Tag Archives: Outlook

Outlook versions supporting Personal Archives and Retention Policies

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Outlook 2013 IconIn an earlier article here, I mentioned which Outlook 2010 versions were eligible for Personal Archives.

Now, with the release of Office 2013, and Outlook 2013 in particular, it’s good to get an update on the Outlook versions and their support of Personal Archives and Retention Policies in Exchange Server 2010 or Exchange Server 2013.

The following Outlook versions support Personal Archives and Retention Policies:

Retail Licenses Volume Licenses
  • Outlook 2013 stand-alone
  • Outlook 2010 stand-alone
  • Outlook 2007 stand-alone
  • Outlook 2007 included with Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007
  • Outlook 2013 stand-alone
  • Outlook 2013 included with Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013
  • Outlook 2010 stand-alone
  • Outlook 2010 included with Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
  • Outlook 2007 stand-alone
  • Outlook 2007 included with Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007
  • Outlook 2007 included with Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007

Few notes:

  • As mentioned here, Outlook 2007 doesn’t support adjusting retention policies;
  • Personal Archives and Retention Policies require an Microsoft Exchange Server Enterprise Client Access License.

Discontinued support of ActiveSync in GMail

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TechTarget QuoteFew days ago, Stuart J. Johnston of TechTarget approached me and several other Exchange fellows to ask how we thought the discontinued support of ActiveSync in GMail, part of Google’s “Winter Cleaning” operation, would impact users. You can read Stuart’s article here.

For reference and because Stuart only used a single quote from my (I think) extensive response, I’ve included my take on the situation below. Interestingly, today it turns out Google lost an ActiveSync patent case against Microsoft in a British court. Exchange fellow Tony Redmond did a nice writeup on that case and his personal involvement in that case here.

PS: I’ve already asked Stuart to fix my last name in the quote.

Regarding the discontinued support of ActiveSync in GMail, I think impact on both the Exchange as well as the GMail population varies.

First of all, the measure is aimed at new, free GMail accounts. I don’t know exact numbers, but I can imagine the number of people still not having a free GMail account is relatively minimal. Also, EAS will remain available to paid accounts.

Second, EAS is a means – no end – to synchronize information like mail, contacts or agenda. Consumers will adapt and switch to alternative protocols (or plugins) to synchronize this information between their Google account and their device. I think the effect of the information exchange becoming less efficient and the lack of information push is negligible.

Thirdly, Android and iPhone – covering 85% over the smartphone market – provide apps specifically aimed at GMail or other Google services. For those not using Google’s apps, the end user experience may be affected and all the additional tools required to fully synchronize with desktops won’t help.

Worst off are Windows Phone users or Windows 8 users using the built-in Mail app (Surface RT). While the Windows Phone user base may be relatively small, the Windows 8 user base is growing and they are both forced to use IMAP, which only does mail and there are – AFAIK – no *DAV apps in the Store to synchronize calendar or contact information.

While I do understand Google’s case, which is probably more a cost reduction and (resource) focus shift measure rather than another act in the Google vs Microsoft war, I also believe there might be a fair chance of Google shooting itself in the foot by dropping EAS. Microsoft’s free outlook.com service keeps supporting EAS (not surprisingly) and Microsoft has already taken up on plugging outlook.com as the alternative for Google

Finally, I’m in favor of competition which drives innovation. The whole GMail versus Hotmail/Office365 is no exception. However, it gets annoying when vendors drop functionality end users are accustomed to, making them have to put energy into looking at solutions or alternatives, which may become tiresome at some point.

Important Hotfix for Outlook 2013 Preview

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Microsoft released a quick fix for a nasty bug in Outlook 2013 Preview, part of the Office Professional Plus 2013 Preview. The related knowledgebase article is kb2737132.

Note: Despite the warning that goes with pre-release software about not using it in production environments, I assume Microsoft knows people will and decided to produce a hotfix so quickly, which is quite unusual for preview software, also looking at the potential consequences.

The bug causes everything, i.e. e-mail, contacts, appointments and tasks, to be deleted permanently from an Exchange server when using the Cleanup Tools from Outlook. Nothing is recoverable through the Recover Deleted Items option.

To install the hotfix, follow one of the links below, depending on your architecture:

Storing Replies with Received Items

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Not directly Exchange related but mail-related, I’d like to mention a function in Outlook which could make organizing e-mail a lot easier, depending on if and how you organize them of course.

Normally, when replying to an e-mail in Outlook, it will store a copy of that message in the Sent Items folder of that account. That is, assuming you have 1 Exchange account set up or multiple in conjunction with the DelegateSentItemsStyle setting as described here.

Now after a while, your Sent Items folder will be full of messages sent over the past period. For received messages you may have created folders and perhaps rules to automatically organize incoming e-mail in projects or customers folders. Wouldn’t it be nice if you can keep those messages with their replies automatically, instead of having to organize your Sent Items by manually distributing its contents over the projects and customers folders?

