Exchange & Meeting Request Reminders

Exchange 2007 puts an end to “'reminder spam” and overrides the sender's reminder, using the recipients default reminder settings. This works great, except for all day events without reminders. Exchange sets them to use the default appointment reminder, which many people leave at 15 minutes. Unfortunately for anyone who syncs their mailbox with a handheld device, the reminder on their device goes off at 11:45 PM. The administrator can fix this quite easily by installing Exchange 2007 Rollup 4.

For more information, see
A meeting reminder is still active when you configure Outlook to send no reminders to an Exchange Server 2007 user
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945854 

Sender and Recipient Spam

Many of us are inundated with spam where our address is used in both the To and From fields. There are several things administrators and users can do to reduce the effects of this spam.

Administrators should publish SPF records for the email domains and configure their Exchange server or spam filter to reject mail that doesn't come from an allowed server. They can also configure the spam filter to blacklist mail to and from their own domain. This works because internal users typically send mail to other internal users without going through the SMTP server or spam filter. Note that this may block messages from 'send this article' links and web forms.

Users are limited in what they can do to fight it, fortunately a rule should handle it quite well. The rule should read as follows:
       If to [my address] and from [my address], delete.
Note that this will prevent users from CCing or BCCing themselves or sending themselves 'send this article' links.

Exchange ActiveSync and Public Folder Contacts

An administrator recently asked "We have a Public folder for contacts. Can we synchronize all mobile devices (using ActiveSync) with this public folder?"

No, you can't do that using ActiveSync. One major limitation of ActiveSync is that it can sync only the default folders in your mailbox, however there are third party tools which may work for you. See http://www.slipstick.com/addins/olpda.asp#tools for a list. Some of these tools do not require Exchange server and will give any Outlook user the ability to sync additional folders with their device.

Office 2007—Military Appreciation Edition

Qualified persons can purchase Office Standard 2007—Military Appreciation Edition for just $49.99. This “special edition” includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. The offer is valid through the end of June 2009 and is for members of the US military only.
See http://www.microsoft.com/office/offers/military/?WT.srch=1  for more information.

The Ultimate steal promotion for college students is still available. Qualified students can purchase Office Ultimate for a great price. This offer is available to students in several other countries. This promotion is scheduled to end in Dec 2010.
Details are at http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx