Shared Mailboxes and Sent Items Saved Location

 

This has been a big design issue with Outlook. Following are the issues.

• When you have multiple mailboxes and send from a secondary mailbox, the sent item gets saved in the default mailbox of Outlook profile.
• If the mailbox is shared between multiple people, it is hard to keep track of sent communication by that one mailbox.

To fix this issue two things need to be done.

1. Apply the hotfix below

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970944

2. Apply the following registry settings.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972148

MSI Manager–Redeploy Software Assigned by GPO

MSI Manager is a simple and great tool that allows you to reinstall a software assigned by group policy. This is very useful when applications were not installed correctly due to timeout or some other issue. If the install gets interrupted in the middle it will not try to reinstall the software again.

To force a reinstall one can manually do the following

in the registry editor navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy\AppMgmt.  There will be a key for each software that has been assigned.  To force a reinstall, simply delete the associated key and then run gpupdate/force on the target computer.

To achieve this quicker user MSI Manager – click her to download and read more details

Microsoft Certification Pack–Up to 20% Discount

Click the poster below to request your Certification Pack.

There are five Career Certification Exam pack options for you to choose from, each serves different certification needs and with different discounts:

• The 2 Exam Pack (Get 15% off + a Second Shot on Every Exam)
• The 3 Exam Pack (Get 15% off + a Second Shot on Every Exam)
• The 4 Exam Pack (Get 20% off + a Second Shot on Every Exam)
• The 5 Exam Pack (Get 20% off + a Second Shot on Every Exam)
• Single Exam with Second Shot for an additional 15% (for total $143.75 USD in the United States)

The Exam Packs are not restricted to just a certification path. You can use them for any Microsoft certification exam.

Email me to get your certification pack

Adding or Deleting Company Holidays to/from All Users’ Calendars–Exchange 2007

I was recently asked to figure out a silent method of adding our organization’s holiday’s to all users calendars. Following was my approach.
First I thought of looking for a client side solution. Everyone in our organization uses Outlook 2007 and outlook uses a file name outlook.hol for holiday configuration. Following is the format of file, it can be created using a simple text editor and can be distributed by an email or commandline (outlook.exe /hol holidayfilename)
[Country or Description] ###
Event or holiday description, yyyy/mm/dd
Event or holiday description, yyyy/mm/dd
read for more details
Above is not very clean for a large environment, so I was not too happy with this solution and started taking a different approach.
Definitely it would be so much easier doing it with Exchange Management Shell and finally I found my answer.
Here is what's needed for a great solution

• Exchange Management Tools and Outlook 2007 installed on a 32bit machine
• Outlook 2007 to create a PST file
• Export-mailbox
• Import-mailbox

Solution

1. First of all create all events for all holidays in a mailbox Calendar and export it to a PST file or Create a Calendar Item in a PST file with the name “Calendar” and create all events in it.
2. On 32bit a machine where outlook 2007 is installed login with an Exchange Enterprise Admin account and open Exchange Management Shell then run the following
   
   $users=Get-Mailbox –ResultSize Unlimited
   Import-Mailbox $users –PSTFolderPath c:\pstfolder/pstfile.pst –IncludeFolders ‘\Calendar’
   
3. Above will add all items from the PST File Calendar to all users’ calendars.

Now what happens if someone comes to you and says hey there is an event we need to delete from all users’ calendars, simple!!
Get-Mailbox –ResultSize Unlimited | Export-Mailbox –IncludeFolders ‘\Calendar’ –SubjectKeywords “Subject of the appointment” –DeleteContent
Hope this is useful!! Please comment.

Cannot See Disconnected Mailbox Exchange 2007

If disabled or removed mailboxes don’t appear in the console.

Run the following cmdlet from EMS

Clean-Database -Identity SGName\DBName

Public Folder Item Count report

This can help compare public folder replicas on two different servers

Get-PublicFolder –server server1 -Recurse |Get-PublicFolderStatistics |ft Name, ItemCount, FolderPath > pfreport-sever1.txt

Replace SSL Certificate for Cisco Wireless Controller

I followed the process below:

• Received a .p12 pkcs#12 file from a 3rd party CA
• Imported it to a server that had IIS installd (this was just so I could export it to a .pfx file) this can be done using OpenSSL convertor.
• from IIS exported the certificate with all possible paths and the private key to a .pfx file
• converted the .pfx to .pem using the following command

OpenSSL> pkcs12 -in wlcssl.pfx -out wlcssl.pem

OpenSSL can be downloaded from the following link
http://www.slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html
Version 0.9.8o is the only one that works for most WLCs – just this info would have saved hours for me.
Win32 OpenSSL v0.9.8o

more details: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk722/tk809/technologies_configuration_example09186a00806e367a.shtml

Run as Different User–Error–Service cannot be started.

Right click an app and chose run as option and provide correct credentials, following error occurs

“The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.”

To fix the above go to services, find Secondary Logon, change the startup type to manual.

