Recently in Exchange / Outlook Category

The very useful post from EHLO has a good walkthrough on how to allow other servers to relay via Exchange2007. At first glance it looks complicated, but it was actually pretty simple. I had tried to authenticate my smtp session from the NT4 IIS smtp session but that didn't work so I followed up with the document above.

The migration from NT4 and Exchange 5.5 to Exchange2007 and Windows 2003 is almost done. This weekend was the installation of Exchange 2007 and the move of mailboxes. Unfortunately it did not go to plan. Upromote worked great on the first server that needed the software and after two or three reboots it was acting as a member server. The second server however did not go well. Instead the server bluescreened in the middle of the process and I was left with a server that was neither in a domain or in a workgroup.  The logon box did not include the domain option but the local SAM was corrupted and wouldn't let me login. As the machine was out of the domain I couldn't connect to it remotely apart from ping activity. After struggling for a long time with a multitude of recovery tools we ended up with a parallel installation of NT4 on the machine so that we could access the data on the drives. This was not without hassles - the RAID controller drivers would not recognise the disk in NT4 - you would have thought that downloading the drivers for the raid controller that appears in the BIOS boot would work but nope - we had to use different drivers!  I tried to access the machine using Microsoft's Dart Tool - the rebranded ERD commander, but this tool doesn't support NT - in the end I had to go back to ERD Commander 2002 to get a version that worked with NT4 (although it didn't actually help). The parallel installation of NT also needed SQL 7 reinstalling but this needed ie4 installed (and where do you get *that* from?)  Fortunately it would also accept IE6 too.

Installing the Exchange2007 sp1 was not a fun experience either - the process stopped half way through with an error saying that a file was in use and that I needed to reboot the server to continue. When I did so, the installation would not continue as all of the Exchange services and several other essential windows services had been set to disabled by the previous installation and the upgrade needs the Information Store to be running. As the other services were stopped the machine acted like it was behind a firewall - you were not able to ping out or into it. Setting all the services to automatic and then starting them got through this problem - I had to boot up my Virtual Exchange 2007 server to see which disabled services should normally be running though. I actually had to try the upgrade about 3 times before I got through with no errors but the whole experience made SQL2005 look stable.

Now I am having major trouble getting the remote outlook clients to connect through to the exchange 2007 server using RPC over HTTPS - it worked great with the Exchange 2003 server but just will not work with Exchange 2007 - if you have any bright ideas then let me know - tomorrow I'll be logging a call with Microsoft for some assistance.

At the end of the weekend I felt like I had installed every piece of Microsoft software just to get Exchange migrated onto new servers. I have got some great ideas for future migrations and I know that I don't want to repeat the process sometime soon!

Then to top it all off, the advert shown in this blog post arrived stuck to the front cover of my Technet magazine today - talk about bad timing.  Having said that, I have received the white paper and I don't think we'd use their services as it sounds expensive. The advice was pretty basic but did include the steps of removing old mailboxes and cleaning up the database. One REALLY annoying thing to see when you are moving mailboxes on a weekend without pay is a lot of "moving 1 of 3654 spam messages" and "moving 3 of 12876 deleted items".  I had told the users to delete these items before the upgrade but this hadn't been done.  I think next time I will include a step of telling the users to delete their spam, junk and deleted items BEFORE the upgrade as it will be done as part of the upgrade "automatically" (and if anyone has a tool that will walk through a message store deleting items in the spam, junk and deleted items then let me know)

This weekend was meant to be the second stage in a NT4 and Exchange 5.5 migration to Windows 2003, Exchange 2007. This process has been a big nightmare so far - this weekend wasn't helped by the cd being unreadable by any of the machines (although you could see *some* files the setup program wouldn't completely launch.)
Trying to think of an alternative solution I wondered if the trial version of Exchange that is downloadable from Microsoft would work. However, although Microsoft say you can actually use a purchased key on the trial version, the only trial version available is 32bit and the only supported version of exchange is 64bit. The other problem is that the 64bit version is a 5.5GB DVD so not something you can easily download on a T1 connection :-)
Eventually we managed to get a copy of the DVD from another branch of the company and I started the install process. Unfortunately it was then that I discovered that you can only install Exchange 2007 into a Native mode AD. Initially I thought it just had to be higher than 2000. Unfortunately as I'm doing an upgrade from Windows NT domain to Active Directory I still had NT4 domain controllers from the original installation and these are not machines that the client is willing to remove. So I'm now stuck with a half finished migration.
Currently my two solutions are to split the nt4 domain controllers into their own separate LAN and then remove the records for the W2k3 servers and delete the NT4 servers from the AD LAn - this should work as the 2 domain controllers are just serving as standalone machines now so don't really need clients to connect to them but their services are needed.
The other solution (which might be more graceful) is to use upromote to demote the nt4 servers to member servers only. At $99 per server this will be more cost efficient and graceful than splitting the network into 2 lans.

