Hey hey - we've pooled our resources on the Outlook team and created a single Outlook Team Blog.  We'll be having folks from the whole team posting and discussing tips, tricks, and resources about Outlook.  Check it out:

 http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/Default.aspx

 See you there...  :)

This is very, very cool. We all love Hotmail and now you can connect it FOR FREE to Outlook.  Check out the details from my fellow program manager Jared Brown:

This week, Microsoft released a new beta of an add-in that allows people to access Windows Live Hotmail in Outlook and best of all, it’s free!  It’s called the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector.  If you’re familiar with Windows Live Hotmail’s history, you may have heard of this add-in before.  It used to require a subscription but with the new Windows Live Hotmail, we’re now able to offer it free (for most features).  Every Hotmail customer can now take advantage of some of the best features Outlook has to offer, like Offline access, Categorization, Flagging, Instant Search, Electronic Business Cards, the To-Do Bar… the list goes on and on.

In addition to the new Ajax user interface that allows for richer capabilities on the web, Windows Live Hotmail includes a new protocol which the Outlook Connector uses to communicate with the service.  The new protocol is called Delta Sync and is very efficient, so your experience using the connector should be faster too.  Give it a try and let us know what you think.

You probably noticed that the new beta is free for most features.  It synchronizes Hotmail e-mail (including all your folders) and contacts for free, but still requires a paid subscription to MSN Premium, Office Live Essentials or Office Live Premium to synchronize calendars, tasks and notes. 

With the new Outlook Connector beta, you can get the most of Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook, so Download it Today!

-jared brown

Hey folks

Long time no blog; we’ve been heads down here at Outlook Headquarters as we start thinking what’s next after Outlook 2007.  At the same time a portion of the team has been working feverishly to release the Outlook 2007 Performance Update, the answer to some of the performance problems that our customers have been seeing with Outlook and especially those with larger mailboxes on their computers. 

Here’s some more information direct from the development team:

The update incorporates a number of performance improvements and is designed to improve the general responsiveness of Outlook during common operations including reading, moving, deleting and downloading e-mail messages for users who have large mailbox files (.pst and .ost files) stored on their computers.  In addition, it contains a fix for a calendar related privacy issue, wherein delegates to a user’s calendar could potentially view calendar items marked as “private” when searching for items in the delegate’s calendar.  

 Customers who download the update may notice:

·         A decrease in the amount of time it takes to copy messages from one folder to another. 

·         An increase in the download speed when downloading multiple or large messages from the Exchange Server.

·         A reduction in the amount of time it takes to delete messages.

Microsoft also made an additional update available that addresses compatibility issues between the Outlook update and Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager.  Customers using Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager are strongly encouraged to download both the Hotfix and the patch.  Customers who prefer to receive both fixes simultaneously can wait to do so until they are delivered together in Microsoft’s automated customer updates in the near future.   

And here’s how to download it:

• Outlook 2007 update: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C262BCFD-1E09-49B6-9003-C4C47539DF66

• Outlook 2007 for Business Contact Manager patch: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b1fadb55-e4e1-4f67-a69a-3e6bf9b130f0&displaylang=en

 I hope that helps make your Outlook 2007 experience even faster and more reliable. 

Thanks!

In past versions, Outlook actually used two rendering engines – IE’s for reading content, and Word for editing when you were composing messages. What this meant was that if you were replying or forwarding HTML emails, previous versions of Outlook would first use IE’s rendering engine to view it, then would have to switch over to the compose engine (Word).

This wasn’t an ideal experience for customers, as the content people created often looked different to the recipient receiving it – like the formatting would be slightly off, or things wouldn’t appear as they had when the message was in “compose” mode. Added to that, one of the big things we heard in designing Outlook 2007 was that our customers wanted the rich editing tools they were used to from Word. As great as IE7 is, it was never designed to be an editing tool for text.

On their end, the Word team had been making advancements of their own in how Word 2007 handled HTML content, based on HTML and CSS standards. So we made the decision to unify the rendering and editing engine in Outlook by using Word’s engine.

While there are some HTML and CSS attributes that aren’t currently supported by Word’s rendering engine, the capabilities that our customers most wanted for their HTML newsletters are supported by Outlook 2007.

See msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338200.aspx and msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201.aspx for more details on what HMTL and CSS standards are and aren’t supported. 

Another great reference is this whitepaper describing the new Word integration into Outlook: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102109301033.aspx.

One of our dedicated MVP's, Patrick Schmid, reported in his post here that:

If you provide an RSS feed for your blog, then there is a good chance that you use FeedBurner. FeedBurner is a great tool to get accurate statistics on how many subscribers an RSS feed has for example. Unfortunately, FeedBurner doesn’t count any subscriptions from Outlook 2007 or IE7. It looks like FeedBurner just doesn’t know that Outlook 2007/IE7 can be real RSS readers. This is a pretty annoying problem for me, as I would assume that a large number of you are subscribing to my blog via Outlook 2007.

For Outlook 2007 we will unfortunately not be able to report any custom user agent string for our RSS aggregation.  Due to the way we integrate with IE across many parts of the application (the WININET stack is the underlying infrastructure for all of Outlook’s internet communication), we cannot easily and safely change the way we broadcast ourselves when connecting to external servers.  To do so would require a fundamental change in the way the WININET stack is called from Outlook and could affect all of the Office applications.  The scope of this fix is unfortunately outside of what we can provide this release.

We are going to work with Patrick, IE, and the Feedburner folks to see if there is anything else we can do. 

Thanks Patrick for helping us diagnose this.

A few days ago I posted on how to use AutoArchive in Outlook 2007 to help manage the size impact of your RSS Feeds on your Exchange mailbox. One of the downsides to using AutoArchive is that there is no easy way to apply a defined set of parameters to a number of RSS Feed folders at once – folders can either use the global setting or they need to have their parameters set individually.

Here's a trick that I use to workaround that limitation and keep my RSS feeds down, along with archiving the content should I ever need to find it with Outlook 2007's Instant Search (plug plug).

1. Create a new .PST file from File: New: Outlook Data File. I called mine "RSS Archive".
2. Select File: Archive from the menu. 
   

   
   

3. In the resulting dialog, select Archive this folder and all subfolders:
4. Click on the "RSS Feeds" folder.
5. Choose a date that you would like to archive from in Archive items older than. I typically choose a date that's two or three days ago.
6. Select your new PST in Archive File:
7. Click OK to run Archive.

The volume of content on some RSS Feeds can be very high. When you add more RSS Feeds to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, you might discover that the size of your Microsoft Exchange mailbox (mailbox: Location on a Microsoft Exchange server where your e-mail is delivered. Your administrator sets up a mailbox for each user. If you designate a personal folder file as your e-mail delivery location, messages are routed to it from your mailbox.) or Personal Folders file (.pst) (Personal Folders file (.pst): Data file that stores your messages and other items on your computer. You can assign a .pst file to be the default delivery location for e-mail messages. You can use a .pst to organize and back up items for safekeeping.) is quickly increasing in size.

The AutoArchive feature in Outlook provides an automatic way to delete items older than a certain date. Many RSS Feeds include news or other time-sensitive information. The need to keep older items is usually not as important as keeping your e-mail messages.

More about AutoArchive

AutoArchive is on by default and runs automatically at scheduled intervals, archiving and, if specified, removing older items from all Outlook folders. Older items are those that reach a specificed archiving age.

By default, Outlook creates the archive files in the following location:

• Microsoft Windows Vista
  drive:\user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Archive.pst
  
• Microsoft Windows XP or 2k3
  drive:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Archive.pst

After Outlook archives items, you can access the items directly from Archive Folders in the Navigation Pane in Outlook. To see the Archive Folders in the Navigation Pane, on the Go menu, click Folder List.

When you open Archive Folders, you will see that Outlook maintains your existing folder structure. If there is a parent folder above the folder you chose to archive, the parent folder is created in the archive file, but within the parent folder only items that meet AutoArchive criteria are archived. If you decide you want archived items moved back into your main mailbox, you can import all the items from the archive file into their original folders or into other folders you specify, or you can manually move or copy items, including dragging between folders.

Customizing AutoArchive for RSS items

There are two sets of AutoArchive settings — global settings and per-folder settings.

