July, 2008

Couple of customers reported that after upgrading to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 or  Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, they found that some of the rules are disabled and cannot be enabled. Remaining other rules work correctly. Also if you try to enable the disabled rules they receive the following error message:

One or more rules could not be uploaded to Exchange server and have been deactivated. This could be because some of the parameters are not supported or there is insufficient space to store all your rules.

Why it occurs: This behavior occurs if the rules that are in your mailbox exceed a size of 32 kilobytes (KB). The rules size limit for mailboxes on Microsoft Exchange Server is 32 KB. In Outlook 2003/Outlook 2007, the size of rules has increased mostly to provide support for the Unicode format.

Note The rules size limit for mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 has been increased to a default size of 64 KB per mailbox. The rule limit is now a customizable limit up to 256 KB per mailbox.

Please find the following KB, which helps us how to mitigate this situation and has couple of workarounds for this issue.

When you use rules in Outlook, you may receive the following error message:

There is not enough space on the Microsoft Exchange Server to store all of your rules. The rules that failed to upload have been deactivated.

To work around this issue:

• Create distribution lists (DLs) to group recipients in rules, instead of using individual recipients.

• Keep the number of recipients small in rules.

• Keep the names of recipients as small as possible.

Do you know the support that is available for applications that use the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol to access Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server or Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 ?

What is supported?

Microsoft support the use of the WebDAV protocol for the following items:

•Non-recurring appointments
•Contacts in Microsoft Outlook that you create or modify
•Folders that you create in Outlook and in Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003
•E-mail messages that you create or modify

Note You cannot use the WebDAV protocol to access the Rich Text Format (RTF) body of an e-mail message.

All other tasks that use the WebDAV protocol to modify a Web store in Exchange 2000 Server or in Exchange Server 2003 are not supported.
Note These limitations do not apply to Outlook Web Access URLs.

Why it's not supported?

Because of limitations that exist when you create items that are compatible with Outlook, we do not support complex calendaring when you use the WebDAV protocol. Complex calendaring applications include the following items:

•Recurring appointments
•Meeting functionality
Note Meeting functionality includes sending, modifying, and canceling meetings.

What are the alternatives?

For applications that require complex calendaring functionality with Exchange 2000 Server or with Exchange Server 2003, we recommend that you use the following API's:

•Collaboration Data Objects for Exchange 2000 Server (CDOEX)
•Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) 1.21
•Outlook Object Model

These API's include additional logic that is required to make the created items work correctly with Outlook. This additional logic is not available when you use the WebDAV protocol. for more information please find the following MSDN KB.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 seamlessly improves the reliability of calendaring by introducing the "Calendar Concierge", a suite of new calendar improvements.

This suite includes,

• Scheduling Assistant:

It allows you to schedule meetings faster through an intuitive color-coded interface. Simply, the Scheduling Assistant makes scheduling a meeting a breeze!

• Calendar Attendant:

It helps ensure the reliability of calendar items. In addition to making scheduling more efficient, Exchange Server 2007 makes the calendar more reliable with the new Calendar Attendant.

• Resource Booking Attendant:

The calendar improvements in Exchange Server 2007 affect not only individual schedules but also the scheduling of resources, such as rooms, projectors, and televisions. It automates resource management, such as conference rooms, projectors, and televisions.

Together, the elements of the Calendar Concierge the Scheduling Assistant, Calendar Attendant, and Resource Booking Attendant make scheduling a meeting easier and more reliable than ever before.

As you know that the Collaboration Data Objects (all versions) Libraries are used to implement Messaging and Collaboration functionality into a custom application.

Please find this article contains information on where these libraries can be found. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/171440

Do you know why MAPI is not suitable for HTML messages?

MAPI 1.0 was written before HTML mail was developed and does not reliably support the creation of HTML-formatted messages. As you know, MAPI 1.0 is the version supported by all versions of Microsoft Exchange through version 5.5 (and all Service Packs). This includes the following subordinate technologies:

•Simple MAPI
•Extended MAPI
•OLE Messaging
•Active Messaging (Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) 1.1)
•CDO versions 1.2 and 1.21
•MAPI controls (Msmapi32.ocx)

Extended Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) should not be used to generate HTML-formatted messages.

What is needed?

