Enabling/Disabling Cached Exchange Mode through the Registry (5 November, 2006)

Cached Exchange Mode is new in Outlook 2003. If makes a local copy of the Exchange Mailbox. The benefits of enabling this is reducing network traffic, faster responds time of the Outlook client (especially with large attachments), being able to use the Junk E-mail Filter and being able to work off-line.

When you create a new profile in Outlook 2003 Cached Exchange mode is enabled by default. When you upgrade from a previous Outlook version with an Exchange mailbox to Outlook 2003 Cached Exchange mode is disabled by default.

This makes it really hard to determine and control remotely whether your clients have Cached Exchange Mode enabled.

Enabling/Disabling Cached Exchange Mode can be controlled though the registry. This allows you to enable/disable it with a simple logon script to create a standard in your organization without the need of forcing the recreation of the entire profile at start-up or visit each client.

View: Enabling/Disabling Cached Exchange Mode through the Registry

     Backup and Restore (5 November, 2006)

With today’s use of e-mail you almost can’t afford to lose 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.
View: Backup and Restore

     Allow Automatic Forwarding/Replying to the Internet (5 November, 2006)

As a secure default Exchange doesn’t allow sending automatic forwards, replies and Out of Office Assistant Messages to the Internet. The security in this is that there can’t be created any mail loops and that Exchange doesn’t reply to any spam messages which might lead to spam attacks. If you still
want to disable this behaviour after careful consideration you can do this in the following way;

View: Allow Automatic Forwarding/Replying to the Internet

     Adding Sound and Scrolling Text (5 November, 2006)

I’ve previously described the proper and built-in method to add a background sound or scrolling text into an Outlook message here. However since Windows XP SP2 this method is no longer supported as SP2 disables the ActiveX component (because of security issues) that controls this functionality. Since there is no fix announced to revive this feature for any version of Office and running Windows XP without SP2 also isn’t a real option I wrote this workaround which describes a safe method to insert sound and/or scrolling text to an e-mail.

1. Download the zip-archive containing the templates here and extract it.
2. Modify the templates to point to the soundclip (on the web) you want to use or the text you want to scroll. I recommend opening the files in Notepad for easy editing.
3. Create a new HTML formatted message with Outlook as your e-mail editor. If Word is set as your default editor use Actions-> New E-mail Using-> Microsoft Office Outlook. Then make sure Format-> HTML is selected.
4. Choose Insert-> File… and browse to the location of the template
5. Select the file and press the little down arrow on the Insert button. Select Insert As Text.

Note
When you choose to insert background music you won’t actually see anything. In fact for Outlook 2003 users; when you have “Automatic download prevention” enabled you won’t hear any sound either unless you have added yourself to the Safe Senders-list! This also is true on the receiving end; when you are not marked as a Safe Sender on the receiving end the sound will not play.

     Adding Sound to Your E-mail (5 November, 2006)

Adding sound to a mail message in Outlook Express is pretty straight forward; Forward-> Background-> Sound. In Microsoft Office Outlook it isn’t that straight forward at all. It is even quite hard to find. Probably because Microsoft Office Outlook is targeted to a more business public than a home user one. But if you look a bit closer you’ll find that you can do a lot more fun stuff Microsoft Office Outlook than Outlook Express. This guide not only instructs you how to add a sound to an e-mail but also leads you to options to let you add stuff like scrolling text or even a movie!

Update: Sadly this method is broken when you are running Windows XP SP2 click here for a method that also works on Windows XP with SP2 installed.

1. First you’ll have to make sure that Microsoft Office Word is your e-mail editor. Please note that you can only set Word as your editor when Outlook and Word are the same version. To set Word as the e-mail editor go to Tools-> Options-> tab Mail Format.
2. On this tab you’ll also have to set your message format to HTML
3. Press OK to apply and leave Options
4. Create a new message. A message will be displayed that Word is starting as your e-mail editor. Note that this looks exactly like Word with specific e-mail fields and options to it
5. To insert sound you’ll need an extra Toolbar called Web Tools. To make this visible choose View-> Toolbars-> Web Tools. A small pane will pop-up now
6. In the small pane press the Sound icon. A new window called Background Sound will pop-up
7. In the Background Sound window press Browse to browse to your sound file. You can add the following sound files
   • wav
   • mid
   • midi
   • rmi
   • au
   • aif
   • aiff
   • snd
8. I strongly advise to use midi-files. These files are quite small even when they are quite lengthy. When you’ve found your sound file press Open to go back to the Background Sound window
9. You can also set the amount of loops for the sound file; how many times the sound file is played completely before it stops playing. You can give this a value between 1 to 5 or set it to Infinite to loop until another message is selected or when Outlook is closed.
10. Press OK to add the sound to your message. Note that the sound-file is played directly.

Do you want to create more advanced e-mails?

