HowTo-Outlook

Archive 54

MAPILab team is glad to present a new add-in for Microsoft Outlook – Actual Contacts.

Get the powerful tool for your address book management! Actual Contacts is intended for:

updating your contacts;
collecting any additional contact’s information (age, occupation, hobby, etc);
creating simple surveys for getting necessary information;
updating your contact information in address books of your respondents through VCard.

View: Actual Contacts for Outlook (also holds a link to a 30 day functional trial)
Don’t forget! If you decide to order use “4PM76A8” to get a discount

Are you an e-mail fanatic and need to be able to create new Outlook items without loosing precious time by going to Outlook first? Then QuickMail is the tool for you.

With QuickMail you can create new Outlook items from anywhere in Windows with a single click!

See the products page for screenshots and the download link.

Configuration, rule and help updates for the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer 2.0.

Download: Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool

Use the Microsoft Exchange Server User Monitor to gather real-time data to better understand current client usage patterns, and to plan for future work. Administrators can view several items, including IP addresses used by clients, versions and modes of Microsoft Office Outlook, and resources such as CPU usage, server-side processor latency, and total latency for network and processing with Outlook 2003 version MAPI.

Download: Microsoft Exchange Server User Monitor

The next version of Microsoft’s Exchange Server–software used to manage e-mail, contact lists and calendars–will arrive in 2006, according to a company executive.

Andy Lees, corporate vice president of marketing for Microsoft’s server and tools business, revealed the ship date Tuesday. Previously, the Redmond, Wash.-based software company had said the software would arrive in 2006 or 2007. The software, currently called Exchange Server 12, will incorporate new features to handle voice mail and faxes.

Exchange Server 12 will support both the 64-bit extensions and the dual-core technology, according to Lees’ presentation.

Other server software coming in 2006 and supporting the new processor features will be Commerce Server 2006, Host Integration Server 2006, BizTalk Server 2006 and a new of version 2 of Virtual Server. Microsoft Operations Manager also will support the new processor features in 2006.

Read full article: New Microsoft Exchange due out in 2006

This optional update provides the Junk E-mail Filter in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with a more current definition of which e-mail messages should be considered junk e-mail. This update was released in March 2005.

Download: Update for Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB892236)

This guide is designed to provide you with essential information about how to harden your Exchange Server 2003 environment. In addition to practical, hands-on configuration recommendations, this guide includes strategies for combating spam, viruses, and other external threats to your Exchange 2003 messaging system. Important: Since the previous version of this guide was released, the following new topics have been added and are available only online:
• Running Exchange Server 2003 Clusters in a Security-Hardened Environment
• How to Run Exchange Server 2003 Clusters in a Security-Hardened Environment

Download: Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide

Microsoft Corp. today released initial results gathered from its implementation of the Sender ID Framework (SIDF), an e-mail authentication technology protocol that helps address the problem of domain spoofing (a tactic commonly used in spam and phishing scams) by verifying the domain name from which e-mail is sent.

Based on more than two months of deployment on the MSN® Hotmail® Web-based e-mail service and data gathered from hundreds of thousands of customers participating in the Hotmail Feedback Loop program, Microsoft has validated that the use of SIDF to check incoming e-mail enhances spam filtering and helps better protect customers’ inboxes from spam while helping ensure that legitimate e-mail gets through.

View full article: Sender ID Framework Demonstrates Positive Results for E-Mail Authentication
View: Send ID homepage
Download: Sender ID Overview
Download: Sender ID- Tips for Creating Your SPF Record

Microsoft ActiveSync 3.8 is the latest synchronization software for Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones. ActiveSync 3.8 contains a set of security enhancements that provide a more secure syncing experience with a Windows PC

Download your localized version: ActiveSync 3.8

Question #1: Lots of people asked about the 32k rules limitation: “As someone else mentioned how about improvements to server side rules (32k limit)”, “Since I ask this every time I talk to Microsoft developers :), any news on when will the 32k server side rule limitation be resolved”.

Answer #1: I’m happy that I get to be the one to tell you that the 32k rules limit is gone… It’s now 64k! Just kidding!! We are still determining what the default will be (there’s a tradeoff in performance of course, the more processing you ask the server to do on inbound mail, so we want to choose a smart default), but the administrator will be able to change the limit.

Question #2: I’d like to see a unified messaging function in E12 (facsimile, voice,…).

Answer #2: UM is absolutely an area we are investing in, as you can see from some of the articles about it, such as this one from eWeek. If you call me at Microsoft today and leave me a voicemail, it gets routed to my inbox using only Microsoft technology.

View full article: And here are some Exchange 12 answers!

Microsoft’s long silence on Exchange is over. In January, Microsoft publicly laid out plans for the next release of Exchange. Microsoft is calling the next version “Exchange 12” or “E12.” The code-names emphasize the close ties to the next version of Office, code-named “Office 12.”

For years the company has been toying with the idea of taking the data store from SQL Server and porting it to Exchange, replacing the JET storage engine that the messaging server currently uses. The effort was code-named “Kodiak,” a vaguely defined future version of Exchange that would use the new data store. The design goal reflected a wider, long-standing effort within Microsoft to standardize the data store across major products. Microsoft had ambitious plans to use the SQL Server storage engine in the next version of Windows, code-named “Longhorn,” and Exchange. Cracks in that plan emerged in June, when Microsoft said Kodiak was off the table. A few months later, unified storage, known as WinFS, was pulled from Longhorn, too.

The JET storage engine will power Exchange 12 just as it did Exchange 2000 and Exchange Server 2003. A Microsoft spokesperson downplayed the technological role in JET’s survival. “The decision to ship the next version of Exchange with JET was based on many factors, but the primary reason was customers. Staying with JET will mean customers will not be faced with the migration work associated with moving to a new store.”

View full article: Exchange 12 To Ride a Faster JET

I thought it was one of the most excessive options in previous versions of Outlook and I was happy to see it got a huge functional and cosmetic overhaul in Outlook 2003. Strangely enough it is now one of the most criticised options as well; the New Mail Desktop Alert.

Fortunately the criticism is mainly based on only 2 things;

“It only works on the Inbox folder”
“It cannot be configured to stay longer than 30 seconds; I WANT IT TO STAY PERMANENT!”

Yes, I said “fortunately” as both issues can be solved. The article comes with a free tool to easily calculate for you how long the New Mail Desktop Alert will stay.

View: Creating a Permanent New Mail Desktop Alert in Outlook 2003
Download: OutlookTools

The Add-Ins section has been updated with some new MAPILab add-ins. While most add-ins are for Outlook some add-ins will enhance Exchange Server functionality.

As a visitor of www.howto-outlook.com you can get all add-ins from MAPILab with a discount by using “4PM76A8” as the coupon code.

For more add-ins see the Add-Ins section. Expect some new add-ins listings soon!

This download contains the latest ExBPA.Config.xml and ExBPA.chm files. Use this package to update your existing installation of the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer. NOTE: If Internet connectivity is available, the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer will attempt to automatically update itself from the Internet. Where updates are being applied automatically, there is no need to download the Web Update Pack.

Download: Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool

Welcome to the Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server online documentation archive. This documentation is designed to assist you in day-to-day administration of Exchange 2000 Server.

Each section contains a How To… book and a Concepts book. The How To… book consists of procedural information to help you accomplish individual tasks. The Concepts book provides the background information necessary to understand what each component does and why you want to perform specific tasks.

Download: Exchange 2000 Server Online Help File Archive

Archive 53

A security issue has been identified that could allow an attacker to run programs and access data on a computer running Microsoft® Exchange Server 2000. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. To be protected against this problem, it is necessary to install this update on Microsoft Exchange 2000 servers.

Download: Security Update for Exchange 2000 (KB890066)

This optional update provides the Junk E-mail Filter in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with a more current definition of which e-mail messages should be considered junk e-mail. This update was released in February 2005.

Download: Update for Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB891067)

This update resolves problems that were found in Exchange 2003 since Exchange 2003 SP1 was released. Click the More Information About This Download link in the Related Resources section for a list of the fixes that are included in this update.

Download: Update for Exchange 2003 (KB 883652)

This update to the Intelligent Message Filter SmartScreen™ filter contains updated spam characteristics that improve the ability of Intelligent Message Filter to block unsolicited commercial e-mail messages, also known as spam. You must have Intelligent Message Filter installed to install this update.

Download: Filter Update for Exchange Intelligent Message Filter

To start with; I’m a big fan of the MSN Outlook Connector. Aside from allowing you to connect to your mail folders it also allows you to connect to your Calendar and Contacts folder on Hotmail. The best feature I think is that it allows you to drag & drop messages from your local folders (pst-file) or Exchange mailbox to a Hotmail folder.

But enough of that; somehow I managed to get it broken and all I was left with was this message on startup of Outlook;
The Outlook Connector menu and status bar have been disabled by the Office Safe Mode. Please contact Support (http://support.msn.com) to enable this.