I must say that this whole 5.5 to Exchange 2007 is not an easy migration by any stretch of the imagination and I would certainly not recommend that you try and do it over two consecutive windows - especially if your original NT servers provide extra services to your existing network.

It's been a very long weekend. I've been trying to do a migration from nt4 and exchange 5.5 up to Windows 2003 64bit, Active Directory and Exchange2007 and although I succeeded there have been several large hiccups along the way. More details in the extended entry as it will get technical!

Anyone recommend a good Exchange 2007 book, of particular relevance will be upgrading servers (from Exchange 5.5 no less!)

I had a remote user, working behind a vpn connection to the office log onto the pc for the first time (which was a hard job in itself - I had to use the dial up networking login to authenticate to the domain and cache credentials to the workstation). This user was having problems running outlook with the software prompting him to provide the location for the office source files with the error message "Error 1706. Setup cannot find the required files. Check your connection to the network, or CD-ROM drive. For other potential solutions to this problem, see C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\1033\Setup.hlp"
Entering the network installation location did not work. This issue is documented in KB Article 297834 which didn't help what so ever, the setup /fvm took forever to run but didn't work.
However, if I logged on as the administrator user outlook would run successfully. So I added the user to the administrators group and I still got the same error message.
Looking in the eventlog I got the generic error 1004, but I did get the message "Detection of product '{90110409-6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9}', feature 'OutlookUserData', component '{8ADD2C9C-C8B7-11D1-9C67-0000F81F1B38}' failed. The resource 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Office\ 11.0\ Outlook\ UserData' does not exist.
Copying the registry entries for the admin user for the Office\11.0 tree didn't work either.
A search on google for 11.0\Outlook\UserData came up with the article kb0106250 on rangersuite. I modified the text file to only include the version 11 entries, ran it and outlook ran through the first time wizard and the user (and I) was very happy.
For completeness sake, the registry entries to fix this problem are in the extended entry.

After receiving a Samsung IP830W to allow international access to exchange, I had a big headache getting the device to sync with the exchange server.
The initial problem was caused by the SSL certificate having expired on the exchange server. Normal browsers can just hit the ok button to continue, but Windows Mobile5 will refuse to sync unless this is fixed.
Rather than purchase a new SSL certificate and wait the couple of weeks for Verisign or Network Solutions to provide me a certificate (this was needed *now*) I did some research and came up with the website SSL Enabling OWA 2003 using a free 3rd party certificate. Following the instructions was very simple and after a few minutes I had the certificate installed on the server. However the Windows Mobile Device would not accept the certificate! More research later the solution seemed to be to copy the cert file to the device and double click it but this still didn't work.
In the end I copied the ca.cer file to my pc and then used the infrared connection to copy it to the device. This got around the previous problem I had with the certificate programs not recognising the previous certificate I had BUT I then got the issue "Security permission was insufficient to update your device".
Whilst I was doing this I was on the phone with Sprint (on hold) for twenty minutes and at this point they answered the phone and were useless. They admitted they hadn't had any training on this, that no certificates were allowed to be installed on the device and to contact Microsoft. I hung up on the guy as he obviously had no clue and downloaded the RegeditSTG file from Bernt Lervik. Using the instructions at Bernt's site I edited the registry to allow the certificate to be installed. I did have to extract the zip file first and copy the exe file across as opposed to the zip file. Note that in order to expand the branches I had to use the center key within the rocker switch as the stylus/enter key wouldn't work.
Start regeditSTG and navigate to the hive key HKLM\Security\Policies\Policies
Change the following three registry keys (hint: hit Values first)
a. 00001001 to 1 (was 2)
b. 00001005 to 40 (was 16)
c. 00001017 to 144 (was 128)
After that I was able to double click the ca.cer file to install it, and then start the activesync process with exchange.

Hope this (convuluted) solution will help any other users and me the next time I have to do this certification dance.

I have a customer who keeps sending me stuff from Scalix mail server, but the attachments come out as winmail.dat Rather than asking them to resend the email, I've discovered winmail opener from eolsoft that allows you to extract data from winmail.dat - it's free too so well worth downloading. In the meantime I've also asked them to look at setting their mail server up so it doesn't do this in the first place!

If you have outlook and try to print an email and the font is incredibly small, then you will need the hotfix from kb932538 referenced in the article on Sandy's page. I would link to the Microsoft site but the knowledge base article is not published which explains why you can't find any details on this problem when you search in technet (sigh).
I'll be requesting this one for my customers on Monday morning as I have at least two desktops that are having this problem. The interim solution is to hit reply or forward and then print the email.
Update I installed this patch on a customer site this morning and it approximately doubles the size of the font so the printout is now just about readable - still nowhere near the size of the printout if I hit forward (or reply) and then hit print. I'm not sure how to go about sending feedback to Microsoft that this doesn't solve the problem.

