On March 8th, we released the Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT) to the Microsoft Download Center, replacing Outlook Configuration Analyzer (OCAT), the original diagnostic tool for Microsoft Outlook. OffCAT was developed by the same team that put together OCAT , so it should be seen as the next...

For about as many years as you’ve used Outlook, you’ve likely used the guidance in the older Outlook meeting requests: Essential do’s and don’ts article. However, if you read the older document, you almost certainly noticed that the document only generally applies to newer Outlook versions. Over the...

The Exchange team blog article OAB in Exchange Server 2013 introduced the new Offline Address Book (OAB) generation and distribution architecture in Exchange Server 2013. Take a few moments to visit the article if you haven’t seen it yet or re-visit it for a quick refresher. The OAB management...

The Microsoft Outlook team has released updates for Outlook 2010 and 2007 that provide Office 365 users with password expiration notifications. The advance password expiry notification will be displayed in a pop-up message (near the system clock) within a certain time period before their password actually...

OCAT download Documentation download As the original blog post about OCAT release was quite popular, we wanted to let you know that we have just released the version 2.0 of the tool, with many features that you have been asking for! If you have OCAT v1 installed, the installation of OCAT...

This post describes an update to the Facebook provider for the Outlook Social Connector and the related policy settings that are available for Administrators. Outlook 2010 includes a feature called the Outlook Social Connector which can show social updates for the people your users email with, directly...

OCAT Documentation Last month we released the Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool (OCAT) on the Microsoft Download Center site. OCAT was developed by two Microsoft support engineers with over 30 years of combined experience in Outlook, Exchange and Office support. Based on their support experience, they...

Over the past year or so I have been working on this tool - adding functionality and checks based off my experience as an Outlook engineer, and from suggestions given by other engineers. Well, this February the tool has been released so that all our customers can download and use it to check for potential...

Following our recent announcement of the release of Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 you will see we released a ton of fixes and I wanted to blog about one specifically, and maybe at the same time provide some background into how issues like these come about and how we go about fixing...

In Exchange 2010, you can place a mailbox on retention hold or legal hold. Both holds serve a different purpose. It's important to understand the functionality provided by both. Retention Hold: As the Messaging Records Management page in the EMC suggests (see Figure 1 ), retention hold is used to...

You may have noticed a change in the behavior of the Safe Senders list within Outlook starting in Exchange 2010. Users can no longer add accepted domains to Outlook’s Safe Senders list. Figure 1: Adding an accepted domain to Outlook's Safe Senders list This was done as an anti-spam deterrent as we have...

Greetings, Exchange Administrators! In today’s edition of “and You”, we’ll be covering Exchange’s handing of messages generated by iPhones, iPads, and Macintosh Mail clients. Specifically, we’re going to cover what /mixed content body messages are, how Exchange handles...

Update 4/26/11: This post has been updated to include additional steps to ensure Kerberos authentication can be used for OAB downloads by domain-connected Outlook clients. With Exchange 2010, a major change was instituted in the way clients connect and access mailbox related data. Unlike previous versions...

Earlier last week, we moved the Exchange team blog to TechNet (check out EHLO Again! for a brief recap and what's new, in case you missed it). Nino Bilic and some Exchange MVPs pointed out that the blog had actually moved back to TechNet. Well, we’re glad to be back! More good news: this week, our friends...

Earlier this month we'd posted about an issue with Outlook 2007's support for Personal Archives, and that a fix has been checked in to the February 2011 Cumulative Update. The Office team has released the Office 2007 Cumulative Update for February 2011 , which includes the Outlook 2007 hotfix. The update...

Quick post to inform you that we've found an issue in Exchange 2010 Personal Archives support for Outlook 2007 in the December 2010 Cumulative Update for Office 2007, which may result in users being unable to access their archive mailbox. Our friends in the Outlook team have been working hard to fix...

I am very pleased to let you all know that in response to your feedback we are adding support for User Datagram Protocol (UDP) notification functionality back into Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. While Outlook 2010 is the best way to experience all that Exchange 2010 has to offer, you have been very...

In Yes Virginia, there is an Exchange 2010 SP1 , we announced Outlook 2007 support for Personal Archives in Exchange 2010 SP1 timeframe. This is now available in February 2011 Cumulative Update for Office 2007 . Exchange 2010 includes Personal Archive, a feature designed to help you reduce the risks...

In my post just the other day I provided a link to the new guide covering Exchange publishing via Forefront TMG or UAG. One poster followed up by asking, “How do I set things up when I have both TMG/UAG with a web farm and a hardware load balancer?” It’s a great question, as these days hardware load...

In GAL Photos in Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010 , I posted about the new GAL Photos feature in Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010. Since then, there have been many implementation-related questions internally from the field, in various froums and from customers. Here are answers to some FAQs . Figure 1...

There are several scenarios for consideration when deploying Exchange Server 2010 in an environment where Outlook 2003 is used. Most of these scenarios have been documented prior to the product release and some applied to previous versions. However, in a review of support cases, we've found that they...

EDIT 4/15/2010: Fixed two typos in examples. The process of finding a conference room in the building you want to meet and then hoping it is available can be a time-consuming process. Well this is all about to change! In the release of Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010 we have introduced a new feature called...

Now you can keep valuable information at hand with the new Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile Update and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. The Outlook Mobile Update is available for Windows Mobile 6.1 phones. When your phone is connected to Exchange Server 2010, you are automatically informed if there...

Over the years, displaying recipient photographs in the Global Address List (GAL) has been a frequently-requested feature, high on the wish lists of many Exchange folks. Particularly in large organizations or geographically dispersed teams, it's great to be able to put a face to a name for people you...

The Outlook team recently reported an issue on their blog about message sizes in the Microsoft Outlook 2010 Beta. A bug in the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta increases the message size of some e-mail messages sent from Outlook 2010 Beta. The Office team has been hard at work building a fix for this issue...