Enabling it again is nothing to call MSN support for; it’s just a simple registry value that needs to be changed.

View: MSN Outlook Connector Disabled

With Microsoft Office Outlook Live (MOOL) you can use the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector to connect to your 2GB Hotmail mailbox. To find out what extra functionality the connector brings to your Hotmail account in Outlook see the KB article below.

View: MSKB 892455: Features of the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector

With the first month on the new year ending it might be about time to archive all the old mail from last year. When you are working in a network you might also have a mail administrator nagging about it for a month already! So when you finally come around to start archiving your mail you’ll notice… it’s not working!!!

The new FAQ article is all about how Archive and AutoArchive works and getting it back to work again in case it fails.

View: AutoArchive not Working

Some articles have been updated or extended. In the coming weeks all articles will be reviewed and get a review date at the bottom of the page so you can be sure you’re looking at current information. Some articles that have been updated are;
Search from the Address Bar
Getting the News button in Outlook 2003

With Outlook Live, you get a copy of Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 for Subscription Services so you can keep your MSN e-mail, calendar, contacts and tasks automatically synchronized with Outlook, and access them anytime—even when you’re not connected to the Internet. With 2 GB of online storage, virtually unlimited offline storage (depending on your hard drive space), patented spam filters and advanced virus protection, your e-mail is better protected and more accessible.

View: Microsoft Office Outlook Live and special promotional offer

Next major Exchange update is still a year or two away. Before then, expect more Web tools and Service Pack 2.

After canceling a minor version of Exchange Server that was expected this year, Microsoft is now focused on making the next major version, code-named “E12,” a deliverable in the 2006-2007 timeframe.

E12 will include 64-bit support; new Web services programming interfaces; improved scripting and security; improved search functionality; and more e-mail/voice-mail/fax integration, according to company officials. The new release also will add better support for mobile devices, improvements in Office Web Access functionality; and better integrated meeting-scheduling capabilities, officials added.

View full article: Microsoft Preps for Exchange ‘E12’

This optional update provides the Junk E-mail Filter in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with a more current definition of which e-mail messages should be considered junk e-mail.

Download: Update for Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter

Microsoft ActiveSync 3.8 is the latest synchronization software for Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

Download: Microsoft ActiveSync 3.8

Welcome to the Microsoft® Office Outlook 2003 Integration API Reference. This reference contains conceptual overviews and reference topics to guide you in developing solutions based on the Outlook 2003 Integration APIs.

Publish date of this reference: December 2004 (version 2003)

This documentation contains reference materials for the Outlook 2003 Integration APIs, including the Account Management API, the Connection State API, the Free/Busy API, the MAPI-MIME Conversion API, and the Store API.

Download: Outlook 2003 Integration API Reference

This guide was last reviewed July 2004; there were no changes to the content. This guide walks you through the process of hardening your Exchange 2003 environment, including configuration recommendations and strategies for combating external threats.

Download: Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide

The documentation and samples assist developers in building applications for Exchange Server.

Download: Exchange 2003 SDK Documentation and Samples December 2004
Download: Exchange 2000 SDK Documentation and Samples December 2004

Archive 52

For the lucky ones who own a Tablet PC (whoohoo!)

With this update you will experience improved ink recogition when using Microsoft Office 2003 on your Tablet PC.

Download: Office 2003 Tablet PC Update: Improved Ink Recognition

Microsoft Corp. today introduced a beta version of its new MSN® Toolbar Suite, with breakthrough desktop search functionality that helps consumers quickly find virtually any type of document, media file or e-mail message on their Windows®-based personal computer. Now consumers don’t have to spend valuable time sifting through an enormous amount of information; instead, they can quickly find precisely what they need. The integrated suite of tools streamlines the process of finding and acting on information from PCs by combining the ease of a Web search with the richness and power of the PC environment.

The free suite of MSN search tools, available now in the United States at http://beta.toolbar.msn.com, is the latest development in a comprehensive MSN Search service that helps consumers more quickly find precisely what they are looking for and gives them more control over their search experience. The new MSN Toolbar Suite includes an updated version of the popular MSN Toolbar for Microsoft® Internet Explorer and new toolbars that are conveniently accessible through Windows and Microsoft Office Outlook®. The new toolbars include the MSN Deskbar for the Windows desktop, MSN Toolbar for Microsoft Office Outlook and MSN Toolbar for Microsoft Windows Explorer.

View: Microsoft Introduces MSN Toolbar Suite Beta With Desktop Search

This update resolves problems that were found in the SMTP of Exchange 2003 since Exchange 2003 SP1 was released. Click the More Information About This Download link in the Related Resources section for a list of the fixes that are included in this update.

Download: Update for Exchange 2003 (KB 883522)

The Exchange Server 2003 Operations Checklists provide guidelines for IT professionals to do disaster recovery tasks, and to perform the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance tasks required to keep your Exchange server performing optimally. Use these checklists as is, or adapt them to suit your company’s specific needs.

Download: Exchange Server 2003 Operations Checklists

This guide provides recommendations and best practices for deploying and managing offline address books with Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003. Whether you are deploying a new Exchange Server 2003 messaging system or upgrading from a previous Exchange version, this guide gives you best practice recommendations, including recommendations on how to optimize offline address book usage in a variety of scenarios. In addition, this guide addresses the most common issues that you may encounter when using offline address books.

Download: Offline Address Book Best Practices Guide

The Solution Accelerator for Exchange Consolidation and Migration helps you accelerate the design, planning, and deployment of Exchange Server 2003 messaging systems deployed as upgrades to, or replacements for, your existing Exchange Server 5.5 or Exchange 2000 Server messaging systems. Business agility and efficiency depend on messaging systems deployed by organizational IT operations; to deliver the required functionality, IT operations themselves must be able to quickly adapt to changing business requirements, then implement secure, efficient solutions to meet these requirements. These solutions require not only great technologies, but also efficient and effective operations with all application and system services driven by mature processes and delivered to the business at an acceptable cost.

Download: Solution Accelerator for Exchange Consolidation and Migration

The Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer programmatically collects settings and values from data repositories such as Active Directory, registry, metabase and performance monitor. Once collected, a set of comprehensive ‘best practice’ rules are applied to the topology.
Administrators running this tool will get a detailed report listing the recommendations that can be made to the environment to achieve greater performance, scalability and uptime.

Download: Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool

This download will enable you to send SMS text messages through most GSM mobile phones connected to your PC using Outlook 2003.

You can enter your SMS text within a Outlook-type entry form and have it sent to your mobile phone for delivery through your mobile phone network service. There is no requirement to install third-party software or to subscribe to additional mobile network services if your mobile phone can be connected to your PC. This is typically via an infrared connection, Bluetooth technology, or a USB/serial cable.

The SMS messages can be saved as a draft, grouped, and forwarded like standard Outlook 2003 e-mail.

Download: Office 2003 Add-in: Microsoft Outlook SMS Add-in (MOSA)

Alright, I have been away from my own site for a while for various reasons but I’m back now! To start with; a new poll and the announcement of a new sponsor (see post below). The results of the old poll can be found here. Thanks to all who voted!

The new poll is; What is your primary connection type in Outlook? If for instance your default account at home is a POP3 account and at work an Exchange account feel free to vote both at home and at work.

For the ones questioning why I keep these polls; 1) to find out what to focus on when writing for my website. 2) just for my own fun and for anyone else’s who has always wondered these things

I’m proud to announce a new sponsor for my website; DSDevelopment. They offer a discount for their great add-in Bells and Whistles for Outlook. This add-in adds lots of options to Outlook like;

automatically add greeting and name of sender when replying
always reply in HTML (or a different format of your choice)
add date and/or time stamp
always BCC
auto mail merge each BCC
blank subject alert
Auto-confirm Outlook warning messages
and many more…

To get a discount when ordering simply type in “394D7208” as the discount code when asked to do so. Please note that the discount code gets changed every month but I’ll post the latest code always in my Add-ins section.

View: Bells and Whistles for Outlook

Spam has accounted for 38 percent of the 31 billion e-mails sent each day in North America in 2004, up from 24 percent in 2002, the market researcher said. Improved content filtering and antispam tools will help fight the problem, as will the growing use of alternative communications means, such as video conferencing and instant messaging software.

The ever-increasing intrusion by spam is forcing users and IT staff to spend extra time and energy to identify and delete such spurious e-mail, which can be entry points for viruses, worms and offensive content.

E-mail is still the most preferred form of communication–business or otherwise–over the Internet. According to IDC, the volume of e-mail sent annually worldwide exceeded 1 exabyte , or 1 billion gigabytes, for the first time last year.