One of our users lost their mobile phone in the snow and I needed to initiate remote wipe of the device. I downloaded and installed the MobileAdmin pack but whenever I went into the Wipe page I would get a 403 error as below

he remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[WebException: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.]
System.Net.HttpWebRequest.CheckFinalStatus() +680
System.Net.HttpWebRequest.EndGetRequestStream(IAsyncResult asyncResult) +74
System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetRequestStream() +234
Microsoft.Exchange.AirSync.Admin.Mailbox.propFindRequest(String deviceUri) +240
Microsoft.Exchange.AirSync.Admin.Mailbox.getDevices() +194
Microsoft.Exchange.AirSync.Admin.Devices.refreshDevicesTable() +135
Microsoft.Exchange.AirSync.Admin.Devices.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +190
System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +67
System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +750

It is pretty scary when a server component crashes when you press the help button - especially on the first day that a server is live - apparently it's a Conflict of the psapi.dll

I've been doing a lot of work with cell phones and Windows Mobile 5 this month, installing about 6 devices. 1 device was purchased as I was struggling to get the previous phone working with Verizon's wireless sync software and after about 5 hours it was time to purchase a Windows Mobile 5 which would sync directly to exchange. In the process of the switching of devices, there were some duplications of events and things and AntiDupe would have been handy to delete the duplicates. In fact it still might come in useful.
One word of advice - 5000 calendar entries is not a good idea and exchange WILL choke if you try to sync them.

I don't have much exposure to Mac's and was surprised to see that if you use certain versions of entourage (i.e. version X) then you need to enable imap on the exchange server. Microsoft's mac support page on exchange has the prerequisites for various versions of entourage. Interestingly, the new version 2004 needs webdav so I'm guessing it using something like rpc over http for exchange?

A nice vbscript to list mailbox sizes saved me a lot of typing this afternoon - just ensure you run it with cscript to avoid a lot of prompts on your screen ;-)

Sync With Microsoft Exchange 2003 & Corporate Outlook Email Via Remote Email Access on Your Smartphone which doesnt have to be running Windows Mobile 5 (but it does need to be Windows Mobile 2003 - which still leaves my original axim out of the loop.)
It is not free (probably $99) but there is a 30 day trial so that you can check it works first.
It looks like it doesn't support notes either - something the native Exchange Direct Push doesn't do too.

 I'm going to be at the Microsoft Technet - Gear up with Microsoft Windows Vista and Exchange Server at Easton tomorrow morning so if you are reading this and going too then come say "Hello!" I'll be the one with the FriendsInTech button on my shirt and talking with a british accent ;-)

I had a user today who logged a ticket saying that everytime she requested a meeting with someone, the recipient was unable to open the meeting request and add it to their calendar. After trying it on their pc I noticed that it asked if I wanted to add the meeting to the timecard application - this was obviously a custom form and sure enough, it was available in the organizational forms - but how to change it back? I was unable to delete the form from the organization and it took me a while to find the real form location. To solve this, go to the folder view in outlook 2003 and right click on the calendar and choose properties. Change the "When posting to this folder" to read IPM.Appointment and it will all work again.

Now if someone could explain why I had two users complain their pc wouldn't boot today but started ok when I switched them on I'd like to know how to market my magic aura.

Microsoft have released a Windows Mobile 5 emulator that you can run on your pc, normally for developing software for the windows mobile. However, you can also use this to test and debug the setup of Direct Push with Microsoft Exchange 2003 service pack2. This is great to try before you blow up a users phone as you test stuff out. Seeing as though Direct Push has only just started being available on the phones, it is unrealistic to know how to get it working out of the box.

I downloaded Microsoft's Antigen for Exchange last night and installed it on a server to remove some old virus's that were stuck in the mail store (there is no scheduled scan of the mailstore as realtime desktop and smtp scanning is now used for virus protection). Although the product did the job of deleting the mail, the whole admin interface is awful to use and the support on the Microsoft website is non existant - there are NO documents in the technet database on Antigen version 9. With the various quirks in the admin interface and no support, this software really should be released as a beta. I'd only say beta due to the fact that it did remove the virus's otherwise I'd recommend alpha status.
The extended entry contains my 22 points that I would provide as bug reports if it was in beta status.

KB815372 is a good article on optimizing memory usage in exchange server 2003 including when to use the /3gb switch and when not to. I found this article after getting event 9665 on a new (to me) server.

