sending the message and set a time and date in the Do not deliver before fields. Remember, Outlook needs to be running at the appointed time for the message to be sent if you use a POP3, IMAP or cached Exchange account. You can't use it convince people you arrive at work early or work late- the time you sent the message to the Outbox will be stamped on it.

These methods are best suited for individual messages. If you need to add a delay to a mass mail or mail merge, there are several add-ins available that may meet your needs better. They're listed at http://www.slipstick.com/addins/mail.asp. 

An e-mail message may not be delivered at the scheduled time when you enable the "Do not deliver before" option in an Outlook 2003 message
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=918824

To change the URL that is used for OWA, for example , from https://domain.com/exchange to https://domain.com/ or https://mail.company.com you need to set up redirection in IIS. (You will, of course, need to have the domain name properly configured in DNS. )

1. Open IIS Manager, and navigate to Web Sites/Default Web Site
2. Right-click Default Web Site and choose Properties
3. Select the Home Directory tab
4. Choose "A redirection to a URL" option
5. In the "Redirect to" field, type /exchange (or the path currently used)
6. In the "The client will be sent to:" list, select "A directory below URL"

Click Ok and return to IIS manager. Now when users can type the URL for this IIS server, IIS will redirect them to the /exchange subfolder.

 

If you don't see all of your appointments when you use the calendar printing assistant, you may need to open the appointments in Outlook and make a slight change. Based on my observation, it looks like items created in either older versions of Outlook or in other applications and synced to Outlook aren't visible in the Calendar Printing Assistant until you "touch" the item and cause it to update.