LIMITING USERS' CREATION OF PUBLIC FOLDERS
Don't want your users creating a raft of public folders on their own? You can limit their ability to do so. Here's how:
1. Go to the Configuration object under the Site container.
2. Select the Information Store Site Configuration object.
3. Click File | Properties.
4. On the Top Level Folder Creation tab you can specify those users who may create top-level folders and those who may not.
If you envision a considerable hierarchy of public folders, it would be advisable to restrict top-level folder creation to yourself and maybe a couple of trusted assistants.

Then you can create top-level folders that will just be containers for subfolders (e.g., "Sales," "Production," "Human Resources," etc.) and then designate within each of those folders which users have permission to create subfolders for those top-level folders. To do so, right-click the top-level folder (in Outlook) and assign the Create Subfolder permission to a user or group of users.

REVERTING TO AN ORIGINAL MAILBOX NAME
Most admins have had a user who somehow managed to rename one of the root folders in his or her mailbox. The first question to ask is: Where was it renamed?
If the user just renamed the Outlook shortcut, that can be fixed simply by right-clicking the shortcut and choosing Rename Shortcut.
If, on the other hand, the user actually managed to rename one of the mailbox's root folders, the easiest way to revert to the original name is to start the Exchange client (Exchng32.exe) on the user's
workstation and log in to his or her mailbox. Once you're in go to View | Folder, right-click the folder to be renamed, and select Rename. You should then be able to change the folder name back to what it was. On the subject of renaming: Did you know that you can rename any column in an Outlook view by right-clicking the column header, selecting Format Columns, and changing the Label field to whatever you'd like?

TESTING CONNECTIVITY THE PAINLESS WAY
Wondering if your Internet mail is flowing smoothly? You could send a message to a friend, but maybe that friend is away from her desk and won't get the mail (or respond to it) until Monday. You could send a message to a mailing list you subscribe to, but unless that list is specifically for testing mail connections, chances are good you'll get flamed by other participants for cluttering their inboxes with test
messages.
So how do you test your connectivity quickly and painlessly? Here are a couple of common tricks:
* Many ISPs have an autoresponder set up for testing. You send a message to it and it automatically pops back a response verifying that your message was received. Check with your local ISP to see if it has one you can use.
* If the ISP doesn't have one, there are a number of commercial autoresponders out there--they're basically systems that will autoreply with an advertisement if you send a message to the address. The ads may not excite you, but you only wanted to verify your ability to send and receive mail, right? A current list can be found here: http://www.myreply.com/classifieds.html
* Get yourself an Internet e-mail account so you can periodically send a test message to yourself. You can complete your test by replying to that message, sending it back to your Exchange server.
Any of these tricks are fast, free, ways to check whether your mail is flowing properly without irritating anybody in the process.

HOW MUCH WHITE SPACE IS IN MY DATABASE?
With all of the deleting, moving, and adding of data in your Information Store, you might suspect that there's a fair amount of white space in there--storage space that was formerly used for data but
is now empty. Well, you'd be right, but how do you tell how much white space is really there? If you have Exchange configured for nightly online defragmentation (as most admins do), then you can just check your Event Viewer - Application Log for an Event 1221. The text of that event will give you an estimate of how much free space is currently in your database.
The only way to get rid of this white space, and shrink the size of your Information Store, is to run an offline defragmentation, but as a general rule you should refrain from doing this unless the amount of
reported white space is considerable and you really need to recover the disk space.

QUICKLY SEE VALUES OF AN ITEM
There will be times when you'll want to know the message class of an item you've received or who created an appointment on a group calendar. A quick trick for finding this information lies in the Field Chooser tool and the Table view.
To see the message class of a received item, just right-click one of the column headers (Subject, for example) and select Field Chooser. Change the fields list from Frequently Used Fields to All Mail Fields
and then drag the Message Class field onto the view. Now you can see the message class of each received item. When you're done with it, just drag that column header off the view again.
To see the creator of a calendar item on a group calendar, switch your view from Day/Week/Month to a table view such as Active Appointments. Now right-click a column header, open the Field Chooser, and add the Organizer field to the view. You can use this trick in practically any folder to see the values of almost any field for each item.

THE INFORMATION STORE MAINTENANCE JOB
By default, the Exchange Server 5.5 Information Store maintenance job runs every 15 minutes to clean up deleted item retention, delete expired folder contents, synchronize the server's Public Information
Store, and remove expired Public Folder contents.
If these Information Store maintenance jobs are causing too much processing overhead during the day when your users are connected to their mailboxes, you can change the schedule. Here's how:
1. Highlight the server whose maintenance job you are modifying.
2. Go to File | Properties.
3. Click the IS Maintenance tab.
4. Choose Selected Times to have Exchange run the maintenance job at the times you specify in the schedule grid.