Now that you’ve found the Web Tools toolbar you can add the following to your e-mail;

• Check Box
• Option Button
• Drop-Down Box
• List Box
• Text Box
• Text Area
• Submit button
• Submit button with a Picture on it
• Form Reset button
• Hidden Text Box
• Password Box
• Movie
• Sound
• Scrolling Text

This is everything you need to create an e-mail that is a fully digital form. For some of the tools it is required that you know some basic VBA scripting. Then you can even change the underlying source (including HTML) by pressing the Microsoft Script Editor button.

     Sorting Outgoing E-mails (5 November, 2006)

When you use rules to sort your outgoing e-mails into folders you’ll notice that
you can actually only "move a copy" to that folder. This rule is quite unclear and
actualy contradicts itself; does it move or does it copy? Well it copies and when
you use the rule by default you’ll end up with duplicates which is probably not
what you want; you want it to move! This is still possible but it involves modifying
another options and carefully craft your e-mail rules.

Turn off the generic save option

Since we’re going to sort the outgoing e-mails by using rules we’re going all the
way and actually also manage saving all outgoing messages by using rules. So we
can turn off the generic option "Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder" which
is on by default. You can find this option in;
Tools-> Options-> tab Preferences-> button E-mail Options…

Create a rule to sort your outgoing mail

In this example we’ll create a rule to store all messages sent to John Doe in the
a folder named "John Doe" which is a subfolder of the Sent Items folder.

1. Select Tools-> Rules and Alerts…
2. Select "Start from a blank rule"
3. Select "Check messages after sending" and press Next
4. In the Step 1 section select "sent to people or distribution list"
5. In the Step 2 section click "people or distribution list" and select John
   Doe from your address book and press Next
6. In the Step 1 section select "move a copy to the specified folder"
7. In the Step 2 section click "specified" and select the John Doe folder
8. In the Step 1 section select "stop processing more rules"
   This is important or you’ll end up with duplicates again!
9. Press Next and then Next again (unless you want to set exceptions)
10. Name the rule, verify that "Turn on this rule" is selected and press Finish

You can of course create additional rules to move messages to other people to different
folders by repeating the above steps but note that you each time add the action
"stop processing more rules" to the rule.

Create a rule to catch the rest of your mail

Currently we’re only saving the mails we’re sorting to other folders. Of course
you want to store the rest of your outgoing messages to the Sent Items folder. We
can do this by creating a generic rule; a rule without conditions.

1. Select Tools-> Rules and Alerts…
2. Select "Start from a blank rule"
3. Select "Check messages after sending" and press Next
4. Without selecting anything select Next.
5. You’ll get a dialog saying;
   "This rule will be applied to every message you send. Is this correct?"
   Press Yes
6. In the Step 1 section select "move a copy to the specified folder"
7. In the Step 2 section click "specified" and select the Sent Items folder
8. Press Next and then Next again (unless you want to set exceptions)
9. Name the rule, verify that "Turn on this rule" is selected and press Finish

Sort your rules

After creating the rules you must make sure that the rules are sorted correctly!
You must set the generic rule to be executed last with above it the personalized
sorting rules.

You can use the arrows in the Rules and Alerts dialog to sort your rules.

     Creating Signatures (5 November, 2006)

Creating and selecting a signature is not that difficult in
Outlook. However creating the signature you want with for example a company logo in it
can be quite of a hassle.  This guide will cover both the basics and
advanced examples on creating a signature in Outlook.
View: Creating Signatures

     Save Embedded Pictures in Their Original Format (5 November, 2006)

You’ve probably come across this at least once; You receive a nicely
HTML formatted message with embedded pictures so the sender can tell the story
with the pictures and when you try to save the pictures you can only save them
as a bmp-file. Or; you receive a fun e-mail with an animated gif-file and
when you try to save it you can only save it as a bmp-file which will of course
break the animation.

This How To article explains how you can save the embedded pictures in their
original file format.

• Make sure the Visual Basic editor is installed
• Create macro
• The code
• Set the Macro Security Level
• Create a button for the macro
• Using the macro
• Code modifications
   

Make sure the Visual Basic editor is installed

Since we are going to create a macro from code you must have the Visual Basic
editor installed (which is the default). If you don’t have it installed you can
install it by Control Panel-> Add/Remove Programs-> select your Office version->
button change. Now setup will start. Here you choose for Add or Remove
Features-> Select "Choose advanced customization of applications" (Outlook 2003). In the
list you get expand Microsoft Office-> Office Shared Features-> Visual Basic for
Applications and set it to Run form My Computer. Press "Update" to install. You
might need to insert your CD during setup.

This is where you can find the Visual Basic Editor when you have it installed

Create Macro

As I already provide you with the code, creating the macro is easy. We start
up the Visual Basic Editor by going to Tools-> Macro-> Visual Basic Editor. This will open a new screen.
Cut and paste the code below to the screen.

Sub SaveAttachment()
 Dim objCurrentItem As Outlook.MailItem
 Dim colAttachments As Outlook.Attachments
 Dim objAttachment As Outlook.Attachment

End Sub


The code copied in the Visual Basic Editor.