View full article: Spam volume keeps rising

Inefficient email management poses a huge threat to organisational effectiveness, according to analysts at the Butler Group. Information stored in emails makes up an increasingly large proportion of a business’s ‘knowledge capital’ even though it is not available to support decision-making.

Courts increasingly require emails to be produced as evidence in litigation, which only increases the amount of data to be stored. It is vital that businesses develop effective email management systems, including archiving key messages and allowing them to be retrieved as required, says Butler Group’s report published this week.

‘Email management must not be treated as a technology problem,’ says the report.

View full article: Email management is growing concern

This add-in provides you with all the tools you need to create, update, and manage a fully-powered e-commerce Web site. After you install the add-in, all you need to do is sign up for a Microsoft bCentral™ Commerce Manager account, create a product catalog, run the E-commerce Wizard, and customize your Web site to suit your needs.

Download: FrontPage 2003, 2002, and 2000 Add-in Version 2: bCentral Commerce Manager

The Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK) is designed for solution providers (SPs), value-added resellers (VARs), and other developers who are interested in developing solutions with InfoPath 2003 and InfoPath 2003 Service Pack 1.

The InfoPath SDK includes documentation and samples that demonstrate development techniques for customizing and implementing InfoPath features, including integration with Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft SQL Server, XML Web Services, Component Object Model (COM) components, and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO).

Download: InfoPath 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK)

This download includes 20 sample Visio 2003 diagrams related to support and sales demos.

Download: Visio 2003 Sample: 20 Sample Diagrams

Archive 51

This book documents the activities that are available to users who belong to the Portolio Managers, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Team Leads, Team Members, and Executives security groups in Project Server 2003. Depending on the security group to which they are assigned, users can work with Project Server features by using Project Web Access, Project Professional, or both applications. This book provides detailed information about how to use Project Web Access and Project Professional to work with Project Server data and to perform project management–related tasks.

Download: Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Security Group Guide

This download contains the Access 2003 source code control add-in for communicating between both Microsoft Office Access 2003 Service Pack (SP) 1 and a source code control application (like Visual Source Safe 6.0). While you work with Access 2003, the add-in steps in at various points and lets you do things like add, check out, or check in Microsoft Access objects into the source code control project. Source code control integration with Microsoft Access is very similar to source code control integration with Visual Basic.

Download: Access 2003 Add-in: Source Code Control

The Smart Tag Explorer and Smart Tag Recognize Tester are a set of utilities intended to aid the smart tag developer in quickly building efficient, stable, and robust smart tags for a variety of applications.

The Smart Tag Explorer provides you with a visual interface for browsing information related to smart tags on your development workstation and on targeted platforms within your enterprise.

Loading and unloading a host application constantly during the smart tag development process can be time-consuming. The Recognize Tester simplifies this challenge by allowing the smart tag developer to test the Recognize and Recognize2 method under development without the need of a host application being loaded. This can reduce the time and complexity of smart tag development.

Download: Office 2003 Tool: Smart Tag Developer Tools

Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook (the Outlook client) is the integrated Microsoft Outlook client for Microsoft Business Solutions CRM that enables access to the same data as the Microsoft CRM Web application. Additionally, the client application also includes offline functionality. This update adds features and performance enhancements.

Download: Microsoft Business Solutions CRM Sales for Outlook 1.2 Feature Pack

This promotion offer will last until September 30th! Ricardo Silva another Outlook MVP from Portugal offers this add-in free of charge to all users who fill the form on the site listed below.

This is a Microsoft Outlook COM Add-in.

Sometimes when you send a message you forget to attach a file, although you mentioned in your email that you are sending a file.

The receiver of your message could be an important client and that would be awkward for you.

This add-in will automatically remind you that you wrote “attachment” – or any other keyword you select – before you really send the message scanning each outgoing email. You will have then the opportunity to attach a file to your outgoing message.

This add-in is easy to work with, is inside Outlook, and has an extremely simple user interface.

Get your free copy by using the promo code OUTMVPS001: Remind Me Attachments

To most of the computer-using world, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office is the familiar workhorse of the desktop, a collection of software for creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
But for Microsoft, which is starting to see its growth slow, reinventing that suite of old reliables including Word, Excel and PowerPoint has become nothing less than a key to its future.

“Office defines business productivity,” Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, told financial analysts in July. “The productivity area is probably the most important franchise that we have.”
With that focus, Microsoft is now pursuing a strategy to transform Office from a bundle of programs on personal computers into a family of software that can put Microsoft’s technology deeper into the operations of corporate data centers.

View full article: Microsoft Renovates Office Suite as a Web Service

A technique originally designed to analyse DNA sequences is the latest weapon in the war against spam. An algorithm named Chung-Kwei (after a feng-shui talisman that protects the home against evil spirits) can catch nearly 97 per cent of spam.

Chung-Kwei is based on the Teiresias algorithm, developed by the bioinformatics research group at IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Center in New York, US. Teiresias was designed to search different DNA and amino acid sequences for recurring patterns, which often indicate genetic structures that have an important role.

Instead of chains of characters representing DNA sequences, the research group fed the algorithm 65,000 examples of known spam. Each email was treated as a long, DNA-like chain of characters. Teiresias identified six million recurring patterns in this collection, such as “Viagra”.

Each pattern represented a common sequence of letters and numbers that had appeared in more than one unsolicited message. The researchers then ran a collection of known non-spam (dubbed “ham”) through the same process, and removed the patterns that occurred in both groups.

View full article: DNA technique protects against ‘evil’ emails

In Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework Server 1.0 there is a bug that prevents the sequential execution of operation instances that call an assembly when the location is specified as a URL in the port such as http://server/assembly.dll. The first operation instance call is successful, but subsequent operation instance calls fail. This does not impact operation instances whose path in the port is specified with a UNC path. This hotfix fixes this bug.

Download: Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework 1.0 – Hotfix Page

The Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 store is a storage platform that provides a single repository in which you can manage multiple types of unstructured information. A single Exchange topology may include store components (mailbox stores and public folder stores) that reside on multiple servers.
Because of the inherent complexity and flexibility of the store components, the store can be one of the most difficult parts of Exchange Server 2003 to administer. This guide provides in-depth information to make administration and troubleshooting tasks easier for you to perform.
This guide builds on the basic concepts presented in the Exchange Server 2003 Administration Guide. It examines several features of the store in depth, such as the way in which public folders replicate, how free/busy folders work, and how offline address books work. This information includes detailed explanations of how these features work, and guidance for using them effectively.

Download: Working with the Exchange Server 2003 Store

To support changes to Office 2003 SP1, additions and corrections to policies for administrative support of Office in corporate settings using Active Directory and Group Policy. This update includes explain text in the form of two Excel workbooks that describe the basic intent of the policies listed in the various ADM and OPA files.

Download: Office 2003 SP1 Support Files Update

The Personal Folders Backup download creates backup copies of your .PST files at regular intervals, in Outlook 2000 and later versions, making it easy to keep all of your Outlook folders safely backed up.

In some cases after you install it the backup add-in the option File-> Backup… isn’t available and doesn’t appear to be installed. An attempt to reinstall the product however indicates that it has already been installed and the add-in also shows up in Control Panel-> Add/Remove Software.

This is often true when you have upgraded your Outlook version, updated the backup add-in or installed the backup add-in logged on as a different user. For troubleshooting steps click the link below.

FAQ: Microsoft Outlook Backup Addin not Available

Project Server 2003 Service Pack 1 for Multilingual User Interface Pack
Project Server 2003 Service Pack 1 for Multilingual User Interface Pack provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Multilingual User Interface Pack.

Visio 2003 Service Pack 1 for Multilingual User Interface Pack
Visio 2003 Service Pack 1 for Multilingual User Interface Pack provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Multilingual User Interface Pack.

Office 2003 Service Pack 1 for Language Interface Pack
Office 2003 Service Pack 1 for Language Interface Pack provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office 2003 Language Interface Pack.

Office 2003 Service Pack 1 for Proofing Tools
Office 2003 Service Pack 1 for Proofing Tools provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office 2003 Proofing Tools.

Reduce the permissions to operate the Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook client version 1.2

Download: Reduce permissions to operate Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook client

This Update Rollup resolves problems that were found in Exchange 2000 since Exchange 2000 SP3 was released. Click the More Information About This Download link in the Related Resources section for a list of the fixes that are included in this Update Rollup.

Download: Update Rollup for Exchange 2000 (KB870540)

Microsoft on Thursday is holding a summit with members of the E-Mail Service Provider Coalition to address the use of Sender ID technology as a standard to fight spam and phishing.

The software giant said it would gather more than 80 members of the ESPC coalition at its Redmond, Wash., headquarters to discuss using Sender ID as a way to ensure that e-mail originates from the Internet domain it claims to come from. Fighting the annoyance of spam and the dangers of fraud activity such as “phishing” is among the top concerns of Internet users and the companies that serve them.