Well, you can actually, and it’s a setting in Outlook. Open up the File > Options and select the Mail settings. In the right pane, check the When replying to a message that is not in the Inbox, save the reply in the same folder setting:

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Note that this setting in pre-Outlook 2010 versions is called In Folders Other Than The Inbox, Save Replies With Original Message.

Now when you reply to a message, it will save the reply in the same folder unless the message was in the Inbox.

Note that this setting will apply to all accounts and personal folders.

Office 365 and “There are no items to show in this folder”

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Be advised that when accessing shared mailboxes on Office 365 using Outlook in online mode, you may experience an issue with Outlook not properly updating the mailbox view.

Instead, Outlook will return a “There are no items to show in this view” message. The folder in the folder navigation pane displayed the proper number of (unread) items in the folder.

This could be the symptom of an issue which was already solved in Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 Rollup 5. It seems the Office 365 data centers are not running a current version of Exchange, as today I received the message the Office 365 environment is currently being upgraded with Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2. The message also mentions the upgrade is to be completed at the end of the month.

More information on the issue in knowledge base articles kb2500648, announcing the fix is included in Exchange 2010 SP1 RU5.

Until then, the suggested workaround is to click one of the columns twice after which Outlook will update the view properly. Of course, you could also enable cached mode, if your setup and company policy permits (e.g. not running Outlook on terminal server).

Delegated Sent and Deleted Items behavior

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Many people using Outlook access multiple mailboxes, either because the mailbox is shared or they are a delegate (e.g. they have send-as permissions). What many users find confusing is that by default, Outlook will put the copies of all sent messages in the Sent Items folder of the default account. For example, when Peter sends a message as John, users expect Outlook to put the message in the Sent Items of John. Also, when Peter deletes a message from John’s mailbox, it will end up in Peter’s Deleted Items folder.

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Luckily, this behavior can be altered for Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 using two registry settings. In order for these setting to work, Outlook needs to have a certain hotfix; which hotfix depends on the Outlook version used. Note that a later service pack or hotfix may already contain this setting:

To enable the different Sent Items behavior, you need to create or edit the a value named DelegateSentItemsStyle, type REG_DWORD and set it to 1 (default is 0 or not present). The location of the registry value is HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Outlook\Preferences, where <version> depends on the Outlook version used; use 11 for Outlook 2003, 12 for Outlook 2007 or 14 for Outlook 2010.

To alter the Deleted Items behavior, create or edit a value named DelegateWasteBasketStyle, type REG_DWORD and set it to 4 (default is 8 or not present). The location of the registry value is HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Outlook\Options\General; for version number use one of the values mentioned before.

After implementing these registry values, either manually or by publishing them in group policies, sent items and deleted items will be stored with the mailbox:

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Note: these registry keys only work when using Outlook in Cached Mode; more information in kb2703723.

 

Disabling Distribution Group Expansion in Outlook

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A customer was using moderated distribution groups and asked if it was possible to disable the expansion of distribution groups in Outlook. As you probably know, after entering a distribution group in the address bar, Outlook will show a “+” sign next to it which will let you replace the distribution group with all its members as recipients. Especially with moderated distribution groups this might be found an issue, because customers might want to hide membership information from senders.

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Unfortunately, hiding isn’t  a real option because distribution groups are universal distribution groups and its members are readable. Fiddling around with the ACL sounds like a viable option (remove permissions to read members) but sounds like a potential cause for other issues so I’m not fond of that.

What you could do is remove the option to expand the distribution group setting one of the following a registry keys, depending on your Outlook client version:

Outlook 2010
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Options\Mail\DisableDLExpansion=1 (REG_DWORD)

Outlook 2007
HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Options\Mail\DisableDLExpansion=1 (REG_DWORD)

Outlook 2003 or earlier
Outlook 2003 or earlier versions don’t have this option.

After you set this key and restart Outlook, you’ll see the “+” sign is gone:

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If you want to roll out this change throughout your organization, use this key in a custom GPO template or utilize the GPO templates that ship with Office (Outlk14.adm or Outlk12.adm depending on version) and configure the GPO accordingly.

Be advised that setting this registry key disables expansion for all distribution groups. Specifically disabling it for moderated groups is impossible, since Outlook has – and should have – no knowledge of the type of distribution group.

Note that the distribution group expansion option is something typical of the Windows version of Outlook, since Outlook for Mac nor Outlook WebApp (OWA) have this option.

MsExchQueryBaseDN and Exchange 2010 SP1

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Note: At TechEd NA 2011 session EXL326, announcing Exchange 2010 SP2 features (e.g. GAL segmentation), Greg Taylor stated that SP1 breaks MsExchQueryBaseDN in Exchange 2010. This might explain the behaviour as described in this article.

