Volume 22 Issue 7

Today's Highlights:

• Prevent Distribution Group Expansion
• Create a Task from a message and include the Attachment
• Outlook's Clean Up Tool
• Outlook.com Reminder: Re-add the account to Outlook

Prevent Distribution Group Expansion

An Office 365 administrator had a problem:

We restricted who can send email to a distribution group but users expand it and can send the email to everyone on it. How do we stop this?

There are three options when using Exchange Server and Outlook: use the DisableDLExpansion registry value to disable distribution list expansion in Outlook desktop, use a dynamic DL, or set the list to be moderated and add the people who can send to the list to the bypass moderation list.

While users without proper permissions won't be able to send to either a moderated or dynamic group, anyone can view the list of group members in a moderated group. Group members are not shown in a dynamic group (because the members are determined by the server when it's sent).

To change a distribution group to moderated:

1. Open the group in the Exchange admin center and select the group (in Office 365, it's under Recipients > Groups)
2. Choose Message approval.
3. Tick the option for 'Messages sent to the group have to be approved by a moderator'
4. Add the people who can send to the group in the 'Senders who don't require approval' section.
5. Choose whether to notify senders if their message is rejected.
6. Save.

The DisableDLExpansion registry value is supported in Outlook 2007 and up. To use it in Outlook 2016, add the DisableDLExpansion DWORD to the registry at HKCU|​Software|​Policies|​Microsoft|​Office|16.0|Outlook|Options|Mail| and set the value to 1. For the other supported versions, change the version number in the registry path. As with moderated groups, users will be able to open the distribution group and view the members but will not be able to expand the list to bypass list controls.

Create a Task from a message and include the Attachment

It's really simple to create a task from an email: just drag it to the task navigation button (or word 'Task'). Outlook will then create a new task with the contents of the message in the Task body. The only issue is that it does not include any attachments in the message. If you right click and drag, you'll have the option of creating a new task with the message copied or added as an attachment. Choosing the message as attachment option will include all attachments, but you need to open the message to access the attachments.

I have a macro that will create the task, include the message in the body and add any attachments, but if you can't, or prefer not to, use a macro, you can add the attachment to the task with little effort by creating a Quick Step to create a task, then before using the Quick Step to create your task, copy the attachment(s) to the clipboard. After the new task is opened, paste in the task body.

1. Open Manage Quick Steps dialog and click New > Custom.
2. Enter a name for your Quick Step.
3. As the Action, choose Create a task with the text of the message.
4. Click Finish.

To use your new quick step, select a message and expand the attachment's menu then choose Copy. To select more than one attachment, select an attachment then Select All from the menu, before choosing Copy. Click the new Quick Step you created then paste the attachments in the task body.

Outlook's Clean Up Tool

A client asked me what the Clean Up tool does. He has duplicate messages to clean up and wants to remove quoted text from replies and was hoping cleanup would do it. The answer is no to both.

Clean Up removes redundant messages in a thread of folder. What is a redundant message? Redundant messages are the previous messages in a thread that are also quoted in the replies. In a long email thread, you could end up several copies of the early messages and the Clean Up Folder command moves these redundant messages in the current folder (or current folder and subfolders) to the designated "Cleanup" folder, leaving you with all the content but fewer messages. It will not remove true duplicated messages; it will not trim quoted text from replies.

The Clean Up folder (and subfolder) commands will clean up all threads in a folder (and subfolders, if that option was selected), while clean up conversation will remove the older messages from the selected thread.

By default, Outlook won't clean up categorized, flagged, or digitally signed messages. These settings can be changed in File, Options, Mail.

To remove duplicated messages, it's usually faster to use a duplicate remover utility. However, if the duplicates are due to importing or re-downloading messages, you can add the Modified date field to the view and sort by it. Everything imported or downloaded later will have the same modified date. Select them and delete.

Outlook.com Reminder: Re-add the account to Outlook

I've had a busy week helping users reconfigure their Outlook.com accounts in Outlook, with some users still trying to use Outlook Connector accounts months after their account was migrated to the new servers.

If you haven't yet switched from the Outlook Connector or Exchange Active Sync and have added new items to the calendar or contacts folder in Outlook after it quit syncing, you should export these folders before removing the account from Outlook. If you don't, you may lose the changes or will need to use an OST to PST utility to recover the items that did not sync. Note: if you are using an ActiveSync account, the data file will be deleted when you remove the account from Outlook and you will lose any changes not synced.

To make the change, use auto account setup to add the Outlook.com account to Outlook. You'll need to restart Outlook, then after comparing the folders in the Connector or ActiveSync folders, remove the old account from Outlook.

More information is available at Outlook.com: Switch Account to Microsoft Exchange

New & Updated Exchange KB Articles

Some messages aren't routed through the on-premises organization when you use centralized mail transport
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3194415

Other Resources

Keep Client or Server Side Rules?
How to fix the rules on the computer do not match the rules on the server error message in Outlook.

Outlook on the web: Insert and Resize Pictures
How to resize images in Outlook on the web.