I was getting an error attempting to log into an exchange web mailbox with the message "The Local Security Authority can not be contacted". As it turned out this was actually due to the fact that the previous administrators had set this user up so that they were only allowed to logon from one particular workstation. I (thought I) had already solved this problem by adding the exchange server to the list of computers that the user was allowed to log onto but that didn't work - it was only after I removed the restrictions (which were not necessary now anyway) that they were able to get their mail via the web.

Useful list of Microsoft podcasts which I didn't know they did - there are at least 3 of these that I want to listen to.

How to tweak the IMF filter v2 in exchange is a good article on white or blacklisting phrases in the subject or body of incoming messages.

KB article 830836 gives the details on editing the registry when too many objects of type objtMessage are opened on the exchange server. I've had this a couple of times in the past and I thought I had blogged this post for reference - but I hadn't

Finally succeeded in deleting a delegate from outlook. As per this post where the delegate remained in the permission lists I had another user who had the same disabled person as a delegate and I was unable to remove the deleted person. Seeing as though the kind of people who have delegates are managers (in this case the head of the company) I really didn't want to mess around with deleting the mailbox and recreating it.
However, it turns out that by re-enabling the disabled user, creating a mailbox for this user, logging into outlook as the person with the problem meant I could then delete the delegate for good. Then it was delete the mailbox and the user again.
Update See HelloMate for a script that will list who has delegate access in AD. By using this, I should be able to modify our disable user procedure.

Information Store viewer can be downloaded from Microsoft's website even though most documentation on the newsgroups states it is in the Support\Utils\I386 folder of the exchange server cd - well it isn't in our volume licence cd - that folder doesn't exist.
I'm trying to work out why outlook still tries to send information to a delegate who has been deleted in exchange and why the user can't be deleted from within outlook (every time I delete them they appear on the delegate tab when I next open outlook). Apparently you follow the instructions at KB 253557, making sure you are NOT in cached mode, but I don't see the Schedule+ EMS message that I need to delete. adding another user to a delegate creates the ems message that I need to delete. However, doing all of this doesn't help as the delegates magically come back when I log into outlook. I am now exmerging the data out to a pst file, deleting the mailbox and recreating it again.

By adding the following to the registry

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\event]
@="http://eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=%s"

And then entering "event 1074" into my address bar it will take me straight to the eventid website with that event listed.
I've also had a couple of issues with exchange this week - MAPI client opens more than the default value of certain server objects occured for one user who has more that 500 folders in her inbox - I've increased the default value so that shouldn't happen again.
Also the error Error: The Template Persistent Cache initialization failed for Application Pool" AppPoolName: because of the following error: Could not create a Disk Cache Sub-directory for the Application Pool. The data may have additional error codes: should be fixed by kb article 332097 - a problem that has been occuring for a while with no known fix working (so here's hoping)

Whilst the server was down we also took the time out to prove the fact that if a voicemail message is left on the avaya IP Office system whilst the mail server is unreachable, then the user NEVER gets the voicemail. The voicemail box fails to queue the voicemail for delivery at a later date -something that the tech's didn't acknowledge as a problem. The fact that users could end up not receiving voicemails or have any trace of them yet the caller knows they left it seems a pretty major bug to me. I'm looking forward to bringing *that* up at the wrap up meeting.

It was a long day in the office today with an upgrade of a windows 2000 server running exchange2000 to a windows2003 running exchange2003. We also upgraded a w2k server running sqlserver to w2k3 too. The sql server was the easiest upgrade with no hitches whatsoever - shame we couldn't say the same thing about the exchange server.

11 outlook web access tips for 2003 which are also useful in outlook itself. I did wonder what the difference between premium and basic version was and now I know. My bonus tip is that unless you have owner access to a users mailbox you only get read access to someone elses calendar in outlook web access, even if you have edit or author access within outlook. I spent ages trying to work this out for a remote customer (who I couldn't talk through things over the phone as they only had 1 phone line which she used for dialup! I finally managed to get hold of someone in the office, make sure that a pc in the office wasn't in use and then take control of the pc to test the outlook vs outlook web access functionality.

Ben talks about the confusion that is going on about exchange2003sp2 and the best ways to install the upgrade and have imf working at the same time. subsequently.

1. If a computer freezes every 20 minutes, is it safe to upgrade the bios (which might solve the problem)? A tricky question and in my case, the answer is no. The computer crashed during the bios update and consequently was Columbus' biggest doorstop. Fortunately I had made sure the machine was under warranty before I began but still had to endure a 45 minute phone call with Dell as they troubleshooted the call. The last 2 minutes went something like this
Dell: Sounds like you need a new motherboard.
Me: Yep
Dell: Sounds like you knew I was going to say that.
Me: Yep!
The engineer will be on site tomorrow to swap out the part although they asked if I wanted to do it. Very cheeky on their part seeing as though the company is paying for the warranty and the coverage - why do their job for them? That and the engineer can sit and wait whilst the lengthy diagnostics runs and I won't.

