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Locking your Views against accidental changes

Custom Views can greatly improve your productivity as your emails, contacts or calendar folders are then presented exactly the way you want it. An often heard request is to be able to prevent changes being made to it later on or to be able to reset it back to the way you had it configured.

The usual workaround for this is to create a copy of your custom view so you’ll always be able to simply delete your modified version and create a fresh new copy.

A better approach would be to actually being able to lock your views. And even though this isn’t possible in Outlook itself, it is possible to lock down your views via a VBA macro.

The code sample provided in this guide gives you an easy to use interface to quickly lock or unlock your views.

Continue reading: Locking your Views against accidental changes


Exchange 2010 SP2 Rollup 1

News

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 is now available for direct download (see below for links). Expect it to become available via Microsoft Update on March 20.

It includes 58 new fixes. The Exchange Team would like to highlight the following ones (some KB articles might not yet be available in your region);

  • KB2616230 Exchange 2010 CAS server treats UTF-7 encoding NAMESPACE string from CHS Exchange 2003 BE server as ASCII, caused IMAP client fails to login.
  • KB2599663 RCA crashes when recipient data is stored in bad format.
  • KB2492082 Free/busy publish to Public Folders fails with 8207 event.
  • KB2666233 Manage hybrid configuration wizard won’t accept domains starting with a numeral for FOPE outbound connector FQDN.
  • KB2557323 “UseLocalReplicaForFreeBusy” functionality needed in Exchange 2010.
  • KB2621266 Exchange 2010 Mailbox Databases not reclaiming space.
  • KB2543850 Exchange 2010 GAL based Outlook rule not filtering emails correctly.

No expected release date for the next update rollup has been made known yet.

Download: Exchange 2010 SP2 Rollup 1
View: Description of Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2


Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT)

Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT) buttonThe Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT) provides a detailed report of your installed Office programs. This report includes many parameters about your Office program configuration. It also highlights known problems that are found when OffCAT scans your computer.

Update:
OffCAT is no longer available. It has been replaced with Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant for Office 365 (SaRA).

For any problems that are listed in the report, you are provided a link to a public-facing article (usually a Microsoft Knowledge Base article) about each problem so that you can read about possible fixes. If you are a Helpdesk professional, you can also save the report to a file so that it can be viewed in the Office Configuration Analyzer Tool on another client on which the tool is installed.

This tool began as the Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool (OCAT ) which provided a quick and easy method to analyze your Microsoft Office Outlook profile for common configurations that may cause problems in Outlook. Even though it is now called OffCAT, analyzing your Outlook configuration is still a very large part of the tool and is a must have when you want to identify possible issues with Outlook proactively.

Download: Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT)
View: Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT) information


Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook (CalCheck)

CalCheck buttonThe Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook is a command-line program that checks Outlook Calendars for problems. To use this tool, the Outlook calendar must reside on a Microsoft Exchange Server. The tool does not work with IMAP, with POP3, or with other non-Exchange mail servers.

The tool opens an Outlook profile, opens the Outlook Calendar, and then checks several things such as permissions, free/busy publishing, and auto booking. Then, the tool checks each item in the calendar folder for problems that can cause items to seem to be missing or that might otherwise cause problems in the Calendar.

Although this isn’t an official Microsoft application, it is however developed by Randy Topken who is an Escalation Engineer at Microsoft and has been supporting Exchange since its first release in 1996 (in other words: this is a very reliable application). The application is hosted on Microsoft’s software development website GitHub and documentation is available on Microsoft’s official support pages.

Download: Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook (CalCheck)
View: Information about the Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook (CalCheck)


Microsoft PST Collection tool

PST File buttonThe Microsoft PST Collection tool is used to discover and import Outlook Personal Folder (.pst) File Format files into Exchange Online or copy them to a central location.

Main features:

  • Find PST files on your network
  • Prevent users from creating new PST files and editing existing PST files
  • Copy PST files to a collection location
  • Import PST files to Office 365
  • Delete PST files

Download: Microsoft PST Collection tool
View: Microsoft PST Collection tool documentation

Tip!
After an administrator has freed the corporate environment from pst-files, it is highly recommended to disable the client usage of pst-files in your network via Group Policies.

Miscellaneous-> PST Settings-> Prevent users from adding PSTs to Outlook profiles and/or prevent using Sharing-Exclusive PSTs


Beta testing for Office 15 has started

News

This week, a select group of testers were granted access to the Office 15 Technical Preview build. As this program is under a non-disclosure agreement, nothing can be shared about how it has progressed from previous leaks and screenshots which were published.

The current “Office 15” codename encompasses the entire Office Family which is; Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio.

While the current builds have only been made available to a select group of testers, you can expect a public beta later this summer.