Sender ID validates the server Internet Protocol address of the sender to assure an e-mail recipient that a message claiming to be from a credit card company actually is. The technology relies on Microsoft’s Caller ID for E-Mail technology and the Sender Policy Framework, authored by Meng Weng Wong, chief technology officer at Pobox.com.

The Internet Engineering Task Force is currently evaluating Sender ID as an industry standard for e-mail authentication. Thursday’s meeting will look at what Sender ID can do to control unwanted e-mail and at the challenges the technology will bring to legitimate users of e-mail.

View: Microsoft touts ‘Sender ID’ to fight spam, scams

Archive 50

Lee Derbyshire wrote an article over at msexchange.org – on how to create your custom Exchange 2003 OWA themes. To make this more fun, we made the files needed for XBOX-inspired OWA theme available here.

View/Download: Exchange 2003 OWA XBOX theme, anyone?

This add-in provides you with all the tools you need to create, update, and manage a fully-powered e-commerce Web site. After you install the add-in, all you need to do is sign up for a Microsoft bCentral™ Commerce Manager account, create a product catalog, run the E-commerce Wizard, and customize your Web site to suit your needs.

Download: FrontPage 2003, 2002, and 2000 Add-in Version 2- bCentral Commerce Manager

Outlook has got many icons to indicate something about a mail. You probably already know the closed envelope, the open envelop, marked as forwarded, marked as replied and if you are in an Exchange organization the Out of Office icon probably looks familiar as well. I’ve been asked several times before what a specific icon means. Since then I really started to look at them and collect them (it’s bit like collecting stamps right?)… for you of course and to write a guide on it!

Well it’s finished now and you can see the list of icons and their meaning by clicking the link below.

Although these are Outlook 2003 icons I’m sure you’ll recognize the icons for your version of Outlook.

View: What do the Outlook Icons Mean?

Microsoft is trotting out new pricing options for its hosted Live Meeting Web conferencing.

Added to the mix are new named-user and conference room models. In the former, companies pay for individuals who then can have as many meetings as they want with up to 15 participants, according to Jennifer Callison, director of product management. Pricing starts at $180 per person for the standard edition or $300 per person for the professional edition which adds application sharing, handouts and recordings to the mix.

The limited-room model for 15 meetings per month starts at $200 per seat per year. An unlimited option covers as many meetings as needed and starts at $600 per seat per year.

Finally, a new monthly minutes option will let users sign up for a block of time each month and get higher discounts the more they use the service. Callison likened this to a cell phone usage plan minus the penalties for overuse.

View full article: Microsoft Opens Up Live Meeting Options

If you’re sick of spam, imagine wading through dozens of prerecorded porn and Viagra messages on your voice mail.

Some computer security and privacy experts are warning that such a day may not be far off for customers of new Internet phone services, which marry the immediacy of a voice call with the conveniences–and inconveniences–of e-mail.

That could be unwelcome news for those who believe telemarketing is already so bad it can’t possibly get any worse.
“The fear with VoIP spam is you will have an Internet address for your phone number, which means you can use the same tools you use for e-mail to generate traffic, said Tom Kershaw, a vice president at security specialist VeriSign. “That raises automation to scary degrees.”

View full article: Net phone customers brace for ‘VoIP spam’

This download enables you to select an area of text within Word 2003 or PowerPoint 2003 to convert it from Cyrillic script to Latin script or vice-versa. This can be also be used for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 when Word 2003 is used as the e-mail editor.

Download: Office 2003 Add-in: Latin and Cyrillic Transliteration

A security issue has been identified that could allow an attacker to run programs and access data on a computer running Microsoft® Exchange Server 5.5. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft.

Download: Security Update for Exchange 5.5 (KB842436)

Download the construction information update to keep the road construction projects information of your maps current in Streets and Trips.
Save the file in the Data folder, located where you installed the program files for MapPoint or Streets & Trips. I.e. C:\Program Files\Microsoft MapPoint\Data\

Download: MapPoint 2001 and Streets and Trips 2001 Construction Update
Download: MapPoint 2002 and Streets and Trips 2002 Construction Update
Download: MapPoint 2003 and Streets and Trips 2003 Construction Update
Download: MapPoint 2004 and Streets and Trips 2004 Construction Update

Well that is if you have the English or German version of Windows XP installed. The download is the full version which also upgrades your Tablet PC and Media Center Edition. All other languages will be made available within 2 months. So keep checking Windows Update as well!

Download: Windows XP Service Pack 2 Network Installation Package

Currently only to the ones who have been Beta testing it (for so long) and the MSDN subscribers. Keep an eye on Windows Update!

Update: The official message has gone out now as well;

Microsoft Releases Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies to Computer Manufacturers
Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing of Windows® XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies. This free service pack delivers the latest security updates and innovations from Microsoft, establishes strong default security settings, and adds new proactive protection features that will help better safeguard computers from hackers, viruses and other security risks.

“Service Pack 2 is a significant step in delivering on our goal to help customers make their PCs better isolated and more resilient in the face of increasingly sophisticated attacks,” said Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft. “It is the result of sustained investments in innovation and extensive industry collaboration. It also reflects a broad recognition that as the security environment changes, the industry needs to work together to respond.”

During the worldwide rollout of Service Pack 2, Microsoft will localize the software in 25 languages over the next two months and distribute it to computer manufacturers, enterprise customers and consumers through downloads, retail installation, free CDs and on new PCs. The easiest way for current Windows XP users to ensure they receive Service Pack 2 when it releases in their language is to simply turn on the Automatic Updates feature in Windows XP.

View full Press Release: Microsoft Releases Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies to Computer Manufacturers

The CHM provides an overview of the FabriKam project and how to use the FabriKam virtual PC environment and documentation to best learn about the rich potential of the Microsoft Office System as a development platform. Each solution and platform component section described the salient points that help developers focus on areas of interest.

Download: Office 2003 Tool: FabriKam – The Microsoft Office System Solutions Learning Platform

The numbers don’t lie: CAN-SPAM is a bust.

Compliance with CAN-SPAM has fallen to a new low, according to recent data collected by MX Logic.

In July, compliance fell for the first time under one percent to a measly 0.54 percent of all unsolicited commercial mail the company sampled during the month.

The Denver-based firm has been tracking compliance with CAN-SPAM since the federal law went on the books in January. Through April, MX Logic’s numbers remained stable, with about three percent of spam messages complying with the law’s requirements, which range from verifiable return addresses to measures consumers and businesses can use to opt out of mailing lists. In May and June, however, the number slipped to one percent.

“Now it’s been halved,” said Steve Ruskin, a senior analyst at MX Logic. “No one’s really sure what’s going on, but it’s clear that CAN-SPAM isn’t a threat to spammers. They’re just ignoring it.”

View full article: CAN-SPAM Big Bust

The Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Software Development Kit (SDK) is designed for solution providers (SPs), value-added resellers (VARs), and other developers who are interested in developing solutions with InfoPath 2003 and InfoPath 2003 Service Pack 1.

The InfoPath SDK includes documentation and samples that demonstrate development techniques for customizing and implementing InfoPath features, including integration with Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft SQL Server, XML Web Services, Component Object Model (COM) components, and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO).

Download: InfoPath 2003 Software Development Kit

Live Communications Server 2003 Document: Release Notes 1.0c
The Release Notes Update contains new information for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 Standard Edition.

Live Communications Server 2003 FAQ and Troubleshooting Guide
This frequently asked questions (FAQ) and troubleshooting guide provides answers and insights to some of the most relevant questions about Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003.

Microsoft this week chopped the price of its OneNote note-taking application. The software, one of several new applications released last year under the Office umbrella, will now sell for $100, half the original price. Microsoft had provided widespread $100 rebates, however.

OneNote is a collection of tools for organizing information from various sources. The application has been targeted mainly at college students and owners of devices based on Microsoft’s Tablet PC format, which can utilize OneNote’s built-in handwriting recognition.

View: Microsoft cuts OneNote price

Archive 49

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

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

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 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

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

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

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 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.

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

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 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 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

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.

I updated the guide to cover Office 2003 SP1

View: Create an Office 2003 CD slipstreamed with Service Pack 1

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!

Archive 48

Alright, so after I saw 2 guys getting arrested for not having a valid train ticked (and then still refuse to buy a ticked and cause a lot of trouble in the train) I got a bit bored in the train this weekend. So I took a deep dive into the registry and tried to find out which key determines whether Cached Exchange Mode is enabled or disabled. Great new; I’ve found it!

View: Enabling/Disabling Cached Exchange Mode through the Registry

From the Author;
ABC Amber Outlook Converter is intended to help you keep your important messages organized in one file (as hypertext system). It is a very useful tool that converts your e-mails from MS Outlook to any document format (CHM, PDF, HTML, RTF, HLP, TXT Ansi, TXT Unicode, DOC, MCW, WPS, SAM, RFT, WS4, WS7, WRI, etc.) easily and quickly. All you have to do is select required messages, choose document format to convert and click Save As button. Currently our software supports more than 50 languages. With ABC Amber Outlook Converter you won’t ever waste your time to organize your messages!

