This company has some great add-in tools for Outlook

A nice Exchange Website:  http://www.msexchange.org/  Good info...but behind the scenes is GFI that owns the site...so their products seem to get glowing reviews.

Outlook 2000 or above blocking attachments you need?  Try Slovaktech's Attachment Options tool.

INSTALL EXCHANGE SYSTEM MANAGER ON A WINDOWS XP CLIENT

Windows XP doesn't directly support installation of the Windows Server
2000 Administration Tools. Without the Windows 2000 Administration
Tools,
XP also doesn't support the Exchange System Manager. Thanks to the
release of Windows Server 2003, you can now install the Exchange System
Manager directly on your Windows XP system. The Microsoft Windows Server

2003 Administration Tools are supported under Windows XP, and you can
run
the Exchange System Manger under the Windows Server 2003 tools.

To install the Exchange System Manager on your XP-based system, make
sure your Windows XP system is running service pack 1 or greater. Next,
download and install the Exchange2000-KB815529-x86-ENU.exe package from
Microsoft's Web site.

This update tricks the Exchange 2000 setup program into believing that
the system has the Windows Server 2000 Administration Tools. To complete
the setup, install the Exchange System Management tools, and install the
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools (adminpack.msi). Once
completed, you can manage your Exchange 2000 environment from an XP
client
without a Terminal Services session.

 

DISABLE ACCESS TO OWA IN EXCHANGE 2000

In Exchange 5.5, there isn't a direct way to disable Outlook Web Access
(OWA) for individual users. As a workaround, though, you can use folder
permissions or user rights to deny access.

Exchange 2000 with Active Directory allows more direct control over OWA
access. To deny access to OWA in an Active Directory environment, follow
these steps:

1. Open Active Directory Users And Computers from the Administrative
Tools menu.

2. From the View menu, select Advanced Features.

3. In the left pane, select the Users object. (Note that the domain
users are now listed in the right pane.)

4. Right-click the user to whom you wish to deny access, and select
Properties.

5. Click Protocol Settings on the Exchange Advanced tab.

6. Click HTTP and then click Settings.

7. On HTTP Protocol Details, clear the Enable For Mailbox option.

8. Click OK to save changes and close out of the dialog boxes.

Restricting OWA access can be useful when server resources are limited,
and you want to be sure that you don't overtax them with too many users.
You might grant OWA access selectively, such as for your company's VIPs
and/or outside salespeople.
 

EXCHANGE 2000 KICKS IT UP A NOTCH WITH SP2
Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Exchange 2000 features some significant
usability enhancements to OWA and some great manageability improvements to
help administrators. See how you can benefit from this Exchange 2000
update.
 

RESOLVING MAIL SERVER PROBLEMS WITH NSLOOKUP AND TELNET
When e-mail doesn't go through, identifying the cause may be tricky and
time consuming. Nslookup and Telnet can provide the information you need
to help zero in on mail server problems. Nice Article at TechRepublic
 

Visit the Exchange and Outlook administrator site from Windows magazine- It has a wealth of information.

Check to see if your email server is working

Send an email message to echo@psi.com and it will send a message back to you!

LEARN HOW TO BUILD A DIGITAL DASHBOARD

Through sample download files, discover how to consolidate information needs with single-click access to collaborative resources.

http://www.microsoft.com/education/default.asp?ID=DigitalDashTutorial

http://www.microsoft.com/education/technical/dashboard.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/education/ddsolnf.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/dd/default.asp

DEPLOYING MICROSOFT OUTLOOK FORMS IN EDUCATION

This Solutions paper shows how to install and use Microsoft Outlook Forms that include data from an external database. This paper also shows how to install and use the Exchange Server 5.5 Routing Wizard. You will learn what's involved in integrating data from an external database with Outlook Forms and how to distribute Outlook Forms for use by faculty, staff, and students.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/education/

Great site for Outlook Web Access Information!

