Exchange Messaging Outlook Volume 13, Number 26

Issue Date October 30 2008 «  Previous Issue | Next Issue  »
This issue is sponsored by Sherpa SoftwareSperry Software

Today's Highlights:

 
 

Identifying Messages with Read Receipt Requests

In last week’s EMO I mentioned a problem with Outlook 2007 and IMAP accounts, where read receipts may be returned regardless of your tracking options. Several readers asked if there was an easy way to see if read receipts were requested.

Yes, Outlook includes a Receipt Requested field you can add to your view, which makes it very easy to see if anyone requested read receipts, group by the Receipt Requested view, or create an Automatic formatting rule to highlight all messages that contain receipts.

To make a change to the view, right click on the row of field names and choose Custom. To add the field to the view, select Field names from the dialog. Select Receipt Requested from All Mail Items and add it to the view. If you keep only From, Received, Receipt Requested, Subject and Categories in the view (and in this order), the receipt indicator is visible under the date in Outlook 2003/2007's two line view. Choose the Group by or Automatic Formatting options to if you prefer to group or color messages containing read receipts.

Another reader asked why you can't work offline and delete the receipts before they get sent. This isn’t a good solution because Outlook stores them as a hidden messages in the top level of your mailbox. You need to use OutlookSpy or MDBVue.exe to view (and delete) receipts from the hidden folder. See Delete Read Receipts using OutlookSpy for the steps.

IMAP accounts and read receipts present a second problem not mentioned in last week's issue: if you move messages with receipt requests to a new folder a Not Read receipt will be generated when the message is purged from the folder. A second receipt may be generated when the moved message is read or deleted. Your default tracking options should properly handle these receipts based on your settings. However, if you're using the option to always return receipts you may want to switch to always ask so you can stop the Not Read receipts that are generated when you move messages.

IMAP and Junk E-mail Read Receipts (EMO October 24 2008)
http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2008/up081023.htm#4 

Exchange Server 2007 and Bifurcation

by Michael B. Smith, MCSE/Exchange MVP

In my last article, “Mail Flow in Exchange Server 2007”, I introduced the concept of bifurcation. Bifurcation is a fun word to say, but it’s important in reducing bandwidth consumption and in making disk storage usage more efficient. In fact, support for delayed bifurcation is what leads to Single Instance Storage in an Exchange mailbox database. In simple terms, bifurcation means that you take a single message and split it into multiple copies, preferably only when you are required to make the split. The process of delaying as long as you can in making that split is called delayed fan out and it is also commonly referred to as an Exchange 2007 feature.

All of these are related. Let’s discuss them and see how they apply.

Single Instance Storage (SIS) applies to special messages. The requirements for a message to use SIS are:

1] Destination recipients are all in the same Active Directory site

2] Destination recipients are all on the same mailbox server

3] Destination recipients are all in the same mailbox database

If all of these three requirements are true, and there are multiple recipients for a message, then only a single copy of the message’s attachments is stored into the destination mailbox database.

Yes, I said a single copy of the attachments. In releases of Exchange prior to Exchange 2007, only a single copy of the entire message was stored (message body plus message attachment). However, that had a high disk cost (that is, it required more input-output operations than storing multiple copies of the message); and one of the major goals of Exchange 2007 was to reduce disk cost. Many of the tradeoffs involved in reaching that goal required using more disk space in order to reduce various I/O operations.

Attachments are accessed less often than message bodies, so they retain SIS. Also, note that Microsoft recommends against using SIS when planning for your disk usage requirement in Exchange Server.

Next, fan out describes when bifurcation occurs. In releases of Exchange prior to Exchange 2007, if the transport engine detected that the destination recipients were on separate Exchange servers, then bifurcation happened immediately, even if those recipient Exchange servers were side-by-side four routing groups away (that is, multiple copies of a message would cross the network). In Exchange 2007, bifurcation is delayed as long as possible, which leads to the feature known as delayed fan out.

If the Exchange servers for two recipients are in the same Active Directory site, but two separate servers, the bifurcation of the message does not occur until the message reaches a hub transport server located within the destination AD site. If two recipients are on the same Exchange server, but two separate mailbox databases, bifurcation does not occur until the message reaches the information store service on the destination mailbox server. And finally, if two recipients are on the same mailbox database, bifurcation of the message body happens when the message is stored into the database, bifurcation of any attachments does not occur.

Delayed fan out can result in significant bandwidth savings if many of your destination recipients are not in your local Active Directory site. SIS can reduce the storage used by attachments in your Exchange mailbox databases.

Bifurcation is a basic process of all mail transport engines. In this article, you have learned how it is used within Exchange.

Resources:

Exchange Server 2007 Active Directory Site and Connector Selection Algorithms
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/09/14/428920.aspx 

Single Instance Storage in Exchange 2007
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/02/08/448095.aspx 

Empty Junk Email on Schedule

A new Exchange administrator wanted to know if Exchange 2003 offered a way to empty the contents of the user's junk folder every seven days.

Sure, Exchange makes this easy with Mailbox Manager.

In Exchange 2000/2003, open the Exchange System Manager and browse to Recipients, Recipient Policies node. Right click on it and choose New. Select Mailbox Manager Settings and create your policy. If a mailbox folder is not listed, Add it. You can create several policies and apply them to different groups of users. For example, you may have one policy for standard users that removes week old mail from the Junk E-mail and Deleted items folders while these folders in mangers mailboxes are cleaned up monthly. To run Mailbox Manager on schedule, right click on the Mailbox Store (under Servers node) and choose Properties. Set the schedule to run every 7 days on the Mailbox manager tab. Most sites run it Sunday morning but you can choose any day.