2. If you use Lotus Notes as your mail client and synchronise your databases to the server, it doesn't synchronise your address book (which doesn't need a replica on the server either to confuse matters). Instead you go to Actions/Synchronise Address Book. Why you have to do this I don't know *cough* you don't have to do that in outlook you know - its all included in the synchronisation/offline capabilities *cough*. I've also not worked out how to get that command onto a toolbar so I have one click access rather than going to the menu to do it (or even better to automatically do it). I've also yet to work out what they synchronise journal does as I dont see an option for a journal in my notes client - this notes client lark is a steep learning curve.

3. If users complain they can't see unread email in outlook, make sure that the messages view does NOT have the "Use Group" menu item selected otherwise it is possible to hide last weeks mail, including unread emails, in this one line within the view (and its too complicated for the users to go to the unread emails view)

OABInteg and Troubleshooting may be useful tomorrow. Two weeks ago a user didn't appear in a outlook address book on one machine but did on another machine and on the server. Hopefully these pages may help troubleshoot if I still have the problem tomorrow. (I'm hoping it will have solved itself over the past 2 weeks)

For my reference - troubleshooting and DR readiness Thanks to You Had Me At EHLO

Build numbers and release dates for Exchange Server came in handy today although why they can't put the service pack details on the tab when you right click on a server and do properties I don't know.

It was a tough job getting up early yesterday morning for the first day at work. What was also weird was that I was out of the house just as everyone else was getting up - apparently I looked like a school kid on the first day of school as I left the house with a backpack on my back (You'll be glad to know that I wasn't wearing grey shorts though).
The funny thing when you start a new job is that the first thing you do is fill in the forms so you can have your wage packet reduced due to all the various types of taxes that will get deducted, so a nice encouraging start there!
After a run through of the company manual it was time to go see some clients. We only got to see two clients and I spent most of the time there filling out the server checklists which is a good way of getting used to all the customer sites.
Although it wasn't a stressful or difficult day I was really tired at the end of it and enjoyed the meal that Kristen and I had at the Old Bag of Nails pub. This is famous for its fish and chips so I was looking forward to a traditional english meal. The menu is full of jokes and funny sayings and worth reading in full before you order and we both ordered the fish and chips. It would have been nice to have had photos of the meal in the menu as we'd have realised to only order one portion between us as it came with loads of chips and two fish portions the size of a normal english portion! Although the fish and chips were nice, we did feel that the fish was rather dry inside the batter and although it was a good meal I don't think it lived up to its hyped reputation (although it was MUCH better than the harry ramsden's fish and chips I had from a mall in Wales one time)
Today we're off to about 3 more customer sites. No techie hints and tips (sorry Danny :-) yet but I do have a couple of puzzlers that I need to research. Out of Office setups on two sites are causing problems - one client has an individual who's ooo just doesn't work and another site where the mailbox cleanup agent removes all the ooo data when it runs. According to Microsoft this shouldn't happen but it does!

In another DR situation coming up shortly, we are going to restore a w2k3 server with exchange2k3 on it. I've done it (for real) on exchange2000 and it wasn't a pleasant experience but hopefully e2k3 has improved the methods used to do a recovery. Checking in technet I found a good page which has multimedia presentations on how to do various exchange2003 recovery procedures. Hopefully I can find this content on my technet cd's so I don't have to download it off the internet but again, useful training to do before the event.

We've been having various problems with outlook2k3 when the clients have been synchronising with the server. The error message that they are getting either contains 0x80040115 or 0x8004011D. This only happens when the offline address book is being downloaded. Unfortunately, the address book that they are trying to download is from a server that no longer exists and in the "home domain" of the client desktop machine. What they should really be downloading is the addressbook that is stored on the new exchange server. I spent a couple of hours searching on google and following lots of dead ends before starting to investigate further into the realms of registry, user profiles and permissions.......See more for the fix.

I knew about the /GB switch with exchange as there was more than 1GB line on the machine but I didn't know about the The /USERVA Switch
switch. I do now though!
What I'd like to know is that if you MUST put this in the boot.ini why doesn't the installation program do it for you? I wouldn't have thought it would be difficult to check the OS and the memory capacity and edit a boot.ini or at least warn you in a popup that you need to do it.

Whenever anyone sends you the latest round of funny pictures or pictures of their new baby and you use outlook, it is a pain to save the files to a location and then open them up into your viewing program. Using the tools at the Office Developer Center: Viewing Multiple Picture Attachments in Outlook 2003, it should be a lot easier to do this. I've not tried this yet but will do pretty soon.