View: screenshot
View: homepage
Order: ABC Amber Outlook Converter

Sender ID will be used with Hotmail, MSN, and Microsoft.com e-mail addresses.

Microsoft will soon put some bite into its Sender ID antispam plans. The software giant will check e-mail messages sent to its Hotmail, MSN, and Microsoft.com mail accounts to see if they come from valid e-mail servers, as identified by the Sender ID, according to a company executive.

The company is strongly urging e-mail providers and Internet service providers to publish, by mid-September, Sender Policy Framework records that identify their e-mail servers in the domain name system. Microsoft will begin matching the source of inbound e-mail to the Internet Protocol addresses of e-mail servers listed in that sending domain’s SPF record by October 1.

Messages that fail the check will not be rejected but will be further scrutinized and filtered, says Craig Spiezle, director of Microsoft’s Safety Technology and Strategy Group.

View full article: Microsoft to Enforce Antispam Plan

Lookout is lightning-fast search for your email, files, and desktop integrated with Microsoft Outlook™. Built on top of a powerful search engine, Lookout is the only personal search engine that can search all of your email from directly within Outlook – in seconds…

You can use Lookout to search your:

Email messages
Contacts, calendar, notes, tasks, etc.
Data from exchange, POP, IMAP, PST files, Public Folders
Files on your computer or other computers
… Very soul (okay, not true)

Just enter your search and press enter. Results are instant. Lookout will find your search terms hiding nearly anywhere in your Outlook mailbox – subjects, bodies, phone numbers, addresses, etc.

Supports Outlook 2000, 2002/XP and 2003

Download: Lookout

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has reached a settlement with Scott Richter, a prominent Internet marketer who was sued in December on accusations of sending deceptive junk e-mail.

Richter and his company, OptInRealBig.com, agreed to pay a $40,000 fine and $10,000 toward the investigative cost. That is far smaller than the millions in penalties that Spitzer said he would seek when he filed the case.

“We will drive them into bankruptcy, and therefore others will not come into the marketplace to take their place,” Spitzer said in December. “If we’re going to succeed, we not only have to shut down those who are there now but make it evident that there is no viable business model here.”

Brad Maione, a spokesman for Spitzer, declined to comment on the discrepancy between Spitzer’s comment in December and the amount of the ultimate fine.

View full article: Spam sender settles N.Y. case

Microsoft Producer 2003 for PowerPoint 2003 is the next release of this very popular add-in for PowerPoint 2003 and PowerPoint 2002. Producer 2003 provides users with many powerful new features that make it easier to synchronize audio, video, slides, and images to create engaging and effective rich-media presentations. Producer 2003 gives content and media professionals, as well as everyday PowerPoint users a host of new content authoring features.

Download: Producer for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003

The Navigation Pane is new in Outlook 2003. It is designed for easier management of the same type of folders like Mail, Calendar and Contacts folders. The Navigation Pane also holds the Folder List and the Outlook Bar has been replaced with the Shortcuts Navigation. These enhancements are great especially when you must manage a lot of Calendar and Contacts folders of other people or Public Folders. This is one of the reasons we started our upgrade to from Office 2002 to Office 2003 with the secretaries. They really loved the enhancements as some of them were managing a Folder List of several meters long (managers are real mail collectors and love to organize by putting every mail in their own folder :-D).

With the enhancements of the Navigation Pane also came quite a lot of options but not all of them are really easy to notice or to work with right from the start. This is why I wrote the Navigation Pane Tips & Tricks guide. Click the link below for the Tips & Tricks.

View: Navigation Pane Tips & Tricks

Six out of 10 companies claim they will give up email if the threat posed by viruses, spam and other unwanted content is not contained and a viable alternative emerges.

Responding to an email security survey carried out by MessageLabs a further 40 per cent said they feel ‘worried’ by the current email security threat to their business, with only 29 per cent feeling ‘optimistic’.

The survey shows that few (15 per cent) think email will remain the same application over the next decade, while two thirds think it will merge with other messaging applications, such as wireless and instant messaging. But only 14 per cent of respondents think it will become completely obsolete.

Over 20 per cent of firms responding to the research indicated that online fraud such as phishing and identity theft will be the greatest threat. Viruses achieved a similar rating (21 per cent).

View full article: Worried firms consider email boycott

Microsoft’s MSN division announced Thursday that it has acquired Lookout Software, a firm whose technology searches messages in the software giant’s Outlook e-mail client.

Details of the acquisition remain murky, as Microsoft did not disclose financial terms and did not describe how Lookout will be integrated. What the company did say was the acquisition builds on MSN Search’s ongoing efforts to refurbish itself through a series of changes.

“Our vision is to take search beyond today’s basic Internet search services to deliver direct answers to people’s questions, and help them find information from a broad range of sources,” Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of MSN, said in a statement.

View full article: Microsoft buys Lookout to boost search
View Press Release from Microsoft: MSN Announces Investment in Search Technology

Additional file and image filters for Office applications. These additional converters and filters are for older or seldom used documents or image formats.

Download: Office File Converter Pack

Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday that it won an almost $4 million verdict against a California man for trademark infringement, false advertising and “cybersquatting” stemming from an unsolicited commercial e-mail campaign to distribute a desktop toolbar program on recipients’ Windows desktops.

Daniel Khoshnood of Canoga Park, California, was ordered to pay $3.95 million after the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California found in favor of Microsoft in the civil case, which Microsoft filed in June 2003, after receiving a flood of spam on its MSN and MSN Hotmail e-mail services from Khoshnood. The e-mail messages claimed to offer a toolbar that, once installed, would automatically update recipients’ Windows systems with security patches, Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft won a summary judgement against Khoshnood and his companies, Pointcom Inc. and Joshuathan Investments, in January. That judgement ordered Khoshnood to stop using Microsoft’s trademarks and name, refrain from spamming, and pay damages to and legal fees for the Redmond, Washington software company, according to a court document.

View full article: Microsoft wins $4 million spam verdict

The Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework 1.0 Resource Kit includes a set of tools, documentation, and sample solutions. The Resource Kit is a useful aid for new or experienced Information Bridge Framework solution developers.

The resource kit is divided into three distinct sets of downloads: Tools, Documentation, and Sample Solutions.

Download: The Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework 1.0 Resource Kit – Documentation

New Hampshire’s tax commissioner has temporarily abandoned plans to tax a broad swath of online services, including Internet phone calls, chat rooms, Web mail and instant messaging.
A representative of the Department of Revenue Administration said Tuesday that after encountering criticism of the proposal at a public hearing the day before, Commissioner G. Philip Blatsos had decided to leave any Internet tax decisions to the state legislature.

“Because this is a tremendously important policy issue, rather than go through the rulemaking process at this point, we should defer to the legislative study committee,” said Val Berghaus, an assistant to Blatsos. “At the request of legislative leaders of the Ways and Means committee, (Blatsos) is going to defer to that request.” The legislative committee is scheduled to convene Aug. 4.

View full article: New Hampshire: E-mail free or die…for now

View: Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for July, 2004

Antispam company Postini Inc. is now rejecting more than half of all attempts to send e-mail to its customers, in part because of increased activity from compromised home computers that have been turned into “zombies” for sending unsolicited commercial e-mail.
The company is dropping 53% of all e-mail connections that use the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) without reading the content of the e-mail messages. That’s a sharp increase since the company began aggregating information about troublesome Internet addresses from across its customer base, said Andrew Lochart, director of product marketing at Postini.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company manages e-mail for about 3,300 companies and 5 million e-mail users. Postini uses its own algorithms to spot spam, denial-of-service attacks and other threats by analyzing the behavior of Internet-connected machines that send e-mail and, after that, the message content.

View full article: Postini: Half of all e-mail requests rejected

Archive 47

With this add-in you can permanently remove hidden and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, from Word 2003/XP, Excel 2003/XP, and PowerPoint 2003/XP files.

When you distribute an Office document electronically, the document might contain information that you do not want to share publicly, such as information you’ve designated as “hidden” or information that allows you to collaborate on writing and editing the document with others.

The Remove Hidden Data add-in is a tool that you can use to remove personal or hidden data that might not be immediately apparent when you view the document in your Microsoft Office application.

Download: Office 2003/XP Add-in: Remove Hidden Data

As it faces a more serious threat from Linux on the desktop, Microsoft will invest $50 million during its next fiscal year to accelerate more corporate deployment of Windows XP and Office 2003.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant will announce at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto a revamped “Desktop Deployment Initiative” that provides partners with more business investment funds, resources and personnel to help get customers upgraded to Microsoft’s latest fleet of desktop software.