If messages are needed in HTML format, such as for sending text formatted in other languages, alternative technologies that provide more reliable support for HTML messages are recommended:

•CDONTS
•CDO for Windows 2000 (CDOSYS)
•CDO for Exchange 2000 (CDOEX)
•Outlook Object Model of Microsoft Outlook 98 or later
•SMTP-capable ActiveX controls obtained from third-party vendors

In short, as an alternative, we should consider using the Microsoft Outlook Object Model, CDONTS, CDOSYS, CDOEX, or a third-party SMTP control.

Do you wonder how to make use of CDO & MAPI in the same modules programmatically?

Please find the following MSDN article, which talks more about this.

One of my customer and several others, have subscribed to RSS Feeds with Outlook 2007. It was working fine and all of a sudden it showing the error mark in the status bar.

For example, whenever we make a Send/Receive, we get error mark in the status bar saying that “Task ‘RSS Feeds’ reported error (0x8C5C0008) : Synchronization to RSS Feed: […] has failed. Outlook cannot download the RSS content from […] because of a problem connecting to the server.”

Here there might be lot of parameters may play here.

• RSS synchronization interval with outlook
• By default, RSS Feeds roam with users from one computer to another. So we need to make sure due to this we’re not getting these issue
• If you have the latest service pack / latest version / patches can also create this issue.
• It might be with their older feed entries in some kind of local store.
• Sync utility might have issue with the new feed entries
• As you know these RSS feeds are published by their own editors in an XML format. It contains only the latest headlines. The exact number of these headlines is chose by the editor, and, each time a new entry is added in the feed, the oldest one is removed (it's a FIFO behavior).
• Some RSS clients (like Outlook and the Windows RSS Platform) keep the older feed entries in some kind of local store, so you can always see these entries, but these are no longer publish by their original editors.

You can try these below for workarounds.

1) Workaround # 1:

• The frequency of RSS updates can be set by the user, but precedence is given to limits set by a provider on how frequently a subscriber can request updates from their site.
• This helps avoid overloading the provider's server with excessive update requests

2) Workaround # 2:

• You can use the default RSS folder home page provided with Office Outlook 2007 , or you can create one tailored to your organization. Whether you use the default home page or provide a custom one, users must be connected to the network to view the home page. With both default and custom RSS home pages, you can take steps to ensure that the offline experience is not confusing to your users. When users are offline and switch to the RSS folder, an error message appears, stating that the page is not found.

For users to have a good offline experience, Outlook displays a message explaining the problem instead of simply returning the standard "Page not found" error when it determines that a folder home page is being loaded.

When users are offline, there are two requirements for Outlook to display the explanatory message instead of a standard error:

· A string must be included at the end of the title on the page used for the folder home page.

· The folder must be created with a new Outlook folder type.

To meet the first requirement, you add the following string to the end of the title of the custom RSS home page you create: (Outlook Homepage). The string and anything after that string is not displayed in the title of the page. When a user is offline, the explanatory message is displayed. When a user is online, the folder home page is displayed with the string removed so users do not see the string in the title.

The second requirement—a new Outlook folder type—ensures that the explanatory message for the RSS folder home page is not displayed for other folder home pages when users are offline. The standard Outlook folder type is IPM.Folder. The new folder type for RSS folders is IPM.Folder.OutlookHomepage

Note: For more information, you can find more information from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179173(TechNet.10).aspx

There is an update (KB950219), which extends Outlook 2007’s support for the iCalendar standards. The update also improves Outlook 2007’s compatibility with some IMAP e-mail servers.

This update adds support for the following iCalendar features:

• Propose New Time for iCalendar Meetings: Users can now respond to a meeting invitation received in iCalendar format with a proposal for a new meeting time.
• Extended Yearly Recurrence: Supports recurrence patterns for appointments or meetings that recur every N years, where N is greater than or equal to 1.

This update also includes miscellaneous improvements to IMAP compatibility.

You can download this from Microsoft Download Center.

 What are Internet Calendars?

Internet Calendars are calendars that are shared through the Internet. These calendars are based upon a global Internet standard that allows calendar information to be exchanged between people regardless of the application that is used to create or view the information.

What were its format and its extension?

Internet Calendars use the iCalendar format and the .ics file name extension.

How many types of Internet Calendars available?

There are two types of Internet Calendars:

1) Calendar Snapshots 2) Internet Calendar Subscriptions