Not sure how much there is to say about using offline address books (apart from the obvious fact that you need one) in Outlook but the Exchange Team have released Best Practices for Using Offline Address Books - this will be useful reading I'm sure as I've had problems with them recently and I guess if they've written a guide about it, then there must be more to it.

I've been changing some more user profiles in outlook this week as we've moved users across to a new server. On almost every machine I've had to blow away the user profile in outlook and recreate a new one.
The latest error message I got was on a client machine connecting to the lan via a VPN connection and getting a message "The Microsoft Exchange Server computer is not available. Either there are network problems or the Microsoft Exchange Server computer is down for maintenance." The weird thing is that I could telnet to the server, ping it, resolve names - just not open the mailbox on the server. After checking various things such as firewall configs,rpc ports I created a new profile - and it worked. Deleted the old one, tried to recreate it as best as I could and now the user is happy.

When the Active Directory Connector deletes your administrator accounts from your exchange 5.5 server (AND user accounts, recipients,mailboxes etc etc etc.) you may find that on reboot the server will not be able to start the Internet Mail Service and complains that the admin account is not valid. Not only do you have to change the username and password in the services on the server you also have to check that the IMC jas a valid administrator account as per the VERY helpful notes on eventid.net. As you might be able to tell we're not having a very good weekend.

If you install exchange 2003 on a windows2003 server, under the protocols tab of the server is IMAP4 (among others). This will have a little red x next to it, but right clicking on it gives you the option to start it. Pressing start means the mmc console will pause for about 1 minute and you then get "the service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details".
Checking the event viewer shows NO entries in the event log!
However, running services.msc and changing the Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 service from disabled to automatic and then starting it in the Exchange console results in a working IMAP4

I'm trying to test the migration of users from our exchange2k server to exchange2k3 on a completely different domain which involves exporting the mailboxes, deleting the mailbox, creating a new mailbox and then setting it to forward mail as an external smtp recipient (on the other mail server on another site).
However any changes I make to AD are taking forever to appear in Outlook2000. The old username (with old address's) still appear in the address book and the new user doesn't appear for at least 1-2 hours after running the recipient update service)
However, if I use the OWA interface the user appears a lot quicker (about 5 minutes after running the recipient update service).
As I have a lot of users I don't really fancy waiting around for AD or something to realise the email details have changed.
Any ideas?
Update I think this is something to do with cached/non-cached mode. If I create a new profile in non cached mode the new user appears when I type in _arghhh and press ctrl-K in the TO field. However it doesn't appear if I do the same thing in the cached mode (and yes I have downloaded the address book (several times))
update2 I was close on the last update. I need to update the offline address lists by right clicking and choosing rebuild. Then a download in outlook of the address book and I can see the changes. Still no idea why it takes so long. I'll remove _argh now and see how long it takes before this disappears from the address books.

From Outlook Tips comes an offer from rsoutlook.com - For a limited time only (until Sept 30, 2004), Remind Me Attachments, an addin that reminds you to add attachments to your messages, is available free of charge.
Enter promo code OUTMVPS001 to get it.

I installed Lookout which Microsoft have recently purchased and it is VERY impressive. It didn't take too long to index my hard disk and email folders and the search results come back very quickly. If you've not downloaded it yet then what are you waiting for? Incidentally they have a rather funny quote on the download page as to what lookout can search......

A useful chart on how to determine what version of exchange or outlook you have installed.

After a tipoff from KC Lemson after I emailed my likes and dislikes to their exchange team (as she requested), I've installed the latest hotfix rollup for Exchange which includes a fix to the problem where Mail to a Public Folder Is Set as IPM.Post Instead of IPM.Note. We subscribe to mailing lists and use public folders as incoming "mailboxes" (like a distribution list but only one destination to prevent more than one person trying to action an incoming email. Instead they move the email into an actioned folder once they have actioned the email. Anyway - once the hotfix has been applied you need to edit the registry as per KB 817809 and bounce the information store. As we're having a power cut at 12.30 today, the bounce will occur then and I'll be able to test these changes.

I'm thinking of turning off the preview pane in Outlook 2000 as a group policy to stop people using it and infecting themselves with a lot of the latest patches (as we don't service pack office). I think it would annoy quite a few users though.

Exchange FAQs will be an interesting source of help for exchange.