ARCHIVE ARTICLES TO A PUBLIC FOLDER

How often have you wished you had kept some or all of the technical

articles you receive from the various list services you subscribe to? If

you archive the articles to a public folder, not only can you search

through them for a specific topic at a later time, but others can also

access them. I have found the easiest way to archive them to a folder is

to use the Rules Wizard to create a rule whereby all messages that come

from specific news feeds are automatically copied to a designated public

folder as soon as they arrive.

To automatically archive specific messages to a public folder:

1. Create a public folder and name it TechNews. Determine the folder's

email address (e.g., technews@company.com--get assistance from your

email administrator if necessary).

2. Save the email address of that public folder to your Outlook

Contacts.

3. Use the Rules Wizard to establish the auto-forward rule. Specify that

it's a Server based rule if prompted. The rules to apply are as

follows:

- Select "Check messages when they arrive" as the type of rule to

create.

- Select "With specific words in the subject" as the condition to

check.

- Under Rule Description, click the "specific words" link. A new

screen appears where you can add the subject text to search for (e.g.,

Windows 2000 Magazine, Exchange & Outlook UPDATE, TechNet Flash).

- Select "Forward it to people or distribution list."

- In the Rule description box, click the link people or distribution

list and select the email address of the public folder that you saved in

your Outlook Contacts folder.

- Click Finish and don't add any exceptions.

Now when you receive these valuable tips and news items in your Inbox,

they're automatically archived to a public folder for future research.

THREE METHODS FOR CLEANING UP AN EXCHANGE SERVER

Okay, so you have your data retention policy in place and you're ready

to clean up your Exchange server. TechRepublic's Christopher Tellez

discusses three methods available to the Exchange administrator to get

the job done.

Exchange 2000 Server Upgrade --Plan and Deploy Your Upgrade

Successful upgrades require careful planning and our Exchange 2000 Server Upgrade Series Planning Guide (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/exchange/guide/planhl.asp) can help you think through the issues. Once you've got a plan in place, the Deployment Guide (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/exchange/guide/deployhl.asp), generously illustrated with screen shots, walks you through all the necessary steps. The series includes a number of job aids (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/exchange/guide/jobaidhl.asp) to make the transition smoother.

Team Folders

Microsoft promoted the folder home page concept shortly after Outlook

2000 launched, using

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads/TFWizard.htm to make the

Team Folders add-in available for download. Intended to jump-start the

use of Exchange Server public folders, Team Folders provides attractive,

self-documenting collaboration spaces. When created with the Team

Folders Wizard, a Team Folder shows visitors a Web page containing the

folder's data. Visitors use buttons to change views, create new items,

and perform other tasks.

OUTLOOK TEAM CALENDAR

The Outlook Team Calendar is a free folder home page application for

Outlook 2000. In a Web page running in Outlook, it displays appointments

for a group of people and can be localized in French or German. You can

reuse much of the code from the application's HTML page in other folder

home page applications.

A lot of confusion exists about placing Microsoft Exchange servers in
a network demilitarized zone (DMZ). Questions range from whether you
should place Exchange servers in the DMZ to how you configure such
servers. This week, I discuss the reasons you might locate Exchange
servers in the DMZ and some protective measures you need to take if
you do.

If you make any Exchange services available over the Internet, you
need to set up an Exchange server in the DMZ. For example, if your
Exchange server accepts inbound SMTP mail from the Internet, you must
provide an SMTP connection to your Exchange server. Also, many
companies place front-end Outlook Web Access (OWA) servers in the DMZ
to let users access their mailboxes over a secure HTTP connection. If
your organization requires news feeds (through Network News Transfer
Protocol--NNTP), you might need an NNTP presence in your DMZ. Other
services that might require an Exchange service in the DMZ include
Instant Messaging (IM) services, conferencing services, and custom
applications.

When you need to locate an Exchange server in the DMZ, you have
several options for protecting the server. If you have a firewall in
place, you might be able to locate the firewall proxy connections to
your Exchange server inside the firewall so that the server isn't
directly exposed to the Internet. This approach is common for services
such as SMTP. When you don't have a proxy firewall, you need to set up
some ACLs on the router that handles traffic to and from the Internet.
Typically, the configuration on your Internet perimeter will have
multiple zones that lead to a multitiered architecture. In such cases,
you must limit inbound traffic to your Exchange servers to the
specific services you want the servers to accept (e.g., SMTP, HTTP).
Likewise, you must let only specified services travel to the Internet
from your Exchange servers.