• Global settings
  Called default settings, determine whether AutoArchive runs at all and what it does by default with the items in any Outlook folder except Contacts, which is exempt from AutoArchive.
  
• Per-folder settings
  override default settings so you can AutoArchive individual folders differently

If you don't specify AutoArchive settings for a specific folder, the folder is not archived. AutoArchive settings apply to the current mailbox only. This means if you select a folder in your Exchange account, and then set Global settings for AutoArchive, the settings apply only to the Exchange account.

Turn on AutoArchive

Although AutoArchive is on by default, you can turn off and turn on the feature when required. AutoArchive must be turned on for the procedures in this article to work.

If you want to use AutoArchive for RSS Feeds folders only, we recommend that you modify the default settings so that AutoArchive is turned on, but takes no action except on the specific folders you configure. This helps prevent accidental archiving or deletion from folders that you did not intend to affect.

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
   
2. On the Other tab, click AutoArchive.
   

   
   

   
   Select the Run AutoArchive every n days check box.
   
3. Enter a number between 1 and 60 in the box for how often you want AutoArchive to run.
   
   To effectively use AutoArchive with RSS Feeds folders, we recommend that you use a value between 1 and 7 days. This is not the number of days that items are kept, but how often AutoArchive runs. The more frequently you run AutoArchive, the more accurate your retention periods are.
   
4. Under During Archive, clear the Delete Expired Items (e-mail folders only) and Archive or delete old items check boxes.
   
   Clearing these check boxes helps prevent accidentally performing AutoArchive actions on folders that you do not intend to affect. Later in this article, you specify AutoArchive settings on a per-folder basis.
   
   If you already use AutoArchive and some of your folders use the default global settings, it is not necessary for you to change your settings.

Specify AutoArchive settings for each RSS Feed folder

1. In the Navigation Pane, right-click the RSS Feeds folder you want to specify settings for, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu.
   
2. Click the AutoArchive tab.
   

   
   

3. Click Archive this folder using these settings.
   
4. In Clean out items older than n period , where n represents the numeric value of 1 to 999, and period equals months, days, or weeks, enter the maximum length of time you want RSS items to be kept.
   
5. Click Permanently delete old items.
   
6. Click OK.
   
7. Repeat for each RSS Feeds folder that contains items you want to automatically delete.

Manually run AutoArchive

1. On the File menu, click Archive.
   
2. Specify whether to archive all folders using their AutoArchive settings (that is, either the default settings or per-folder settings you specified for individual folders) or whether to archive an individual folder using the options you specify in this dialog box.

The Windows Shell Team has a new blog entitled "Shell Revealed". From the site…

Welcome to shell:revealed, the home of the Windows Client team. We're the folks that build the core user interface for Windows and we love every minute of it!

shell:revealed isn't about Windows Vista, it's about Windows. Many of the people on the Windows Client team have been here a very long time and have plenty of knowledge to share with the world. This is the place to find out what we're doing, how we're doing it, and why. This site is dedicated to all Windows users.

They were also on /. this morning. Sweet!

Windows Desktop Search (WDS) 3.0 is a native component of Vista, and is being shipped separately as a system component for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users. WDS is a system service that indexes file, email and other content in order to provide fast searches over content and properties. It is an upgrade to all previous 2.x versions of Windows Desktop Search you may currently use. Outlook 2007 will have a new version of Instant Search technology that is built on top of WDS and is dependent on its presence for search to work.

The Beta 2 Technical Refresh of Outlook will prompt you to download and install a new version of Windows Desktop Search 3.0 if you are running on WinXP. This is required in order to support our new Instant Search capabilities in Outlook.

"Windows Desktop Search 3.0 (WDS) enables fast search on your computer using indexing technology. It helps you to find your documents, email, music, photos and other items. The search engine in Windows Desktop Search 3.0 is a Windows service that is also used by applications such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Office OneNote 2007 to index application content and deliver instant results when searching within an application.

This release is an update to the Beta Engine Preview release of Windows Desktop Search 3.0. The most noticeable improvements include full Desktop Search UI, 64-bit support, and better performance. The installation process will automatically upgrade 2.5 and higher versions of Windows Desktop Search. Earlier versions of Windows Desktop Search should be uninstalled from Add/Remove Programs before this version is installed."

