A Dozen Things Outlook Doesn’t Do—but Should (Aug 5)
Opinion: David Coursey shares his wishlist of features he’d like to see in the next release of Microsoft Outlook.
You’d think that by now Microsoft Outlook would be a pretty complete product. And it generally is, except that it doesn’t do a number of things that it really ought to. Like these dozen features that are on my list for the next release of Bill’s Chosen E-Mail Client. I wonder how my list matches up against yours:
1. Address correction and validation: The United States Postal Service likes to see addresses presented in certain ways, with specific abbreviations and nine-digit ZIP codes. Why doesn’t Outlook automatically validate the addresses in my contact list, fix nonstandard abbreviations, and add ZIP codes and the extra four digits as needed?
View full article: A Dozen Things Outlook Doesn’t Do—but Should
Exchange Server 2003 Message Security Guide (Aug 3)
This book discusses how, when using S/MIME, encryption protects the contents of e-mail messages and digital signatures verify the identity of a purported sender of an e-mail message. In addition, this book provides guidance on how to implement S/MIME with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. In addition, this book provides guidance and pointers to other resources where those are necessary.
Download: Exchange Server 2003 Message Security Guide
Microsoft Attacks Spam in Courts (Aug 3)
In its campaign to hit spammers where they feel it — in their pocketbooks — Microsoft has filed 60 lawsuits over the past two years, using state and federal statutes against bulk e-mailers operating from distant points around the country.
So investigators were surprised last year when the path of one case involving spam linked to a pornographic British site led back to private mailboxes in Kirkland, practically under the shadow of Microsoft’s Redmond campus.
Those mailboxes, Microsoft investigators say, belonged to a number of interlinked companies that the porn site was registered to. Jason Cazes of Kirkland was the director or part owner of many of the companies.
View full article: Microsoft Attacks Spam in Courts
Microsoft to Launch Indonesian Version of Microsoft Office (Aug 3)
Microsoft Indonesia will launch the Indonesian version of Microsoft Office, which includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook, late this year, its president director, Tony Chen, said here Tuesday.
“We will promote (the new program) to the public late this year,” he said.
The new application was made following studies on the need for Microsoft Office in Bahasa Indonesia, he said, adding that the application is Microsoft Indonesia`s initiative to empower the use of Indonesian software.
View: Microsoft to Launch Indonesian Version of Microsoft Office
MS Office Interconnect Beta Manages Contacts, Digital Business Cards (July 30)
As Microsoft looks at offering tailored, market-specific Office System products, this fall it will release in Japan a new product called Microsoft Office Interconnect, currently under beta testing, that is essentially a contact manager.
The product allows users to have a unique, electronic business card that can be mailed around, secured with digital signatures and allowed to travel among the user’s contacts, colleagues and connections.
When the user’s personal data changes, the new information can be electronically updated in a secure, peer-to-peer type of system, Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft’s senior vice president for Office, told analysts and the media here Thursday.
View full article: MS Office Interconnect Beta Manages Contacts, Digital Business Cards
Clearing the Forms Cache Script (July 29)
Outlook 2003 has some issues with custom forms. Although most issues with forms have been fixed in Office 2003 Service Pack 1 occasionally you still get confronted with “Outlook cannot open this form …” messages. You’re only solution; clear the forms cache and try again!
Clearing the forms cache is quite a longwinded process. This might be OK if it just happens every now and then but when you are for instance developing a lot of forms this can be quite time consuming. If you need to clear the cache quite often you might be better of using the script posted in the article below.
Download: Clearing the Forms Cache Script
Office 2003 Resource Kit SP1 ADM updates (July 29)
Updates to the Office 2003 Resource Kit for SP1 include all the ADM template files. Corrections to a few registry entries, deletion of policies no longer used by Office 2003, and the addition of new policies to allow for better control of an Office deployment on Active Directory enabled networks, are provided in this update.
Download: Office 2003 SP1 ADM updates
Exchange Guides (July 29)
Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide
This book guides you through the process of hardening your Exchange 2003 environment, including configuration recommendations and strategies for combating external threats.
Exchange Server 2003 Glossary
The Exchange Server 2003 Glossary contains important terms and definitions for the Exchange Server 2003 product. This is a working document that will be updated and enhanced ongoing.
Exchange 2003 Transport and Routing Guide
This guide explains how transport and routing works in Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003, and how you can configure Exchange to enable internal and external mail flow.
New PowerToys for OneNote 2003 SP1 (July 28)
Better sooner than later – the first PowerToys are already here and available for download. Bear in mind that “PowerToy = hobby project”, so these are not necessarily the same robustly designed and high quality things you should expect in the main product, but that said, many of us use them all the time at work and they have been worked over plenty by our internal user group, so they’re good to go.
