How Outlook rules work

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

This morning, as part of an e-mail migration, I was looking at a scenario where I needed to divert all inbound e-mail messages from one (Exchange Server) mailbox to another (Microsoft Mail) mailbox, unless the message originated from the target mailbox. I couldn’t implement this in Active Directory as it only supports a simple divert of all incoming messages to another recipient (and so couldn’t handle the additional complexity of excluding certain messages), but the rules and alerts functionality within Microsoft Outlook is more flexible.

One potential issue was around where Outlook stores information relating to its rules – because I need to create the rule using Outlook on one PC and remove it from another.

In this case, everything was fine, because this particular rule ran server-side (and hence didn’t rely on Outlook being active in order to execute); but it’s not always that simple – some rules rely on Outlook client functionality.

The Slipstick website includes comprehensive information on how the rules functionality is implemented, both for standalone Outlook clients and for Outlook clients connected to Exchange Server computers.

Enhanced search capabilities for Outlook and the Desktop

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

The fact that Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google are all looking to grow (or retain) their share of the search market and to extend this to the desktop is no secret. Unfortunately for Microsoft the the next Windows release (codenamed Longhorn) is constantly being delayed and as one of its primary aims is to improve the search capabilities available natively within the operating system, this gives Google and others an opportunity to take a hold on the desktop (although Google will need to be smart in order to maintain it’s lead in the Internet search engine market – whether the launch of the rumoured Mozilla-based Google browser will help with this is yet to be seen).

Back in July 2004, Microsoft purchased an ISV called Lookout Software. Lookout is an add-on to Microsoft Outlook that allows users to bypass the search tools provided by Microsoft and sift through e-mail, contacts and other information with keywords. The latest version of Lookout is now available from the Microsoft website and my first impressions are that it is very good, and very fast (is it only me that thinks the Lookout branding looks a bit like Google’s?).

On a related note, Copernic, another successful player in the search market, released their Desktop Search product this month – again, my first impressions using this are good.

Links

Lookout and Microsoft questions and answers
Outlook is a platform
Rumours surround Google browser
Google browser may be reality

Allowing potentially dangerous attachments in Outlook

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve come up against this one before, but as its something I’ve had to look up on a few occasions, I thought I’d post it up here. You know the problem – someone e-mails you a useful script and Outlook blocks access to it; and rightly so as we have no real way of telling if the attachment could be malicious.

If you trust the sender and are sure you need to access the attachment, there is a quick registry hack you can employ:

  1. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security\ (for Outlook 2003 – change 11.0 to 10.0 for Outlook 2002 or 9.0 for Outlook 2000).
  2. Add a new String Value called Level1Remove and add a semicolon-delimited list of file extensions to be allowed, e.g. .bat;.cmd;.com;.exe;.vbs.
  3. Restart Outlook and the offending attachments will be accessible.

Remember that this is disabling a security feature, so only enable potentially dangerous attachment types as an emergency workaround and remove the Level1Remove value once complete.

More details may be found in Microsoft knowledge base article 829982.

Office 2003 SP1 and enhanced junk e-mail filtering for Outlook 2003 released

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 20 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last week, Microsoft released Office 2003 Service Pack 1. The service pack includes the many public updates and hotfixes that have been released since Office 2003 debuted in autumn 2003 and adds fixes to several other problems that Microsoft hadn’t previously documented. It also offers some new security functionality including the addition of several file types to the list of those that Outlook blocks (noteably: .asp; .tmp; .vsmacros; .vss; .vst; .vsw; and .ws).

Along with the main service pack, equivalent service packs for OneNote 2003, Project 2003 and Visio 2003 were released, as well as an update for Outlook 2003’s junk e-mail filter allowing it to automatically update the safe senders list with outgoing messages’ recipients. This update replaces the outlfltr.dat file that controls the behaviour of the filter and provides a more current definition of which messages should be considered junk, based on Microsoft’s most recent analysis of mail patterns from the massive volumes of spam that Hotmail servers receive.