As part of the move to the Azur Group I need to add email address's of the other users to our mail server. Apparently Microsoft have a utility, csvde, which allows you to Import Contacts and User Objects into Active Directory as documented by this knowledge base article. However there are several changes you need to make to the source file, extracted from Exchange 5.5 and the mappings that need changing are described in KB 281563. The daft thing is that the first page tells you that you need to change various field names, giving examples and to see the second page for more information. But the second page doesn't mention the examples that they use. So in the end I recreated the contacts by hand.

obj-class

A very Useful link on understandin pop3 or imap login strings has been posted which will help. I can work my way around pop3 and smtp but knew nothing about imap. I've spent the best part of two days struggling to get our Exchange server back on the internet and working again and I'll document more about this on Monday. Basically we ended up with not being able to email other Azur or K3 sites but could email everyone else....then I went in and cleaned up Active Directory and couldn't email anything out unless I kept stopping and starting the smtp server. In the end I deleted and recreated our smtp routing connector and everything worked - just when we were starting to discuss reinstalling exchange 2000 - NOT a nice thing to contemplate at lunchtime on Friday afternoon.

From a technical mailing list I received today, apparently if your PST file goes over 2GB then it will get corrupted. However, Microsoft offers a tool that truncates oversized PST and OST files so you can recover at least some of the information in the folder. Commonly referred to as the "Crop Tool," this file is now available from the Microsoft's Exchange 2000 Tool: PST2GB Web page. Although this won't ensure full recovery of all the data, it may help to recover *some* data.

The MS Exchange Blog has a useful tip on The Exchange 2000 MAILQ Utility which I duly implemented this afternoon. It took me a while to realise why I was getting hundreds of popup messages on the server for almost every line of code. This was because I hadn't read the instructions and had double clicked on go.wsf instead of dropping to a dos prompt and running cscript go.wsf
The end result looks good though - now I need to work out how to add this into a dashboard type shell thing I can have on my pc. There are so many small website bits and pieces scattered everywhere that really need putting into a status web page.
The other annoying thing is that you need to use IE to view the resulting output page :-(

Outlook Shutdown Addin from daveswebsite.com may be useful for getting rid of outlook as it often stays around. Personally though I'd try and work out why it stays in memory.

Will asked me about this Administrator Information About the Outlook E-mail Security Update article on Microsoft's Knowledge base. I'd never heard of this functionality within outlook - I've seen the effects of installing sp1 on office, which gives a similar dialog box, but not heard about it being centrally controlled. One for the memory I think!

I solved my Calendar issues with Outlook 2k3 this morning. Not sure exactly what the solution was, but by logging onto a downlevel client (98 with office 2000) and then logging into my mailbox as me AND changing permissions for one user from reviewer to author (which I needed to do anyway) I then found that everyone else can now view the calendar....and its only taken 15 days to crack it. Now the annoying thing is that I don't know what caused it or which of the two things fixed it.

Someone blogged about Alain Lissoir who seems to be is a scripting guru.He has a couple of interesting articles, with scripts, for managing Exchange Server 2000 (of interest to me) and also quite a few for w2k3 and exchangew2k3

Apparently since I upgraded my desktop pc to outlook 2k3, most of the users in the office have been unable to view my calendar, but get a message "unable to display the folder" and a grey screen. They used to be able to open it, and can access everyone elses calendar. The weird thing is that one person can open it, but they are using service release 1 of office 2000 - everyone else is not service packed (because of the annoying "do you really want to send this message" when automatic macros kick in). In the meantime, I'm enjoying the privacy which leads me to wonder if outlook didn't have the private button functionality would it break privacy laws where employee's can expect privacy? It would be interesting to see if outlook 97 is still able to read private events in the calendar (which it used to be able to do)

I got the Microsoft Exchange Server reported error (0x80040600) : 'Unknown Error 0x80040600'. again today. Sure enough, deleting the messages in deleted items cleared the problem. When I then did a F9 synch 18 messages suddenly appeared in deleted items. Cleared those too.

Thanks to MS Exchange Blog : Holiday Reading... I've seen an application, ChooseFrom that sits on exchange that looks at the "send replies to" field at emails and sets that address as the FROM address in emails, thus allowing exchange users to send mails from other email address's. Useful for sending posts to mailing lists when you've subscribed the list to a public folder. Unfortunately I doubt our company will fork up the $150 to use it on our mail server :-(
He also explains why outlook web access asks you to insert the office 2000 cd (like you are going to have THAT handy) - apparently it's documented in technet articles 257886 and 298110
Oh, and there sounds like an almost ideal job vacancy too.

I put Outlook2k3 on my work desktop machine the other day whilst the laptop is in for repair. So far I'm not as impressed with it as I am on the laptop. The laptop runs at a screen resolution of 1600*something and the desktop runs at 1024* (because its not clear or big enough to run at a better resolution. As I run a dual monitor on this machine, the second monitor is slightly further away on the desk so needs to be at a higher resolution so I can see it clearly.) Unfortunately this means that there isn't really enough room for the tri-pane view in outlook with the reading pane on the right hand side instead of underneath. Also the middle column gets squished up so not as much useful information gets displayed. Functionality is exactly the same on the machines, just usability is not as good at a lower resolution.....I dread to think what it would be like on the users who insist on running at 800*600!

