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Exchange Messaging Outlook Volume 10, Number 7 |
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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 10, No. 7,
Jun 23 2005, of Exchange
Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange
and Microsoft Outlook.
Today's highlights:
Regular features:
Outlook, Appointments, and Time ZonesAs anyone who has ever moved between time zones for business or pleasure knows, changing the time zone settings on the computer changes appointment times and causes all day events to span two days. It's very annoying at the least and can lead to missed appointments if you aren't aware of how Outlook works with times and time zones. Many people mistakenly believe Outlook uses 'absolute time' for appointments (and tasks or reminders), which means an appointment you enter for 2 PM will always stay on 2 PM, no matter how many times you change the time zone. This isn't how it works though. Outlook stores times as UTC time and reads the computer's time zone offset to display the appointment in the calendar. While this makes it easy to send meeting requests to people worldwide and makes using shared calendars much less confusing, it moves the appointment to a new time if you change the time zone on your computer. Keep in mind that this is the correct way to handle times and all email clients use the same method to display the sent and received times on email, so it's not 'an Outlook bug'. So what's a person to do when they need to change time zones? Outlook offers one little used feature than can make traveling between time zones much easier: dual time zones. When enabled, two time scales are displayed along the left edge of the planner view, making it easy to set appointments for the correct time in either time zone. Although I prefer not to, you can quickly swap between these time zones if you need to. To turn on dual time zone display, go to Tools, Options, Preferences tab, Calendar Options, Time Zone button and add a second time zone. Now when you view the calendar in a day planner format, you'll see two time scales displayed. You can right click on the scale and choose Time Zones to change zones or swap them. If you need to change time zones permanently, either because you moved or because you had the time zone or daylight time settings wrong, the easiest way to correct the appointments is to export the calendar to a non-Outlook format (Excel or CSV works well), then change the time zone settings and import the items back into Outlook.
When I travel, I prefer to leave the calendar alone and replace the Windows tray clock with one that can display multiple time zones. This allows me to see the correct local time and keeps appointments I created in my home time zone correct. Meeting requests created by a person in the time zone I'm visiting have the potential to cause confusion, but reminders will fire at the correct time for the meeting - using dual time zones will help to eliminate appointment time confusion. The worst thing you can do when you're traveling is change the computer time to match the 'local' time while leaving the time zone set for your home time zone. At the very least, this messes up file time stamps and your email will appear to be sent hours before or after the recipient receives it; at worst, it can prevent you from connecting to networks. Use a clock utility to display the local time if you rely on the computer's clock for the time and Outlook's dual time zone to make sure you have the correct time for appointments. Any Windows shareware site will have a large number of freeware and shareware clock utilities to choose from. My favorites include the Microsoft Time Zone power toy for Windows XP. It runs in the notification tray and displays different time zones in a balloon. One of it's cooler features is "Find times in..." for converting future times. For example, if someone sends you conference call details in a message, you can select a city in their time zone and the date and time of the call, then select your city so you know what time to create the appointment for. Two other nice time utilities are Chameleon Clock and 1st Clock. Both have many useful features, including a popup calendar, which is great for people who use the Windows Date/Time calendar as a calendar and forget they need to click Cancel, not Ok when finished. Along with the ability to set an absolute time on appointments, an often requested feature is the ability to set an appointment for a specific time zone, so that you could make an appointment for 2 PM and select the correct time zone. With this feature, appointment details sent in an email would not require extra thought to get the time right in an appointment. We'll have to wait and see if either of these features makes it into Outlook 12. Additional time utilities and updated information can be found at The Summer Book Giveaway
Last week's question solicited your opinions on the loss of public
folders from a future version of Exchange. I received a lot of great
comments and will use them in a future issue. Jon Howard was
selected as the winning entry and gets to choose between Jim Boyce's
Outlook Inside Out book from Microsoft Press or Digital Press's
Mission-Critical Microsoft Exchange 2003, written by Jerry Cochran.