Microsoft to drop Windows Live Spaces–Changing to WordPress as default blogging option

Microsoft and WordPress maker Automatic have announced that Microsoft will be ditching its Windows Live Spaces blogging technology in favor of using WordPress as the default blogging option for Windows Live. Considering the popularity of WordPress in the blogging scene…… read more from the source

Reset trust relationship of a machine to the domain

Login as local administrator

use the following command

netdom resetpwd /Server:DCName /userd:domain\administrator /passwordd:*

Upgrade or Downgrade Aztech 600E Modem Firmware

It was not very easy to find the firmware so I am putting the URL online for anyone who needs it.

ftp://ftp.aztech.com/Support/MALAYSIA/ADSL/DSL600E

both upgrade and downgrade is easy, just follow the instructions in the package.

Outlook Calendar and Daylight Saving Time

Reoccurring appointments with wrong time

After you have made sure that all your exchange servers have applied correct time settings, clients (workstations) are in sync too and you have a few users complaining about time being incorrect in some of their reoccurring calendar appointments then considering the following may help. Outlook 2010 users may not be effected by this issue but if they are then the following link refers to a Time Zone Data Update Tool for it.

According to the following article Microsoft recommends to use Time Zone Data Update Tool for pre Outlook 2010 clients. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931667

Here is the link to download 32bit tool for pre Outlook 2010 client http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931667

If you don't want to use the tool or if it doesn't fix the issue then manual edit of the appointment is required. This applies to reoccurring appointments.

Go to Outlook > Calendar and open the series of the reoccurring appointment which is not displaying time correctly.

Then click on reoccurrence button and here you will notice that the appointment time is displayed correctly. There are two ways to fix it.

1. Remove reoccurrence save the appointment and apply it again
2. Change the time zone to a different one and save the appointment then apply the correct time zone again and save the appointment.

Both of these options will generate updates and send it to all attendees, fixing the appointment time on their calendars are well.

Troubleshooting Daylight Saving Time Changes

It’s good to know a few facts before we go about troubleshooting DST changes.

By default the PDC in your domain becomes the Time Provider for the clients in a domain. So the first domain controller installed will become Stratum: 1 time provider.

If the PDC was decommissioned and role was transferred to a different DC then it would be necessary to run the following command on it to make it a Stratum: 1 time provide or a reliable time source for the domain.

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:time.windows.com,0x9 /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update

Above command would make the DC or any member server you run it on a reliable time source for the workstations in a domain. Other DCs would automatically be Stratum:2 servers that means that they will get their time from PDC and will also be time source for workstations so they are client/servers.

For the DST changes to be applied correctly first make sure that all clients have all current windows updates installed by WSUS or directly from Microsoft. If there are still issues with some computers then see if following helps.

1. Try to restart Windows Time Service

        net stop w32time && net start w32time

1. If that doesn't fix it then consider the following:

• Make sure that the clients are configured to get time from a the Domain

Run the following commands in the same order

         w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier /update

         net stop w32time && net start w32time

• TimeZone related information is saved at three locations in registry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones

And the Time service parameters

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones" is often updated by Microsoft and is applied through windows updates.

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time" has the configuration for the time service that includes where the machine should get its time from, whether this computer is a time server or a client/server or just a client and much more.

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation" when nothing works these settings do their magic when it comes to DST changes.

Problem Cases

1. So you have already restarted the time service on a client and still it displays wrong time.

1. Event log says that the client is getting time from the correct DC but still time is displayed wrong.

1. You have setup the TYPE to NT5DS by running the command [w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier /update] which would force the clients to get the time from PDC but still it is displaying wrong time.

Solution

Find a computer that has correct DST applied - a computer that doesn't have problem

Go to the registry and export the following

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation

And make sure to add the following entry at the end the exported reg file

"DisableAutoDaylightTimeSet"=dword:00000000

This would make sure that the "Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes" is checked or enabled so you don't have the same issue.

The computer a txt file with the names of all computers that have problem and use the following command to apply changes (make sure to have pstools installed)

Psexec –s @txtfilewithcomputernames.txt regedit -s path\to\regfile.reg

Restart the computers

Hope it helps. Happy DST!!

Check the following for more info: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387

Remove Duplicate Contacts in Microsoft Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010

Here is what Microsoft suggests

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP100985411033.aspx#2

But if someone has thousands of contacts then it will take care ages to to click on each duplicate and select, one might need to get a physio session to recover from those clicks. I had around 5oo duplicate entries in my contacts in Outlook because I was testing ActiveSync on an Exchange Server with my mailbox and the client I used had some default settings that duplicated all contacts.

Anyways I could recover my contact list in a minute but I thought this exercise might be helpful to someone out there.

Export your contacts to a CSV file

Import it and while importing contacts chose the following option “Do not import duplicate items

Click on next and then finish, all duplicates should be eliminated.

Office 2010 Web App on SkyDrive

Microsoft has slowly caught up with the web and have been offering great features to boost up the use of live ID or hotmail.

25GB free space in SkyDrive

and now Office 2010 Web Apps, the interface is flawless, much better than Google Docs. I have nothing against Google Docs I use it quite often but when I tried the Microsoft Office Web Apps I realized what Google Docs has been missing.

I have to say, I am impressed with this initiative of Microsoft and thank God now I can use Office on some of my Dinosaurs at home ;-)