Allow OOF only to Contacts

An administrator recently asked this question: "I want to allow my users to send Out of Office replies to external recipients, but only if the sender appears as an entry in the user's personal Outlook contacts. If the user chooses to send auto-replies to people outside of the organization it needs to be to their Contacts only, not to just anyone. Is it possible to disable the 'Anyone outside my organization' option through group policy, a registry change, or something else? We're using Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007."

The Out of Office settings are stored as a hidden message in the mailbox, not in the registry and as far as I know, it’s not possible to force OOF to use Contacts only.

Note: The option to control who gets OOF is available with Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007 (or 2010) only. 

Birthdays recur every 12 Years

Another week, another calendar sync bug. In this bug, all day events that recur yearly are changed to recur every 12 years. This bug has been around a few months, apparently since the release of Office 2007 SP2 and affects devices that sync with Outlook 2007 using ActiveSync. It may only affect users who sync their device between two different computers.

If your calendar is affected by this bug, set the events to have an end date. This reportedly fixes the problem.

Even if you don’t sync with devices, I recommend setting an end date on all recurring appointments and events. If the appointment occurs frequently, set the end date for Dec 31 and make new events each Jan 1. Use 2012 as the end year for less frequent events such as birthdays or set them to end after 10 events. As long as you do not add notes to individual occurrences within the series or create exceptions, you can change the end date later without issue.

Quick Tip: Make a Distribution List in OWA

An Exchange user forced to use OWA had this question: "I have a list of names and addresses in a spreadsheet and need to make a distribution list. Do I need to paste the names and addresses in one at a time? "

Nope. As long as the list has the email addresses correctly formatted, you can copy and paste the entire list into the Members field of a distribution list in OWA. You may need to adjust the list in Excel so that its properly formatted - specifically you need to add a semicolon following each email address. You can add the semicolon in a column after the email address (using Excel’s Fill capability) then copy both columns. To include a display name, arrange the worksheet so the columns are in this order: Name (can be 1 or more columns), Email address, <semicolon column> then select these columns and paste into the Members field.

This method also works in Outlook. Open a new distribution form and click Add Members, then paste the list into the Members field at the bottom of the dialog.

Poll: Do you keep Outlook open 24/7?

We have over 600 voters so far and over 80% keep Outlook open 24/7. If you haven't voted yet you still have time to vote at http://forums.slipstick.com/showthread.php?t=22205. (You don't need to be registered at the forum to vote in the poll.)