The download button will take you to this page for installation. If you're running a 64bit machine you can find the WDS build on this page instead.

If you're running on Vista RC1 or later, you'll be good to go with no separate installation needed. J

Happy searching!

With the Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh now live on the web, I wanted to take a few minutes and talk about the best way to get your RSS feeds up and running after you upgrade. The B2TR installation is actually a patch that installs on top of the original Beta 2 and makes upgrading very simple.

In B2TR we made a significant amount of changes to the way that are RSS Feeds are stored internally inside of Outlook. These changes were made to deal with several cases where users could receive duplicate items for an individual post, have duplicate feed folders, or even experience the loss of feeds or sync breaking when using an Exchange account.

If you've got a lot of feeds in the original Beta 2 and are going to be installing the B2TR patch, we recommend a few steps to get your RSS setup using the new architecture.

Upgrade Steps

1. In Beta2, export your feeds as an OPML file.
2. Patch to the B2TR.
3. Run Outlook with the /cleansharing command. Do this by going to Start: Run, then type "Outlook /cleansharing".
   

   
   

   
   
   1. This will remove ALL of the RSS Feed subscriptions from Outlook.
   2. It will not remove the folders or the data, but if you go to the Account Manager's RSS tab (Tools: Accounts, RSS) you will not see any more feeds listed.
   3. This is an important step since it clears out all the feeds using the old architecture.
   4. Note: this will also remove all of the subscriptions to Microsoft SharePoint sites and Internet Calendar subscriptions.
4. You can now delete the folders for your old RSS Feeds since the next step will create new folders.
   1. If you're on Exchange give this operation a few minutes to sync to your server and other Outlook clients.
5. Import your OPML file.

Those steps should get you working cleanly with the improved RSS architecture in the B2TR. If you've got any comments or issues please use your normal support channel (if you're a corporate beta user) or drop me a comment below.

Internet Explorer 7 Integration

Outlook B2TR's integration with the IE 7 RSS Platform will require the IE7 RC1 build for WindowsXP, or Windows Vista RC1, in order for the sync to work correctly.

Thanks! Good luck with the B2TR build.

Check it out at http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_office_word/default.aspx.  It's being written by Jonathan Bailor, a Program Manager on the Office Word team focusing on compatability of the new Word document format with previous releases. 

Jonathan will be discussing everything from mainline scenarios that Word 2007 makes better to his thoughts on program management.  Check it out!

About two weeks I did a great interview with Shawn Murrary for his podcast on the IWCenter.  Shawn's site is a fantastic source of information on Office 2007 and how many of the new features across all of the products will change the way information worker go about their day. 

My direct podcast is located here, and Shawn keeps a repository of all his podcasts on this page (including one with SteveB!). 

Thanks Shawn for this great opportunity to talk about some of the exciting work we've done in Outlook 2007.  If anyone has any questions based on what Shawn and I discussed feel free to let me know.

Happy listening...  :) 

Another great review by Paul Thurrott over on the Windows SuperSite:  http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/office2007_beta2_tr.asp. 

He's got some great information on Outlook and talks specifically about the new Instant Search functionality. 

Figure 11. The GridView Theme has Been Added to the App_Theme Folder

Rename the GridView Theme to DataWebControls (right-click on the GridView folder in the App_Theme folder and choose Rename). Next, enter the following markup into the GridView.skin file:

<asp:GridView runat="server" CssClass="DataWebControlStyle">
   <AlternatingRowStyle CssClass="AlternatingRowStyle" />
   <RowStyle CssClass="RowStyle" />
   <HeaderStyle CssClass="HeaderStyle" />   
</asp:GridView>

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+shows+off+improved+search/2100-1032_3-6102892.html?tag=cd.top

"Most search engines today use a somewhat two-dimensional approach, matching user queries with the content and link structure of Web pages to return a list of results. We're looking at how to add a third dimension--the users themselves--to improve the search experience," said Eugene Agichtein, a researcher in the Mining, Search and Navigation Group within Microsoft Research.