Exchange / Outlook

winmail.dat opener

I have a customer who keeps sending me stuff from Scalix mail server, but the attachments come out as winmail.dat Rather than asking them to resend the email, I’ve discovered winmail opener from eolsoft that allows you to extract data from winmail.dat – it’s free too so well worth downloading. In the meantime I’ve also asked them to look at setting their mail server up so it doesn’t do this in the first place!

Tiny emails printed in outlook with ie7

If you have outlook and try to print an email and the font is incredibly small, then you will need the hotfix from kb932538 referenced in the article on Sandy’s page. I would link to the Microsoft site but the knowledge base article is not published which explains why you can’t find any details on this problem when you search in technet (sigh).
I’ll be requesting this one for my customers on Monday morning as I have at least two desktops that are having this problem. The interim solution is to hit reply or forward and then print the email.
Update I installed this patch on a customer site this morning and it approximately doubles the size of the font so the printout is now just about readable – still nowhere near the size of the printout if I hit forward (or reply) and then hit print. I’m not sure how to go about sending feedback to Microsoft that this doesn’t solve the problem.

Mobile Admin for sbs2003

One of our users lost their mobile phone in the snow and I needed to initiate remote wipe of the device. I downloaded and installed the MobileAdmin pack but whenever I went into the Wipe page I would get a 403 error as below

he remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[WebException: The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.]
System.Net.HttpWebRequest.CheckFinalStatus() +680
System.Net.HttpWebRequest.EndGetRequestStream(IAsyncResult asyncResult) +74
System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetRequestStream() +234
Microsoft.Exchange.AirSync.Admin.Mailbox.propFindRequest(String deviceUri) +240
Microsoft.Exchange.AirSync.Admin.Mailbox.getDevices() +194
Microsoft.Exchange.AirSync.Admin.Devices.refreshDevicesTable() +135
Microsoft.Exchange.AirSync.Admin.Devices.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +190
System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +67
System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +750

The advice at Experts Exchange mentioned that you need to remove require ssl to the exadmin directory in sbs, a fact backed up at Vladville. Shortly afterwards the phone was wiped.

Delete outlook duplicates

I’ve been doing a lot of work with cell phones and Windows Mobile 5 this month, installing about 6 devices. 1 device was purchased as I was struggling to get the previous phone working with Verizon’s wireless sync software and after about 5 hours it was time to purchase a Windows Mobile 5 which would sync directly to exchange. In the process of the switching of devices, there were some duplications of events and things and AntiDupe would have been handy to delete the duplicates. In fact it still might come in useful.
One word of advice – 5000 calendar entries is not a good idea and exchange WILL choke if you try to sync them.

Roadsync provides Direct push capabilities with Windows Mobile 2003

Sync With Microsoft Exchange 2003 & Corporate Outlook Email Via Remote Email Access on Your Smartphone which doesnt have to be running Windows Mobile 5 (but it does need to be Windows Mobile 2003 – which still leaves my original axim out of the loop.)
It is not free (probably $99) but there is a 30 day trial so that you can check it works first.
It looks like it doesn’t support notes either – something the native Exchange Direct Push doesn’t do too.

Outlook forms.

I had a user today who logged a ticket saying that everytime she requested a meeting with someone, the recipient was unable to open the meeting request and add it to their calendar. After trying it on their pc I noticed that it asked if I wanted to add the meeting to the timecard application – this was obviously a custom form and sure enough, it was available in the organizational forms – but how to change it back? I was unable to delete the form from the organization and it took me a while to find the real form location. To solve this, go to the folder view in outlook 2003 and right click on the calendar and choose properties. Change the “When posting to this folder” to read IPM.Appointment and it will all work again.

Now if someone could explain why I had two users complain their pc wouldn’t boot today but started ok when I switched them on I’d like to know how to market my magic aura.