Most significantly, the fund will pay for 57 new hires worldwide who will be deployed as desktop specialists in the field. In the United States, Microsoft will deploy 24 desktop experts who will be empowered to help partners and customers realize a return on investment (ROI) on software many have licensed as part of their Microsoft upgrade contracts but have not yet installed.

Microsoft estimates that only 30 percent of its installed base currently runs the three-year-old Windows XP, while a much smaller percentage has installed Office 2003. And only a third of the total Office installed base today runs Microsoft’s Office XP.

View full article: Microsoft Desktop Initiative To Push Windows XP, Office 2003 Deployments

MapPoint and Streets & Trips Construction Update (July 13)

Download the construction update to keep your maps current.

Save the file in the Data folder, located where you installed the program files for MapPoint or Streets & Trips. For example C:\Program Files\Microsoft MapPoint\Data\.

Download: MapPoint 2001 and Streets and Trips 2001 Construction Update
Download: MapPoint 2002 and Streets and Trips 2002 Construction Update
Download: MapPoint 2003 and Streets and Trips 2003 Construction Update
Download: MapPoint 2004 and Streets and Trips 2004 Construction Update

The software giant has hooked up with Britain’s biggest telco to offer improved Web conferencing

Microsoft is set to announce a deal on Monday with British communications giant BT Group to boost the software giant’s Live Meeting Web conferencing service.

BT will resell Live Meeting subscriptions integrated with the company’s own conference calling services, according to a statement from the companies. BT also has signed on to use Live Meeting internally for its 150,000 Internet-connected employees.

View full article: Microsoft Live Meeting gets BT boost

View: Flash presentation

Every so often people ask us – “How often do you recommend we run the offline defrag?” Meaning – how often do we run it to have the server run OK?
The short answer would be – we do NOT recommend this to be run as any type of “regular” maintenance at all.

Looking at this closer – what really happens when you do an offline defrag?

View: Is offline defragmentation considered regular Exchange maintenance?

Have you always been curious how many people still use Outlook 97 or how fast people are adopting Outlook 2003? Now you’ll know

Cast your vote today!

4Team Corporation is a software production company working in Software Industry since 1999.

Their primary objective is to provide their customers with affordable workgroup management solutions. Their software products are developed to improve the productivity and efficiency of a workgroup that uses Microsoft Office programs as its software basis.

One of their most popular add-ins;
Share Outlook: Sharing any Microsoft Outlook Personal folders without a server.

See all of their products in the Add-Ins section.

Flirting used to be something that happened primarily at bars, parties or the local Starbucks, but a new survey from MSN found that instant messaging (IM) is the choice of today’s Romeos, both in the United States and worldwide. More than 35 percent of Americans who responded to the survey say they’ve used Web-based services such as MSN® Messenger to set up romantic dates, with 50 percent saying they have used it to get to know a potential partner early in a relationship. Worldwide, the numbers are even larger, with over 40 percent of respondents saying they have used IM to set up dates and nearly 58 percent saying they have used it to find out more about people they might like to date.

View full article: Flirting’s Moved Online! New Research From MSN Reveals Millions Swap IM Addresses With Potential Dates

Microsoft wants customers yet to upgrade to its latest software versions to ‘understand’ why they need to do so, and plans to dispel the perception that older versions of its software are ‘good enough’.

In a wide-ranging ‘state of the nation’ email sent to Microsoft employees, chief executive Steve Ballmer said: “So many customers have yet to deploy our most recent advances, so we must not only help them understand why to deploy, but demonstrate the benefits of deploying before we reach the Longhorn generation.”

He said the company needed to change customers’ perceptions, including the view that “older versions of Office and Windows are good enough and that Microsoft is not sufficiently focused on security”.

This, he said, would be achieved by emphasising “key positive perceptions of the strong manageability, and developer and information worker preference, for our platform”.

Ballmer said customers were still feeling pain over security issues, but added that products were now being built “in a way that significantly reduces vulnerabilities and customers’ exposure to attack”.

View full article: Microsoft to ‘educate’ users on software upgrades

The latest variant of the Lovgate worm scans PCs for executable files and then renames them, a tactic used by viruses from a much older generation, according to antivirus companies.

The Lovgate worm first appeared in February 2003 and has since mutated many times. The most recent versions of the worm–Lovgate.AE and Lovgate.AH–were discovered on Sunday. They spread by e-mailing themselves to addresses found on an infected machine and then open a “back door” to give control of the infected system to an attacker. Finally, the worms scan for vulnerable PCs connected to the infected system’s local network–using the same Windows vulnerability exploited by the MSBlast worm almost a year ago.

The most important difference is the worm’s destructive nature. Although the latest Lovgate worm does not delete any user data–such as documents or spreadsheets–it replaces executable files (with the .exe extension) on the local hard drive with further copies of itself. This process can leave an infected computer effectively useless because it is unable to run any applications.

View full article: Old-school worm loves Windows applications

Microsoft should release a 64-bit version of Office at the same time as its 64-bit version of XP – due by the end of the year – if it wants to attract more corporates to its Software Assurance licensing scheme, according to Rob Enderle of analyst firm Enderle Group.

Enderle said such a move could encourage more firms to sign up to Software Assurance now that Microsoft has discontinued its Upgrade Advantage licensing programme.

“It would make sense to have a 64-bit version of Office to release alongside [64-bit XP],” he added.

And moving Office to a 64-bit environment would allow Microsoft to eliminate security holes in the 32-bit versions. “Security has become the IT manager’s biggest nightmare,” commented Enderle.

View full article: Firms want safer version of Office

The number of unique new unsolicited e-mail messages has risen 42 percent from 350,000 per day at the end of 2003 to 500,000 a day by the end of June, according to antispam vendor Commtouch Software.

And while 49 countries have been identified as hosting Web sites referenced in spam e-mails, China is still the host for 73.5 percent of such sites, Commtouch says in a statement. Spammers include those site links to provide more information regarding their products, or to allow users to buy the products online.

View full article: Amount of Spam Still Skyrocketing

The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office has filed suit against a Florida man suspected of sending spam e-mail to thousands of consumers, in what’s considered to be the first claim brought by a state under the federal Can-Spam Act.

On Thursday, the state’s attorney general, Thomas Reilly, filed a complaint against a business known as DC Enterprises, and its reported proprietor, William T. Carson, for allegedly distributing bulk e-mail that advertised inexpensive mortgage rates. In addition to alleging that the company violated numerous conditions of Can-Spam, the federal government’s freshly minted answer to the spam epidemic, Reilly is pursuing charges against the defendant for breaching several Massachusetts laws that deal with mortgage brokering.

View full article: Massachusetts files suit under Can-Spam

The UK, US and Australia are combining forces to combat spam. They have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to promote joint enforcement and investigation of spammers across the three countries.

Stephen Timms, the UK communications minister, today called on other countries to join the trio in their anti-spam crusade. He said the MoU is “not going to solve spam overnight but it is going to help. It reinforces our determination to tackle spam with a combination of government and industry initiatives, technical solutions, and user awareness.

Timothy Muris, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said: “Illegal spam does not respect national boundaries. This agreement is an important next step to help law enforcers on three continents leverage resources to combat illegal spam.”

View full article: US, UK and Australia sign anti-spam act

Archive 46

Describes how to create your own customized presentation templates to use in Producer 2003. Readers should have a basic understanding of cascading style sheets and HTML.

Download: Creating Custom Templates for Microsoft Producer 2003 white paper

Detailed discussion of how Microsoft IT partnered with the Office, Exchange, Windows, and SharePoint product development teams to develop a testing and deployment strategy that delivered Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 to nearly 70,000 computers within the corporation. The testing strategy, which utilized a large, carefully configured control group of several thousand users, has led to a robust product that has been rigorously tested in a real world environment. The deployment validated key productivity and functionality enhancements in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 products, dependent Line of Business applications, and related products such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. Best practices from the deployment are detailed.

Download: Planning and Deploying Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003

As promised here are some pictures from Tech-ed. I’ll write the story later as I’m already late for the party!

View Picture; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

In case you were wondering why I wasn’t in the newsgroups; I’m at Tech•Ed Europe this week. If you’re there as well; come and visit me in the Ask the Expert section at the Tablet PC booth. I’m giving demo’s there with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (codename Lonestar), OneNote SP1, InfoPath SP1, the Context Tagging Tool and lots of other cool new features for the Tablet PC. We have 10 Tablet PC’s at our booth to illustrate the variety of Tablets to choose from these days. When you complete the Hand on Lab for the Tablet PC you can collect a 64MB USB Memory Stick at our booth!

Tomorrow I’ll be dragging along my camera so expect some pictures of the event tomorrow or later this week!