As you may know, the msExchQueryBaseDN attribute can be used to limit a user’s scope of the global address book and address searches (also see kb817218). This is helpful for restricting access in environments consisting of multiple organizations or organizations with a substantial  number of mail-enabled objects. The attribute is part of the user object and you configure it by pointing it to a DN of the OU or address list of choice, e.g. OU=sales,DC=company,DC=com. Note that by default msExchQueryBaseDN is empty, so that user will search the whole domain the user’s part of.

With Exchange 2010 SP1, the following unexpected behavior is encountered in Outlook when you’ve set the msExchQueryBaseDN attribute:

msExchQueryBaseDN Set
When msExchQueryBaseDN is set to a valid DN, Outlook WebApp (OWA) will show the default global address with elements from the configured msExchQueryBaseDN downwards. Outlook 2007/2010 will show an empty global address list; other global address lists are invisible. Searching the address book in OWA works, in Outlook it doesn’t because Outlook thinks the address list is empty:

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Note that if the structure contains many elements, opening the global address list in OWA may result in the following exception:

Url: https://…/owa/forms/premium/SubPageContainer.aspx?ae=AddressList&t=Recipients&subpage=DirectoryView.ascx
User host address: …
User: Blake, Francis
EX Address: /o=…
SMTP Address: francis@eightwone.com
OWA version: 14.1.270.1
Mailbox server: ex2010a.domain.local
Exception
Exception type: Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.ADVlvSizeLimitExceededException
Exception message: Active Directory operation failed on ex2010a.domain.local. There are too many entries which exceed limit of Virtual List View. Additional information: The directory service encountered an unknown failure. Active directory response: 000020EF: SvcErr: DSID-03140350, problem 5010 (UNAVAIL_EXTENSION), data 0

The message indicates it tries to fit too many elements in the list.

MsExchQueryBaseDN cleared
When msExchQueryBaseDN is cleared, Outlook and OWA will show the default global address list as well as other address lists. Also, even though the number of elements is equal or larger than when msExchQueryBaseDN is set, the global address list will show in OWA. So, apparently the number of elements isn’t an issue, which makes the exception you get in OWA when msExchQueryBaseDN is set confusing.

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After some digging, I think this behavior is related to dropping address list segregation support for on-premises Exchange 2010 and moving several functions and support for it to Exchange 2010 hosting mode. A possible clue can be found in the Exchange 2010 mailbox attribute QueryBaseDNRestrictionEnabled, which description reads:

The QueryBaseDNRestrictionEnabled parameter specifies whether to restrict a user’s ability to view or search for other mailboxes in their organization. If this parameter is set to $true, the global address list (GAL) of the specified mailbox user isn’t populated. Specifically, if the user views the GAL, it will appear empty. If this parameter is set to $false, users can use the GAL to view all mailboxes in their organization, including mailboxes for which this parameter is set to $true. The default value is $false.

This empty GAL behavior when QueryBaseDNRestrictionEnabled is set to $true matches the behavior encountered when setting the msExchQueryBaseDN attribute.

So be advised that while we wait for Service Pack 2, of which the Exchange Team said it will contain some form of (still undisclosed) address list segregation (announcement here),you will run into the issues described above when using msExchQueryBaseDN in an Exchange 2010 SP1 environment.

To bulk clear the msExchQueryBaseDN attribute for a whole domain, execute the following command from the Exchange Management Shell:

Get-Mailbox –ResultSize Unlimited | ForEach {$o=[ADSI](“LDAP://”+$_.distinguishedName);$o.PutEx(1,”msExchQueryBaseDN”,0);$o.SetInfo()}

Updated: Added SP2 announcement mentioning to broken MsExchQueryBaseDN (May 18th).

Fix for Outlook 2007 Personal Archive update

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As announced early February, the Office team has released a fix for the Outlook 2007 Personal Archive issues. This fix is also integrated in the Office 2007 Cumulative Update for February 2011 (kb2493732).

The description of the Outlook fix included in this CU can be found at kb2475891.Unfortunately, it doesn’t mention any specific Personal Archive issues.

You can request the individual hotfix here.

Outlook 2007 personal archives issue, fix in Feb’11 CU

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The Exchange team put a notice up today on their website on an important update for Outlook 2007 regarding personal archive support on Exchange 2010. Unfortunately, the post doesn’t contain any information regarding the issue itself, only that it may result in inaccessible archives. The fix will be included in the February 2011 Cumulative Update for Office 2007, which is to be released later this February.

This Outlook 2007 personal archive support is becoming some story. After the the initial update enabling this functionality, Outlook 2007 Cumulative Update of December (kb2412171), the update was re-released in January to include 3 fixes (see kb2485531). Now we can expect another fix for an undisclosed issue.

I suggest keeping an eye on the Outlook team blog for updates regarding this issue.