A very useful list of Outlook keyboard shortcuts from KC Lemson which would have helped me with my mouse problem on the laptop (if I had known them earlier!)

Some quick links as I don't have to to blog them all individually. Real Underground map (funny), Microsoft's free/busy service, Interesting Exchange articles, Freeware list

Microsoft have posted an update to the spam filter in Outlook2003. Hopefully this means they will continue to do so unlike the outlook 2000 one that was never updated! Yes I know its late but I've only just got web access.

Yes I guess some people are using msmail with outlook 20003 as its a cheap alternative to exchange if you had msmail years ago. Unfortunately its not available with 2002 or 2003 but Outlook Tips have ways of getting Outlook working with MSMail. Incidentally outlook tips have an rss feed at http://www.outlook-tips.net/rss/tips.rdf

A nice list of Outlook tutorials which might be handy for educating our users on how to use outlook properly!

Brought the Outlook2k3 laptop into the office to synch all the changes I'd made whilst out of the office this week. Interesting to see that Outlook 2k3 doesn't show the email marked as spam (as I deleted it whilst offline). However the outlook2k desktop, which looks at the same exchange mailbox still sees the spam in the inbox. o2k3 shows 2 unread emails in the inbox, o2k shows 4. Now either this is because you can't have two versions accessing the same mailbox (don't see why not) or due to the fact that when I synch I get a "Microsoft Exchange Server reported error (0x80040600) : 'Unknown Error 0x80040600'. There are loads of articles in google about 0x80040600 most of which talked about corrupted pst files. I cleared out my deleted items, resynched and everything worked and my inbox unread messages match.

Microsoft's technet website is getting worse and worse. I searched on the technet site for 0x00000050 and it came back with no results found. Search all of Microsoft and it comes back with 4 results plus links to more results (4 of them). NONE of these results brings back article A "Stop 0x00000050" Error Message Occurs During an Upgrade from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000. Surely the Indexing service should find results. They can't disable number searches as most of MS errors will have a number to query against (otherwise whats the point in putting in on the screen in the first place?) If you use the google interface and search for 0x00000050 it returns 1790 results with the first 3 being different microsoft articles all with 0x00000050 in the subject.

If you remove IIS from an exchange server then you are really going to be in trouble and you will need a reinstall of ii2 and then exchange. A Technet article, 323672, explains what happens when the Exchange Routing Engine Service Does Not Start Automatically or Manually After You Remove IIS and Then Reinstall It which normally happens after you get a Event id 7000 When Attempting to Start Exchange Services (and no it wasn't me who did this but I did have to recover from it)

Apparently you can't backup exchange 2003 and the system state on the same backup set. This is a change to how e2k worked and seems a bit weird although there is a technet article explaining that the 820852 - Backup of the Exchange Server 2003 Information Store and the Windows Server 2003 System State Data Does Not Complete Successfully and Event ID 8019 Is Logged. I guess you could set two jobs to run with the second job appending to the end of the tape. My nly concern is that if its not done as part of the normal backup then its unlikely to get done at all - just how many people update their rdisks - and I mean the floppy version - of their NT4 servers.

Did you know that if you shift-delete an item in outlook, although it doesn't appear in the deleted items folder, it is still recoverable using the recovery feature, normally only seen on the deleted items folder. The guy who wrote this facility has the relevant writeup on how to enable deleted item recovery on other folders.

Had a weird problem on a home users pc today where they couldn't access their outlook web access. It just keeps asking for the username and password on this XP (home) machine. If we access the same url with the same username/password combo on it on any other machine then we get in ok. We can also get into other outlook web mailboxes on this affected pc. Unfortunately the mailbox we are trying to get into is the owner of the laptop! Update The problem was solved by changing the password for the user (and yes I was using the correct password as the same username/password combo worked from other machines)

Theres a 32MB Exchange 2000 Post-Service Pack 3 (SP3) Rollup Patch available since the 27th August. I guess I'll be installing that on Monday - there is NO WAY i'll be installing that remotely over a vpn connection!

Clara are now testing email address's provided as the "from" field in emails sent via their servers. If they are unable to check this email address is valid by sending a bounce message then the outgoing email will be rejected as per their email to the announce list. They should really have announced they were going to do this *before* they implemented it, and I don't really see how this is going to stop spam emails as most email address's used ARE valid - they are just not valid for the spammer!

I think I have found out why our mail server is playing silly wotsits!
UpdateThis also explains why we've not had many virus alerts coming through - looking at the NAV logs, I don't think it has quietened down at all.

Been having some weird problems with our webmail access to our mail server today.