View: Microsoft Hosts Over 6,500 Developers and IT Professionals at Tech•Ed Europe

By Bill Gates;
I’d like to update you on the progress that Microsoft and our industry are making to curb the epidemic of junk email. Since I sent a message to customers on this subject a year ago, we’ve made significant advances against spam. It’s still a major problem — an invasion of privacy, a costly drain on time and resources and, as a carrier of worms and viruses, a significant threat to computer security. The good news is that billions of junk emails are being blocked every day, and spamming has become a more difficult and less rewarding business.

Much of the improvement Microsoft customers have experienced so far has resulted from broad deployment of SmartScreen, our advanced spam-filtering technology. SmartScreen has provided a significant benefit to users of MSN 8 and MSN Premium, MSN Hotmail and Outlook 2003. Since Hotmail deployed it six months ago, SmartScreen has been blocking more than 95 percent of all incoming spam — an average of nearly 3 billion messages every day. Because we believe that SmartScreen is crucial to the war against spam, we recently began making it available free to all users of Exchange Server 2003, via a download of the Exchange Intelligent Message Filter from www.microsoft.com/exchange.

Nonetheless, the actions of spammers over the past year have reinforced our conviction that current filtering technologies are not enough. Knowing that only a small percentage of their output will get past today’s filters, spammers have responded by significantly cranking up the volume of emails they send. So networks are burdened with even more junk than before. According to some surveys, email traffic now consists of nearly four spam messages for every legitimate one.

Clearly, we must find additional ways to counter spam. Microsoft is working on a number of new technologies and strategies that we believe will bring significant improvement.

View full article: Preserving and Enhancing the Benefits of Email — A Progress Report

Exchange 2003 SDK Documentation and Samples June 2004
The documentation and samples assist developers in building applications for Exchange 2003 Server.

Exchange 2000 SDK Documentation and Samples June 2004
The documentation and samples assist developers in building applications for Exchange 2000 Server.

Exchange Server 2003 Message Security Guide
Updated July 2004. 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.

Working with Active Directory Permissions in Microsoft Exchange 2003
This guide helps Exchange architects in their understanding of how Exchange uses Active Directory in the context of permissions. Further, this document is a reference guide for administrators implementing a split permissions model.

Chris Pratley wrote;
Today we had our ship party for OneNote 2003 SP1 down at Sammamish State Park (at the south end of Lake Sammamish in Issaquah for those who might know the greater Seattle area). Although we have signed off on the code, the process of building a patch, verifying it, and creating international versions continues so you won’t see the final SP1 bits for a few more weeks.

Click the link below for some highlights of OneNote 2003 SP1

View: OneNote 2003 SP1 has wrapped

The man who invented the Esperanto of the technology world enabling computers to swap information freely has died.
Bob Bemer developed the Ascii coding system to standardise the way computers represent letters, numbers, punctuation marks and some control codes.

He also introduced the backslash and escape key to the world of computers and was one of the first to warn about the dangers of the millennium bug.

Mr Bemer died on 22 June at his home in Texas following a battle with cancer.

View full article: Key computer coding creator dies

Updated June 2004. Extensive improvements were made to the order and details in several procedures. Graphics of warning message boxes were added in procedures, as well as clearer explanations of the actions required from users when various warning messages appear.

The May 28th, 2004 update contained minor corrections for DWORD and global catalog server references. The original update (May 2004) was released for Service Pack 1 (SP1) with information about the new user interface in Exchange System Manager.

Overall, this guide describes four scenarios to deploy the Windows RPC over HTTP feature in a corporate environment, for both Exchange Server 2003 SP1, and Exchange Server 2003.

Download: Exchange Server 2003 RPC over HTTP Deployment Scenarios

Next week it is TechEd Europe time! I’ll be there all week as well where you could find me at the Ask The Expert booth for Tablet PC’s. If you’re there as well; don’t be a stranger and visit the ATE Tablet PC booth. From what I’ve heard so far it’s going to be a nice booth with quite a few demo tablets…

Microsoft TechEd Europe
Microsoft’s definitive European conference for Building, Deploying, Securing and Managing connected solutions
GET INSIDE the code, the products and the technologies… at this year’s Microsoft premier technical conference. Create your own customized four-day technical training program, participate in hands-on training and preview the latest technology.

View: TechEd 2004 Europe

A U.S. congressional committee on Thursday approved a bill designed to crack down on deceptive “spyware” that hides in users’ computers and secretly monitors their activities.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 45-4 for a bill that would require software makers to notify people before loading new programs on their machines that collects information about them.

Spyware can sap computing power, crash machines and bury users under a blizzard of unwanted ads. It can capture passwords, credit-card numbers and other sensitive data.

The bill, introduced by Reps. Mary Bono, a California Republican, and Ed Towns, a New York Democrat, would allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to seek millions of dollars in fines for some of the practices lawmakers consider most egregious, such as logging users’ keystrokes or stealing their identities.

It also would require that spyware be made easily removable.

View full article: Anti-Spyware Bill Advances in Congress

MSN® Hotmail®, the world’s most popular free Web-based e-mail service, will undergo a major upgrade, delivering customers world-class e-mail protection as well as enhanced storage to satisfy all their needs. Starting in early July, MSN will roll out free e-mail anti-virus protection to all the 170 million MSN Hotmail customers worldwide, making MSN Hotmail the only free global e-mail service to both scan and clean incoming and outgoing e-mail for viruses and worms before they can enter a customer’s inbox. MSN also announced it will bring increased storage – 250MB inboxes – to free MSN Hotmail customers in multiple markets and will introduce MSN Hotmail Plus, an upgraded premium Web service to help customers get the most out of MSN Hotmail.

“We know from talking with our customers that online safety is their No. 1 concern,” said Blake Irving, corporate vice president of Communication Services and Member Platform for MSN. “MSN is intensely focused on providing a safer and more robust communications experience for consumers. Providing free anti-virus cleaning helps protect our Hotmail customers while guarding members of the overall Hotmail community and the friends and family they e-mail.”

Later this summer, MSN will begin increasing storage limits for free MSN Hotmail accounts in multiple markets around the world. Customers will receive 125 times their current e mail storage with the introduction of 250MB inboxes and have the ability to send attachments up to 10 MB. Upon upgrade, MSN Hotmail customers will also receive MSN Calendar free, enabling both individual and shared calendaring.

View Full Press Release: MSN Announces Comprehensive Worldwide Upgrade to MSN Hotmail

Microsoft Corp., author of the Microsoft® Caller ID for E-mail proposal, and Meng Weng Wong, co-founder and CTO of Pobox.com and author of the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), have announced today that they have successfully converged the two proposals into one specification named Sender ID and submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for consideration as an industrywide standard for e-mail authentication as part of the IETF’s efforts to define effective industry Internet e-mail standards to address the problem of spam. Sender ID is designed to help verify the source of e-mail to help eliminate domain spoofing and provide greater protection against phishing schemes. By providing a unified specification, Microsoft and Wong hope to simplify industry adoption of effective e-mail authentication technology, thereby helping more swiftly provide greater spam protection to e-mail users worldwide.

“Spoofing,” or sending e-mail purporting to be from someone it’s not, is an increasingly common and relatively simple way for spammers to try to trick filters. It can also pose a security risk when used to deliver e-mail viruses or phisher scams, which attempt to trick users into divulging personal information such as credit card numbers or account passwords by pretending to be from a legitimate source, such as a user’s bank. Sender ID aims to prevent spoofing by confirming what domain a message came from and thereby increase the effectiveness of spam filters.

View full Press Release: Sender ID Specification Submitted for Standards Body Consideration

The Anti-Spam Technical Alliance (ASTA), whose participants include Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq “YHOO”), Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”), EarthLink (Nasdaq “ELNK”) and America Online Inc. (NYSE “TWX”), today unveiled the result of more than a year of close collaboration by presenting a host of detailed best practices and technical recommendations for the entire industry in an effort to fight the scourge of spam.

The proposal provides recommended actions and policies for Internet service providers (ISPs) and e-mail service providers (ESPs) as well as large senders of e-mail including governments, private corporations and online marketing organizations. These recommendations primarily focus on two key issues: helping solve the e-mail forgery problem by eliminating domain spoofing through Internet Protocol (IP)-based and signature-based solutions; and best practices to help prevent ISPs and their customers from being sources of spam.

View full article: Anti-Spam Technical Alliance Publishes Industry Recommendations to Help Stop Spam

Not trying to be rude on this but; didn’t we know this already? Embedding pictures goes back to Outlook version …??? At least they are slowed down now; embedding pictures makes their SPAM e-mails a lot larger in size! Also, they won’t be able anymore to check whether your address is valid by means of the downloaded image.

Don’t forget you can always beat them (in displaying pornographic images) by choosing to display all messages in Plain Text;
Outlook 2003; Tools-> Options-> tab Preferences-> button E-mail Options…-> option: Read all standard mail in plain text
When needed you can now change individual messages back to HTML with just 2 clicks.