FIND OUT WHICH SERVICE PACKS YOUR EXCHANGE SERVER IS RUNNING
To quickly determine which build and service pack you're running on an Exchange server, start the Exchange Administrator program and click the Servers object in your organization. On the table to the right you will find a column that lists the version, build, and service pack level of each of your servers. Finding your NT service pack level is a little harder, but not much. Go to Start | Programs | Administrative Tools | Windows NT Diagnostics. The General tab shows you the version, build, and service pack level for NT. The system tab will give you information about your HAL and BIOS levels.
Finding the build and mode of your Outlook client is as easy as clicking Help | About Microsoft Outlook from within Outlook. That will tell you the version, build, and the mode (Corporate/Workgroup,
Internet Mail Only or No E-mail) that the software is running in. Clicking the System Info button on that screen will give you information about the workstation's operating system version and build.

USING CUSTOM ATTRIBUTES
If you're making extensive use of your Exchange directory, you may find a need to add information that doesn't already have a field. Microsoft has accounted for this possibility by including 10 Custom Attribute fields (on the Custom Attributes tab of the Mailbox Properties sheet), which you can populate with any data you like.
Can't remember which Custom Attribute field was for mother's maiden name and which one was for birth date? Well, you're in luck--you can rename those fields by going to Exchange Administrator, finding the server's Configuration container, selecting the DS Site Configuration object and clicking File | Properties. On the Custom Attributes tab you can assign new names to each of those 10 fields.
Changes you make to the DS site configuration tab are reflected throughout the Exchange site, so you can use the same set of Custom Attribute fields on multiple servers as long as they're in the same
Exchange site.

SHARE A MAILING LIST WITH A PUBLIC FOLDER
The increasing number of industry-specific electronic newsletters have spotlighted an excellent use for Public Folders--as mailboxes for these newsletters. If you have several users who would all like to receive an e-mail newsletter, simply create a public folder for them, give it an SMTP address that's easy for you to work with, then subscribe to that e-mail newsletter with the e-mail address of the public folder. This has the added benefit that the users can read the newsletter from the public folder and even post messages to each other discussing it there.
Doing this alleviates the need for several users to all subscribe to and manage the flow of newsletters. And there's the added benefit that you can keep old copies of the newsletter for as long as you like--no
more calls from the VP of Marketing asking if you can somehow retrieve that five-week-old newsletter message that he accidentally deleted from his mailbox.
Security gotchas: Make sure that the users all have appropriate access to the public folder and grant the Anonymous user at least Contributor status so that the newsletters can be received in the folder.

CREATE AN ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS LIBRARY
If you're creating forms with Outlook that you want to share with the rest of your Exchange users, just publish them to an Organizational Forms library. "But I don't seem to have one!" you say? No worries;just create one.
To do so, go to Exchange Administrator, select the server you're working with, then click Tools | Forms Administrator. From there you can add one or more new Organizational Forms Libraries to publish forms to. When you create the Forms Library you're asked to specify a language; when a foreign language client connects to the Exchange server it will look for a library in its own language. If you support
clients in multiple languages, pay particular attention to the language you choose. Although you can change the name of the library after it's created, you can't change the language.
Before you close the program, be sure to add yourself as owner to the Organizational Forms Library or you won't be able to publish to it.

SETTING AGE LIMITS FOR PUBLIC FOLDER CONTENTS

You can set age limits for the contents of folders in the Public Information Store by using the Public Information Store Properties page.

To set age limits on all folders in your Public Information Store, follow these steps:

1. Double-click the Site Configuration container for the site you're modifying.

2. Double-click the server whose Public Folder Settings you're modifying.

3. Select the Public Information Store object.

4. Choose File | Properties.

5. Select the Age Limits tab.

Check the Age Limit For All Folders On This Information Store (Days) checkbox and enter the number of days you want to keep items. Exchange Server will then delete all messages in your public folders that are older than the age limit you entered.