You can check out the PowerToys page (may not be up just yet if you’re reading this post July 27-28):
http://www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/powertoys
Or go directly to these download pages to get the first two PowerToys:
IE to OneNote. This PowerToy adds a button to IE that lets you send any page or a selection on a page to OneNote. You get the same results as a copy/paste would give you, but you can do it all in one click. It also nicely puts the clippings in a single section so you can browse and clip, browse and clip. Then review your research later, complete with links back to the source pages. Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=a9872a17-2d0c-47f0-9b4d-026e94a8ef1c&displaylang=en
Outlook to OneNote. This PowerToy adds a button to Outlook so that you can send any email message (or group of email messages if you multi-select) to OneNote to keep them together with notes and other docs. Very handy if you like to have a “project folder” section in OneNote that keeps all your stuff together in an easy to flip through and modify/reuse format.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=87c661e3-178d-46f0-979e-0fdd96327928&displaylang=en
View: New PowerToys for OneNote 2003 SP1
You Software Enters PC Productivity Market With Funding and Strategic Acquisition (July 28)
Sperry Software has been sold to You Software!
You Software Inc., the award-winning publisher of personal and network value-add productivity software, today announced it has secured more than $2 million in Series A financing with investments from SmartForest Ventures, Second Avenue Partners and Cedar Grove Investments. The financing will be used to launch the company’s initial value-add software products for Microsoft Office and Outlook users and to expand its development team. The company also announced the acquisition of Sperry Software Inc., the best-selling provider of productivity utilities for Microsoft Outlook. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“We believe there are tremendous opportunities for You Software to deliver high-quality value-add products for the hundreds of millions of people who use Microsoft Outlook,” said Debi Coleman, SmartForest Ventures partner and former CIO, CFO and vice president of Worldwide Operations for Apple Computer Inc. “The You Software team has a proven history of making productivity software easier for customers to use.”
Sperry Software, founded by Mike Sperry in 1998, is a Microsoft Certified Partner and provider of the best-selling add-on productivity tools for Microsoft Outlook. Sperry Software, with a customer base of more than 12,000 users, has been recognized as the best single source of Outlook add-ons by leading industry press. The technology and products contributed by Sperry Software will help accelerate You Software’s penetration into the huge market for value-add software for Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office. You Software intends to improve the customer value of Sperry Software products by making the software more affordable while adding appealing features that improve usability and facilitate customization.
View full Press Release: You Software Enters PC Productivity Market With Funding and Strategic Acquisition
View: Sperry Software Add-Ins
Access 2003 Conversion Toolkit (July 28)
Access 2003 developers, administrators, and users now have a new toolkit to aid them in analyzing Access 97 databases for upgrade and conversion to Access 2003. Use the tools in the Access 2003 Conversion Toolkit to find and analyze your databases in preparation for switching to the latest version of Access.
Note: This toolkit does not covert your databases. It only helps you with scoping and identifying known issues that have an impact on the conversion process.
Download: Access 2003 Conversion Toolkit
Microsoft Delivers Continued Improvement With Office 2003 Service Pack 1 (July 28)
Microsoft Corp. customers today started downloading the Microsoft® Office 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) which, as a result of their feedback, delivers continued improvements in reliability and performance for the Microsoft Office System as well as new feature enhancements for Microsoft Office OneNote® 2003 and Microsoft Office InfoPath (TM) 2003. With Office 2003 SP1, customers can develop InfoPath-based solutions more easily; create, organize and share notes more effectively in OneNote; and be even more confident in deploying the most reliable and secure version of Microsoft Office ever released.
“Microsoft really listens to its customers,” said Teresa Grote, chief information officer at Dinsmore & Shohl LLP, a law firm in Cincinnati. “We’ve worked closely with Microsoft to suggest improvements to the security and rich media features in OneNote. We’re thrilled to see that those features are included in the SP1 release, and we expect them to continue increasing our staff’s productivity and improving their overall work product.”
View full Press Release: Microsoft Delivers Continued Improvement With Office 2003 Service Pack 1
New Features in Outlook 2003 SP1 (July 27)
Aside from fixing stuff Office 2003 SP1 also brings extra features to Outlook 2003
Junk E-mail Filter: International. You can now block Top Level Domains and messages with specific encoding
Junk E-mail Filter: Safe Senders. Automatically add people you reply to to the Safe Senders List
Calendar logging. For more info see http://support.microsoft.com/?id=841064
Dropped: Microsoft Internet Free/Busy options; The service was dropped already but the options were still available.
Create an Office 2003 CD slipstreamed with Service Pack 1 (July 27)
I updated the guide to cover Office 2003 SP1
View: Create an Office 2003 CD slipstreamed with Service Pack 1
Office 2003 SP1 (July 27)
Download: Office 2003 SP1 + InfoPath 2003 SP1
Download: OneNote 2003 SP1
Download: Visio 2003 SP1
Download: Project 2003 SP1
Download: Project Server 2003 Service Pack 1
Download: Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Service Pack 1
Download: Update for Outlook 2003- Junk E-mail Filter (KB870765)
Download: Office 2003 Add-in- Office Web Components
Download: InfoPath 2003 Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET
Download: Office Update Inventory Tool Version 2.1
Or use OfficeUpdate!
Not all KB support articles are live yet so you need to read the release notes even more carefully!