Alright, enough from me; go on, read the article

Spammers have found a way to bypass Outlook 2003’s anti-spam security by embedding pornographic images into their emails.

Spammers who send pornographic pictures in the hope of enticing the recipient to signing up to an adult Web site have discovered a way to bypass Outlook 2003’s security features, which are designed to stop potentially offensive content being automatically displayed in the preview window.

The latest version of Microsoft’s Outlook was built with a relatively sophisticated spam filter, but as the product’s first birthday approaches, spammers are finding new ways to ensure that their unsolicited message go undetected.

In order to help fight spam, Microsoft armed Outlook 2003 with a Bayesian filter, which tries to recognise unsolicited messages by examining the words used and, depending on the frequency of certain key words, calculating the probability of that e-mail being spam.

The company also improved on previous versions of Outlook by allowing users to choose if an HTML email should be allowed to access the Internet and download content. This gives the user a chance to prevent the pornography from ever reaching his or her PC.

However, John Cheney, chief executive of email-security firm BlackSpider Technologies, explained that one of the growing trends is for spammers to attach a pornographic image file to their emails and then use HTML code to display the attached image. This means that Outlook doesn’t need to access the Internet before displaying the picture.

View full article: Porn spammers sneak images into Outlook

Archive 45

Due to the addition of new features in Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003, you cannot use Project Professional 2003 to save projects to an existing Microsoft Project Server 2002 installation without first making some minor modifications to the database schema. You can load and view projects from an unmodified Microsoft Project Server 2002 database in Project Professional 2003, but if you want to make changes or create new projects in Project Professional 2003 and save them back to Project Server 2002, you must download and run the four SQL scripts provided here. These scripts will add some additional fields to the database tables that are required by Project Professional 2003, but will be ignored by earlier versions, so users of Microsoft Project Professional 2002 or Microsoft Project Standard 2002 can continue to connect as normal to the upgraded Microsoft Project Server 2002 database.

Download: Project Professional 2003 Database Compatibility Scripts for Microsoft Project Server 2002

ActiveX controls for Project Web Access are installed by default when you install Project Server. You can install Project Web Access (PWA) ActiveX controls on client workstations manually in cases where your organization operates in a locked-down environment in which users cannot install OCX controls.

Download: Project Server 2003: Project Web Access ActiveX Controls

When it comes to improving the spelling checker in Word or finding new ways to draw charts in Excel, Microsoft probably has things covered.

But to figure out the broad changes needed for its venerable Office software, Microsoft is turning to an Indian medical student, an aspiring architect from Kenya and 13 other young adults from across the globe.

The young people, ages 19 to 24, are part of an “Information Worker Board of the Future” that will spend this week touring Microsoft’s campus and discussing their ideas for the future of work and software.

Microsoft hopes the investment will pay off with some insight into how their flagship Office software needs to evolve.

“We want them to tell us what we don’t know,” said Dan Rasmus, a former Giga Information Group analyst who joined Microsoft last year to head up its Information Work Vision effort.

View full article: Microsoft hopes younger eyes have Office vision

This sample demonstrates how to migrate an existing Word VBA solution to a Visual Studio Tools for Office solution.

Download: Migrating Microsoft Word VBA Solutions to Visual Studio Tools for Office Sample

ActiveWin interviewed Steve Ballmer and asked him about anything including the MVP Program on which I would like to say; “Thanks, and you’re welcome! :-)”

ActiveWin.com: How do you feel the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program has impacted Microsoft customers and technical communities worldwide?

Steve Ballmer: MVPs have a tremendous impact on Microsoft customers and technical communities worldwide, and their passion for technology is inspiring. Their commitment to helping customers optimize their use of Microsoft technologies is key, as is the feedback they provide, which is vital to product development and R&D. When I spoke at this year’s MVP summit, it was the largest ever, with MVPs representing 63 countries. We can’t thank the MVPs enough for their contributions.

View full interview: Interview with Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer (CEO): Microsoft Corporation

Deploying a Worldwide Site Consolidation Solution for Exchange Server 2003 at Microsoft Detailed discussion on how Microsoft IT used Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Office System 2003 to enable a consolidation of Exchange sites from 75 to just seven worldwide. To accomplish this task, the IT Messaging team gathered and analyzed detailed wide area network (WAN)-level network measurements on a site-by-site basis to determine if consolidation was viable. It then consolidated its mailbox server infrastructure on Windows server clusters using storage area network (SAN) storage enclosures. Follow-up network measurements were taken after each group of sites was migrated to ensure latency and performance requirements were met.

Download: Deploying a Worldwide Site Consolidation Solution for Exchange Server 2003 at Microsoft

Free Web-based training courses on Office Online are one of the best ways to gain valuable expertise on the Microsoft Office System programs. What’s in a course?

Easy-to-understand audio and visual aids.
Fully integrated practice sessions that use the actual application.
Self-evaluation tests that confirm your understanding.
Quick Reference Cards to refer to after you’ve taken the course.

If you already own a Microsoft Office 2003 product, you have access to these Web-based courses. If you do not own an Office 2003 product, you can learn about these courses by taking a special tour. You can also download a Microsoft Office Word 2003 document to view the content of the Quick Reference Cards.

Download: Office 2003 Publication: Office Online Training Courses Quick Reference Cards Content

The Microsoft Outlook Web Access 2003 Web-based Administration tool provides a long-awaited way of easily (and safely) making UI changes that previously required direct manipulation of the registry.

View: Microsoft Outlook Web Access 2003 Web-based Administration
Download: Exchange 2003: Outlook Web Access Web Administration

Exchange Server 2003 Cluster Configuration Checklist Discussion of the top cluster configuration issues developed through the operational experience of Microsoft IT that can adversely affect the performance and stability of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. By addressing the cluster configuration concerns outlined in this document, IT shops will prevent many of the most common problems that affect Exchange.

Download: Exchange Server 2003 Clustering Quality Assurance Checklist

The Bush administration will not immediately create a national do-not-spam registry to discourage unwanted e-mails, saying using current technology to do so might generate even more unsolicited sales pitches across the Internet, according to documents obtained Tuesday.

The Federal Trade Commission, expected to announce its decision later in the day, said it feared that unscrupulous senders of unwanted e-mails would mine such a registry of e-mail addresses looking for new victims, according to a summary of the FTC’s decision obtained by The Associated Press.

The commission, which was obligated to consider the proposal under the “can spam” legislation that Bush signed in December, concluded that it would be “largely powerless to identify those responsible for misusing the registry.”

View full article: U.S. declines to create do-not-spam list

With today’s use of e-mail you almost can’t afford to loose a single e-mail so let alone your entire mail archive. This guide is all about backing up and restoring your Outlook Data. It describes various methods and explains which method is best to be used in which scenarios.

How To: Backup and Restore

This download is a collection of sample files for use with the Introduction to XML in Word 2003 training course on Office Online.

Download: Word 2003 Sample: Practice files for Introduction to XML

Editing the HTML source code has been made very easy in Outlook Express. In Microsoft Office Outlook… well, not so much and I doubt whether the tool available has actually been designed for this since the process is anything but intuitive. But it can be done! Click the link below for detailed instructions.

How To: Edit the HTML Source Code while composing a Message

The Redmond, Wash., company, in an effort to slow the a barrage of junk e-mail directed at its customers, filed four lawsuits on Wednesday and four others on June 2, each naming at least 20 defendants whose identities are not known.

“These are high-volume spammers that are responsible for sending hundreds of millions of spam messages,” said Tim Cranton, a senior lawyer at Microsoft. The company also named Florida resident John Hites, who as recently as November was listed as one of the world’s top 10 spammers by Spamhaus, a nonprofit antispam group in Britain.

Microsoft said Mr. Hites is connected to HB Systems and Ads Inc., two foreign companies thought to have operations in the United States. Pin Point Media, a company based in either Coral Springs, Fla., or Weston, Fla., also was named. Mr. Hites and representatives from the three companies could not be reached for comment. Microsoft said it hopes to identify unknown defendants through the discovery process. It is seeking injunctions against the defendants and could collect as much as $1 million in civil fines from each one.

View full article: Microsoft sues 200 accused ‘spammers’

Journaling with Exchange 2003
Originally posted May 2004. Reposted June 9, 2004. See Additional Information for details. This guide discusses how the enhancements to the Journaling feature in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) (and Exchange 2000 Server SP3, with the envelope journaling software update) makes messaging data more manageable for a broader compliance solution.

Exchange Server 2003 Message Security Guide
Reposted 1/19/2004. See Additional Information for details. 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.

Exchange Server 2003 Disaster Recovery Operations Guide
Originally posted May 2004. Reposted June 9, 2004. See Additional Information for details. This guide explains how to back up and restore the critical data in your Exchange organization.

HowTo-Outlook

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