DISTRIBUTING ADMINISTRATIVE RIGHTS

Before others can manage your Exchange environment, you must grant them access to the site and configuration containers. The easiest way to do this is to assign rights to a Windows NT global group and put the desired users into that group. Users and groups with permissions to the site container can then manage recipient objects and create new mailboxes. Users and groups with permissions to the configuration container can administer Exchange Server's core components and connectors. To add permissions:

1. Create an Exchange Administrator's global group and assign users to the group.

2. In Exchange Administrator, select the object whose permissions you want to change.

3. Go to File | Properties.

4. Click on the Permissions tab.

5. Click Add.

OPTIMIZING EXCHANGE'S PERFORMANCE

Performance Optimizer is a critical component in ensuring peak performance from Exchange Server. You should run Performance Optimizer immediately after installing Exchange as well as whenever you change resources or move Exchange Server directory components to another disk. Performance Optimizer does the following:

* Analyzes your hard disk configuration to determine which device has the fastest access times. It reserves the disk that has the fastest access time for Exchange's transaction logs.

* Analyzes your hard disk configuration to determine which device has the fastest random access time. This drive becomes the location of your Public Information Store.

* Analyzes physical memory against the number of users and the way the server will be used. It uses this information to determine the optimal size of the directory and information store caches.

To run Performance Optimizer, go to Start | Programs | Exchange | Performance Optimizer.

THE EXCHANGE SITE SERVICE ACCOUNT

During the setup of your Exchange server, you'll be prompted to designate the Site Service account. You should enter the account name in the form domain\account.

It's not a good idea to use the Administrator account as the Service account. Instead, you should always create a dedicated Service account for Exchange to communicate across servers. If you try to use the Administrator account as the Service account, you could grant rights during setup that would conflict with the rights already assigned to the Administrator account.

AUTOMATE MONITORING OF EXCHANGE EVENTS

There are two excellent tools you can use to monitor Exchange events that are generated in the event logs of Exchange servers. The first, Evtscan.exe, lets you monitor servers for specific events, and when an event is detected, the tool will (depending on how you configure it) send an e-mail, send a message to specific users or computers, or restart or stop a service.

The other utility, Elf.exe, lets you specify the servers and events that you want to monitor. The utility then writes the results to a text file.

Both of these tools are available in the Exchange Resource Kit.

REHOMING PUBLIC FOLDERS

Sometimes you may need to move a public folder from one server to another. For example, if a server in your site is going to be taken offline for an extended period of time, you may want to move its public folders to another server in your site.

This process is known as rehoming public folders. Microsoft has provided a utility, PFAdmin, in the BackOffice Resource Kit for Exchange to allow easy rehoming.

To rehome a public folder without the BackOffice Resource Kit, follow these steps:

1. Create a personal folder in Outlook.

2. Choose the public folder you want to move and copy the entire contents to the personal folder.

3. Delete the public folder.

4. Allow replication to take place so the deletion is replicated to all other sites within your organization.

5. Log on to a mailbox on the server where you want to home the public folder.

6. Create a new public folder that will become your rehomed public folder.

7. Copy the folder contents from your .pst file to the new folder and assign the appropriate permissions.

ALTERING THE TIME WHEN DIRECTORY CHANGES ARE READ

If you make changes to your Exchange 5.5 directory, you may be perplexed to discover that the changes aren't always immediately reflected in the Information Store. This is because the Information

Store caches the directory store and only rereads it about every 2 hours. So, any changes you make might not take effect for up to two hours. If you'd like to expedite the process, you can do so by going to

the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem registry key and adding this new value:

Name: Mailbox Cache Age LimitType: Reg_Dword Value: a number (in minutes, representing how often you want it to update) of type Hex.

You can set the number to anything you want; many admins have set it to check as often as every 5 minutes with no ill effects.

After you make this change you'll need to stop and restart your Information Store service and you'll want to update your emergency repair disks to reflect the change.

Note: Remember, editing your registry can be risky; always have a verified backup before you begin.

ADMINISTER EXCHANGE FROM YOUR WORKSTATION

If you sit more than 10 feet from your Exchange server it can be awfully inconvenient to have to get up to go administer it elsewhere. Fortunately you have some options for remote administration.

If you're running NT Workstation on your machine you have the best option--just install Exchange Administrator right on your desktop and you can administer any Exchange server on your network from there. To install it on your workstation, start the Exchange setup program, do a custom install, and tell it to just install the Administrator program on your workstation. When you start the Administrator program you'll just have to tell it which server you want to administer (you can specify a default) and it will connect to that server.