If you use standard management tools to administer and manage Exchange
servers in the DMZ, you might need to implement special
configurations. For example, when you locate OWA servers in the DMZ,
you need to open TCP ports 80 (HTTP), 443 (Single Sockets Layer--SSL--
port for HTTP), 389 (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol--LDAP), and
3268 (Global Catalog--GC) because OWA uses these ports to serve
clients. However, to manage the OWA server from inside the firewall,
you also need to open certain remote procedure call (RPC) ports.
Management tools such as Exchange System Manager (ESM) won't work
unless you configure these ports and services to pass through the
firewall.

Planning the connection and deployment of Exchange services in the DMZ
can seem daunting. A good place to start is your Exchange Server
documentation. Also, read the following Microsoft articles for more
details about configuring Exchange services with firewalls.

"XGEN: TCP/UDP Ports Used By Exchange 2000 Server"
   http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q278339

"XCCC: Exchange 2000 Windows 2000 Connectivity Through Firewalls"
   http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q280132

"XADM: Setting TCP/IP Port Numbers for Internet Firewalls"
   http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q148732
 

ExInfo is a
small Visual Basic (VB) application that runs locally on an Exchange
2000 server and provides diagnostic and system-state data about the
server as well as a lot of Active Directory (AD) information. For its
primary interface, ExInfo uses Windows 2000's Windows Management
Instrumentation (WMI), which is Microsoft's implementation of Web-
Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) technology. ExInfo uses WMI queries
on the local Exchange 2000 server and queries to AD to provide a great
deal of useful information. ExInfo is primarily a query and reporting
tool; it doesn't make any configuration changes unless you
specifically program that functionality through the tool's scripting
interface. To use ExInfo, you must be running Exchange 2000 Service
Pack 1 (SP1) or later and Win2K SP1 or later. When you run the tool on
the local server, you must log on with sufficient permissions to
access WMI, AD, and any items that the scripts you plan to execute
might require.

ExInfo's GUI has three tabs that represent the tool's main functions:
Information Collection, Custom Scripting, and File Collection. The
Information Collection function gathers information from the WMI
interface and AD (through a connection to a Global Catalog--GC--
server). You can view this information from the GUI, or you can have
ExInfo generate a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Data
Interchange Format (LDIF) dump file of the Configuration Container. In
addition, ExInfo can output the information to HTML-based reports. The
Information Collection tab lists several information containers,
including Organization-Wide Data, for objects such as administrative
groups, servers, Internet message formats, recipient policies, process
and services list, logical disks list, and Exchange WMI classes. The
WMI information is a little slim, but Microsoft will expose more and
more Exchange information through WMI in future Exchange releases.
Another interesting option in this tab view lets you execute a built-
in script that queries the GC and performs an integrity check of
Exchange 2000 recipient and configuration information in AD.

The Custom Scripts tab is simply an interface that lets you execute
custom scripts and display script output and error messages on the
viewer pane and save those messages to a log file. You can specify
whether subsequent script executions append or overwrite log file
output.

The File Collection tab is a GUI for compressed cabinet format (CAB)
file creation. File Collection lets an administrator package any of
the scripts or files that ExInfo creates (or any file on the server)
into a CAB file.

If you're looking for a tool to gather data for your Exchange 2000
servers or if you want a convenient way to execute scripts or view
Exchange WMI information, take a look at ExInfo. The tool is free from
Microsoft PSS and comes with the standard disclaimers about limited
support. For more information, visit the following URL:
   http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q305/8/16.asp
 

Security for your Exchange servers:

"Security Operations Guide for Exchange 2000 Server"
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/prodtech/mailexch/opsguide/default.asp

"Configuration and Security Update Recommendations for Exchange 2000"
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/deployment/2000/bestconfig.asp

"Configuring Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server for the Internet"
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/deployment/2000/e2kinternetconfig.asp

"Exchange 2000 Front-End and Back-End Topology"
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/deployment/2000/e2kfrontback.asp
 