You can now close the Visual Basic Editor.

Set the Macro Security Level

Now that we have created our own macro we must adjust the Macro Security
permissions to allow the macro to run. By default the security level for macro’s
is set to High which means that only signed macro’s can run. Since we are not
able to sign our own macro we are going to set the Macro Security to Medium
which means that we get prompted when we try to run the macro (we only receive a
prompt once per Outlook session; restarting Outlook means we’ll get prompted once again).

To change the Security Macro Level go to Tools-> Macro-> Security and select Medium

This is the security warning you’ll get when the Macro Security Level is set
to Medium. Press Enable Macros to enable the macros.

Now that we’ve created the macro and
adjusted the Macro Security Level we must restart Outlook. When we close Outlook
we’ll get prompted to save our project. Of course we’ll choose "Yes".

Create a button for the macro

The easiest way to access and use the macro is to create a button for it. Since
the macro only works in messages we open an existing e-mail first. Now follow the
instructions below to create a button.

1. Set the Toolbar in edit mode by going to View-> Toolbars-> Customize…
2. Select the tab Commands
3. In the Categories column select Macros
4. In the Commands toolbar click on Project1 and hold down the mouse button.
5. Drag the icon to a location on the Toolbar so the pointer will
   loose the cross and release the mouse button to drop it in that location
6. Right click the icon to change the name and to assign it a button image you like (if you
   want to learn more about editing Toolbar buttons click here)
7. Press Close to leave edit mode

The Save Attachments icon in the Toolbar

Using the macro

Alright, now that we’ve gone to all the trouble we can finally save all types of
embedded pictures in their original file format. To do this you open the message
that contains the embedded pictures. When you click on the Save Attachments
button you’ll save all the pictures to the Desktop at once and the message will
close. In fact the macro will save all possible attachments (except blocked
ones) within the message to the Desktop. Say good-bye to converting bmp-’s back
to jpg-’s and broken gif-’s!

Code Modifications

I got quite some feedback on this article. Most of them were about how to get
the macro to store it to a different folder than the Desktop. While the Desktop
might be a good place for incidental use it is less handy when you use it more
often. So here are some code modification which would give you an idea on how to
modify the code to store the pictures in the folder of your choice.

Original Code
This is the only line in the code we actually need to modify
objAttachment.SaveAsFile (strFolderpath.SpecialFolders("Desktop") & "\" &
objAttachment.FileName)

Storing to the My Pictures folder
objAttachment.SaveAsFile (strFolderpath.SpecialFolders(16) & "\My
Pictures\" & objAttachment.FileName)

Storing to a subfolder of My Pictures named "gifs"
objAttachment.SaveAsFile (strFolderpath.SpecialFolders(16) & "\My
Pictures\gifs\" & objAttachment.FileName)

Storing to a disk location
objAttachment.SaveAsFile ("D:\folder name of choice\" & objAttachment.FileName)

     Open link from Outlook in new window (5 November, 2006)

Ever had that when you are reading a webpage a new mail arrives that has a
link in it and when you click on it it opens in the window you were just reading?
Very annoying if you ask me. Follow these instructions to change this behavior and let the link open in a
new window.
Note 1: This behavior will change for all applications (not just Outlook) from which you open a link.
Note 2: There is no need to change this setting for Outlook 2003 as Outlook 2003 will ALWAYS open links in a new window.

Internet Explorer Options

To change the setting for Internet Explorer choose;
Tools-> Internet Options-> tab Advanced-> section Browsing-> untick option “Reuse windows for launching shortcuts”

In the registry

1. Make sure Outlook is closed
2. Open your registry editor by opening the Run command and type regedit (regedt32 for Windows 2000)
3. Locate the following key;
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
4. Double-click on the AllowWindowReuse value and give it the value of 1
5. Press OK on the input box and close the registry editor
6. When you now open Outlook and click on a link in a message the link will open in it’s own window.

     Restore Deleted Items from an Outlook PST (5 November, 2006)

This guide will instruct you how to recover all your deleted
messages since the last time you ran “Compact Now” on a PST-file.

When you haven’t closed and opened Outlook in between you’ll
have the best results. If you have restarted Outlook in between the results are
unpredictable.

If the items aren’t restored at the first attempt you could try again and
delete more or other characters at the beginning but I don’t think it will
work.

The best way is always to restore from backup; preventing is better then curing.

1. Locate the *.pst file and create a copy of it to work with
   (never mess around with original files!)
2. Open the *.pst file in a hexadecimal editor. (I use
   
   UltraEdit for this)
3. In the column on the right side overwrite character 7 to
   13 with spaces. In the hexadecimal column (left column) block 7 to 13 will
   display 20 (hexadecimal value for a space)
4. Save the *.pst file
5. As you have now corrupted your pst file you need to run scanpst.exe to repair it
6. When scanpst has repaired your pst file open in it Outlook
   and look in the Deleted Items folder or in the original folder to locate
   your deleted items