The process for Exchange 2007 is similar. Open the Exchange Management Console and browse to Organization Configuration, Mailbox to create the policies.

What if you don't use Exchange server? Not a problem. Go to Tools, Options, Other, AutoArchive and configure AutoArchive to run weekly then right click on Junk Email folder and choose Properties. On the AutoArchive tab, choose Archive this folder using these settings. Set it to clean out items older than a few days and select permanently delete old items. Repeat these steps on the Deleted Items folder.

Outlook Quick Tip: Stop Snoozing

I think we've all done this once or twice: a reminder comes up and you quickly hit snooze then realize you forgot to change the snooze time. When this happens, you can undo the snooze by opening the item, removing the reminder and saving it. Reopen it and set a new reminder.

If you accidently snooze (or dismiss) a group of reminders and need to reset them, switch to the All Appointments view and add the Modified time field to the view. When you snooze or dismiss a reminder, the item's last modified time is updated - sort by this field to locate all the recently touched items then reset the reminders.

New Outlook KB Articles

Error message when you try to use a keyboard shortcut in an Outlook 2003 custom form that has an embedded Web Browser control: "The operation failed"
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=958700 

Description of the Outlook 2003 Post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package (Engmui.msp, Olkintl.msp, Outlook.msp): October 28, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=958701 
This hotfix fixes several issues including the error "The operation failed. An object could not be found." when you try to use a keyboard shortcut in an Outlook 2003 custom form with an embedded Web Browser control.

Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package (Olkintl.msp, Engmui.msp): October 28, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=957142 
This hotfix addresses storage group log file on the server that is running Exchange Server 2003 grows exponentially until the storage group fails because of a lack of disk space. This problem may occur when an Outlook 2003 user synchronizes their mailbox with the Exchange Server. The OST Integrity Check Tool (Scanost.exe), the tool indicates that the users .ost file is corrupted.

Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package for the English language proofing tools (Msspell.msp): October 28, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=958688 
This update adds several new words to the dictionary.

Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package for the Arabic language proofing tools (Ptk.msp, Aramui.msp): October 28, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=954354 
This hotfix addresses the application crashing when you check the spelling and grammar of Arabic language text in an Office 2003 program.

Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package (Outlook.msp): October 28, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=957220 
This addresses several issues, including problems with shared calendars.

Description of the Office Outlook 2003 hotfix package: April 28, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=952143 
Hotfix for KB 95214 You cannot disable the "No end date" option for appointments, meeting requests, tasks, or task requests in Outlook 2003

Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 3 hotfix package for Microsoft Office Document Scanning (Mdivwctl.msp): October 28, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=958586 
This fixes an issue with Canon scanners used with Office Document Scanning. If the Canon scanner has a display name that is longer than 30 characters, the document is not scanned.

Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook.msp): October 28, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=957692 
This addresses a long list of issues with Outlook 2007.

Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook-en-us.msp, Outlook.msp): October 28, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=958789 
This addresses the lack of diagnostic logging for the trusted add-ins feature in Outlook 2007

New Utilities

CA XOsoft Replication Option for Exchange
http://www.xosoft.com/products/f_WANSyncExchange.shtml 
CA XOsoft Replication Option for Exchange is a disaster recovery solution that uses asynchronous real-time replication to provide cost-effective disaster recovery capabilities for Microsoft Exchange on 32- and 64-bit Windows standalone and cluster servers.

VBOffice Reporter
http://www.vboffice.net/product.html?pub=20&lang=en&cmd=detail&id=2006073 
VBOffice Reporter is an easy to use tool for data analysis and reporting in Outlook. A single click allows you to see the number of hours planned for meetings the next month, expenses for a specific project in the last month, and many things more. Features include the ability to create reports for all tasks, calendar, and journal items. Create a report with a single click and then sent via e-mail or open it in Excel. Version 2. Trial available.

Updated Utilities

OLKeeper
http://www.slipstick.com/redirect.asp?id=olkeeper 
OLKeeper reliably prevents users from closing their Outlook and possibly missing reminders or e-mails. When you click the X button to close Outlook, OLKeeper asks you what to do: minimize, close or cancel. You will never again miss an important appointment or e-mail just because Outlook was accidentally closed or waste your time with unnecessary, long waits during Outlook restarts.

OOther Resources

Application Shutdown Changes in Outlook 2007 Service Pack 2 Beta
http://blogs.msdn.com/rgregg/archive/2008/10/27/application-shutdown-changes-in-outlook-2007-service-pack-2-beta.aspx 
Service Pack 2 changes the way Outlook closes, ensuring that the user’s intent to close Outlook is respected. These changes mean the way the Outlook COM server shuts down has changed significantly, which may impact solutions using the Outlook object model outside of the Outlook process.

Outlook and IMAP: Outlook sends unknown messages
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/rr_ndr.asp 
When an IMAP account is configured in Outlook 2007, your tracking preferences are ignored and read receipts are returned when you delete items from the Junk E-mail folder.

Trouble with Live Search Maps Add-in for Outlook
http://blogs.msdn.com/pcreehan/archive/2008/10/22/trouble-with-live-search-maps-add-in-for-outlook.aspx 
Microsoft has received a large number of support cases that are caused either directly or indirectly because of this add-in. These include hangs, crashes, and leaks. One problem is the custom form and an updated form is available for download.

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