EXCHANGE 2000 SERVER TOP 50 "HOT ISSUE" ARTICLES
   See a list of the 50 Microsoft articles that can help you perform
the most common tasks in Exchange 2000 Server. Top subjects include
the Exchange Mailbox Merge program, setting up SMTP domains for
inbound and relay email, configuring the SMTP Connector, and manually
removing an Exchange 2000 installation.
   http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/support/exch2000/e2khottopics.asp

 

ADDING HOLIDAYS TO THE OUTLOOK CALENDAR

The calendar might say September, but 2003 will be here before you
know it. It isn't too early to start thinking about how you and your
Outlook users will fill your Calendar folders with next year's
holidays. Outlook 2000 users especially should be interested in this
topic because the holiday lists that Microsoft provided with that
version run only through this year. (Outlook 98 and Outlook 97 ran out
of holiday lists earlier.) Let's look at the typical way users add
holidays to Outlook, then discuss alternatives you might want to
consider between now and New Year's Eve.

The built-in way to add holidays to Outlook is for the end user to
choose Tools, Options; click Calendar Options; then click Add
Holidays. The Add Holidays to Calendar dialog box lists holidays by
country and religion. Users select the check boxes for the country or
religion whose holidays they want to import, then click OK to add the
selected holidays to the default Calendar folder.

The holiday information that ships with Outlook is in a text file
named outlook.hol in Outlook 2002 and outlook.txt in Outlook 2000 and
earlier versions. One way to distribute a new list of holidays is to
edit this file, adding the new holidays and a heading for them. Put
the edited file on the end user's machine (using a logon script, for
example), then tell the user to use the method above to select the
check box for the heading you added and import new holidays.

The major drawback of this method is that it can't create recurring
events. Instead of adding one New Year's Day event that recurs every
January 1, it requires you to add a holiday entry for January 1, 2003;
January 1, 2004; and so on.

If you want to provide recurring events for certain holidays, you can
use a different method that depends on the iCalendar (vCalendar 2.0)
standard. This method works only with Outlook 2002 because earlier
versions don't support recurring iCalendar events and can't chain
multiple iCalendar items together into a single file that Outlook can
import.

The first step is to create an individual iCalendar .ics file for each
holiday or other event that you want to distribute. To create an .ics
file for a recurring event, open the event from your Outlook Calendar
folder, choosing "Open the series" when prompted. Then, choose File,
Save As to save the item as an iCalendar .ics file.

The next step is to open each saved .ics file in Notepad. An .ics file
is nothing more than a text file in a specific format.

Next, open a blank instance of Notepad, in which you'll build one file
with the information from all the individual .ics files. Paste the
complete text of one .ics file into the blank Notepad file. Delete the
END:VCALENDAR line at the end of the file. From the next .ics file,
paste only the text from the BEGIN:VEVENT line through the END:VEVENT
line. Continue pasting from each .ics file until you get to the last
one. For this one, paste everything from BEGIN:VEVENT through the
final END:VCALENDAR line at the end. Choose File, Save As to save the
file with an .ics extension.

You can now distribute this file to users in an email message or over
your intranet. Instruct users to save the file to their local hard
drive. (They shouldn't open it directly as they usually do an .ics
file.) Next, users must select File, Import and Export in Outlook to
run the Import and Export Wizard. They should choose the "Import an
iCalendar or vCalendar file (.vcs)" option. After users select the
saved file and click OK, Outlook creates an item in the default
Calendar for each of the items pasted into the bulk iCalendar file.
You can also use this method to distribute company meeting notices and
other events in one file that users can import into Outlook 2002.

If you don't have a pure Outlook 2002 environment, I can offer one
more method--a custom Outlook form. After you publish this form in
your Organizational Forms library, you can use it to distribute
holiday information to anyone in your organization. Code behind the
form scans a folder in which you've placed the holidays or events you
want users to have and puts information about those appointment items
into the body of the message. When users get the message, they can
press a button to put all those items into their own Calendar folder.
This approach doesn't handle recurring items, but you can adapt it to
work with all versions of Outlook.