This week's question comes from the tips archive at the Outlook Tips website:
The winner will receive an autographed copy of my book, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours. Send your answers to answers@slipstick.com and we'll select a winner from all entries. I'm taking the week of July 4 off to spend time with my grandkids and take in a baseball game or two, so you'll have until July 20, 2005 to answer this question and be entered in the drawing. Hide Public FoldersDo you use Exchange Server but don't want some users to see the
Exchange Server Public Folders so they aren't tempted to create
public folders or ask for some to be created for them? While you can't prevent Public Folders and Public Folder Favorites from displaying in Outlook's folder list, you can set the Default permissions to the public folders to None and remove the check mark from the Folder Visible option. You can do this from either Outlook or Exchange System Manager. Outlook 2003 doesn't include the public folder tree in the All Mail navigation pane, which will help to keep public folders out of sight for many users. Outlook: Email Doesn't Send
In the October 29, 2004 issue of EMO, I mentioned a problem where
email won't send if you look at the unsent mail in the Outbox and
have one of several add-ins installed, including the OneNote power
toy. This is not the only cause of problems sending email in Outlook. If your symptom is new mail won't send but replies will, verify you have a default email account set. This seems to happen more frequently if you created the first (or only) account in the profile using an automatic script or configuration file provided by your email provider. When mail sends fine after you first open Outlook but then stops sending until you close and reopen Outlook (or reboot the computer), it's caused by something that is accessing Outlook's data. The MSN Search toolbar does it for me, but other programs may cause this behavior as well. Even with the Search tool closed (Exited), it affected Outlook's ability to send. I decided it wasn't worth testing to find out of disabling Outlook searching would correct the problem and uninstalled it. When you can receive mail but can't send, check your SMTP authentication settings (on the outgoing server tab under the More Settings button in your profile). Some anti-spam addins and firewalls affect your ability to send email. Disable Outlook integration in the anti-spam or antivirus application and verify the correct version of Outlook has permission to access the Internet through the firewall. If the authentication settings are correct and you aren't using anti-spam or antivirus software to scan outgoing email, check the error message on the Send/Receive dialog and enter the error code in your favorite search engine. Many ISPs, along with the Microsoft KB, have troubleshooting information for common error codes and the general information applies to both Outlook and Outlook Express and all mail servers. Details, including where to look for a specific setting or the correct SMTP server names, will vary with the program or ISP of course. |
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New Utilities |
AD BULK CONTACTS ALLOCATUS ASTERISK BLUEINBOX CALLPLAN CRM FOR OUTLOOK CLOUDMARK EXCHANGE EDITION CLOUDMARK SAFETYBAR IMI CONTACTS EXPORTER OFFICE CENTRAL ONLETTERHEAD LINKEDIN OUTLOOK TOOLBAR WINDEVELOPER IMF TUNE |
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Updated Utilities |
BUSINESS CONTACT MANAGER FOR OUTLOOK 2003 http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/contactmanager/prodinfo/update.mspx Version 2 of Business Contact Manager for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 is now available for download. This update adds Pocket PC syncing (separate download) and database sharing capabilities. Available by download or order a CD. For more information, visit the Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update website at http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/contactmanager/prodinfo/default.mspx. You must be a licensed user of Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003 or Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 to use this update. MESSAGE CLASSIFICATION FOR MICROSOFT OUTLOOK OUTLOOK ADVANCED QUOTING ADD-IN ORF ENTERPRISE EDITION WINZIP COMPANION FOR OUTLOOK |
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Other Resources |
CREATING OUTLOOK ADD-INS WITH VISUAL STUDIO 2005 TOOLS FOR OFFICE http://www.outlookcode.com/vsto/index.htm Contains code samples to help you learn how to write code with VSTO, along with links to other VSTO resources. DESCRIPTION OF THE OUTLOOK 2003 JUNK E-MAIL FILTER UPDATE: JUNE 2005 SHAREPOINT AND OUTLOOK 2003 DEMO INTEGRATION SITE |
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New Exchange Knowledge Base Articles |
Event ID 1221 reports less free space than should be the case http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=555323 The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service unexpectedly quits on an
Exchange Server 2003 computer An empty value is returned when you try to access a multivalued binary property
by using Exchange OLE DB Provider Backfill requests for some public folders are never completed on an Exchange
Server 2003 computer A handle is leaked if you restore a mailbox store by using a Volume Shadow Copy
Service-based program, but you do not restore the logs in Exchange Server 2003 The IIS Admin Service may crash when an Outlook Web Access client uploads an
empty message in Outlook Web Access for Exchange Server 5.5 You cannot replicate public folders in Exchange Server 5.5 |
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New Outlook Knowledge Base Articles |
Address information may not be added in the correct address fields when you add
a new contact to the Contact address book in Outlook 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=893713 Description of the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 1 hotfix
package: May 23, 2005 |
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More Information |
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