If you run Windows 9x your options are a little more limited. Basically you'll need to use a remote control program like PC Anywhere. One good option is a freeware remote control tool called Virtual Network Computing (VNC) from AT&T Labs. http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/

RERUN PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZER AFTER AN UPGRADE

Any time you make a change to the hardware in your Exchange server you should rerun the Performance Optimizer (you'll find it on the Start menu with the rest of the Exchange Admin programs). It can evaluate your new hardware and service expectations and make modifications to your server configuration to take best advantage of your new hardware. Starting the Performance Optimizer in Verbose Mode (with a -v switch) gives you considerably more (six screens worth) of choices that you can make in optimizing your Exchange server.

Added bonus: You can use the Performance Optimizer to change the drives/directories where key files (such as Transaction Log files) are kept. This can be helpful if you've added new drives that you want to dedicate to the log files. Just start the Performance Optimizer, answer the questions on the first screen, then after it does a little evaluating of your system you'll be presented with the list of key

files and paths to them. You can accept the suggested paths, or change them to paths that you select.

USING OFFLINE FOLDERS

That road warrior with the notebook probably won't be able to easily or cheaply access your Exchange server from seat 11B (at least not yet), but with offline folders, data can be accessed whenever the laptop is booted. To enable offline folders go to (on the Outlook client) Tools | Services | Microsoft Exchange Server Service and click the Advanced tab. At the bottom of the dialog box you'll see the options for enabling offline folder use. Once the folder has been enabled and created, you can go into the properties for any mailbox folder and customize the offline-folder settings. Next time the user logs on; Outlook will synchronize the offline folder with the Exchange server. Later, when disconnected, the user can work offline and access all of the items that were in the mailbox when it was last synchronized.

Special Tip #1: If the user is going to synchronize over a slow line make use of the Filter button in the sync options to restrict the items that will come across the line. Of particular interest: Deleted Items

and items that have large attachments.

Special Tip #2: Want to sync public folders for offline use? Copy the folder from the All Public Folders container to the Favorites container. Then go into the properties of the Favorites copy and set

The Sync options.

ENABLING MESSAGE TRACKING

Messages sent to and from an Exchange server can be tracked to help resolve mail delivery problems. Message tracking can be enabled on the MTA, the Information Store, the MS Mail Connector, or the IMS. When message tracking is enabled, each component that handles mail records its activities in a log file. Keep in mind that the default is to have message tracking off, so you must enable it before you can use it.

To enable message tracking on the Information Store or MTA:

1. Open Exchange Administrator.

2. Highlight the IS site or the MTA site configuration object on which you want to track messages.

3. Go to File | Properties | General.

4. Select Enable Message Tracking and click OK.

To enable message tracking on the MS Mail Connector:

1. Open Exchange Administrator.

2. Highlight the MS Mail connector object on which you want to track messages.

3. Select File | Properties | Interchange.

4. Select Enable Message Tracking and click OK.

To enable message tracking on the IMS:

1. Open Exchange Administrator.

2. Highlight the IMS on which you want to track messages.

3. Go to File | Properties | Internet Mail.

4. Select Enable Message Tracking and click OK.

After enabling message tracking, all components must be restarted on each server in the site before it will take effect.

USING THE INFORMATION STORE INTEGRITY CHECKER

The Exchange Server Information Store Integrity Checker, ISINTEG.EXE (located on the \excsrvr\bin directory), finds and eliminates common

Information Store database errors. You should use this utility if you can't start the IS service, if users can't access their mailboxes, or

if you have to recover the IS database with something other than NT's native backup utility. You can run the utility in one of three modes--Check mode, Check And Fix mode, and Patch mode. Check mode searches the IS database for table errors, incorrect reference counts, and any objects that are not referenced. ISINTEG displays the results and also writes them to a log file. Check And Fix mode checks for the same things as Check mode, but under this mode, ISINTEG also attempts to fix any errors it finds. Patch mode is used when the Information Store will not start after being restored from an offline backup. The syntax for using ISINTEG in Check or Check And Fix mode is: ISINTEG -pri | -pub [-fix] [-verbose] [-l [<filename>]] [-test<testname>] where:

-pri = works on the private information store.

-pub = works on the public information store.

-fix = tells the utility to fix the errors it finds.

-verbose = provides detailed feedback.

-l = sets the log file name.

-test = performs a specific ISINTEG test.

The syntax for running ISINTEG in Patch mode is: ISINTEG - patc No matter what mode you run the utility in, the Information Store must be stopped first and afterwards restarted.

SETTING EXCHANGE SO USERS CAN RECOVER DELETED ITEMS

Have your users ever asked you to recover e-mail that they accidentally deleted? In versions of Exchange prior to 5.5, the Exchange administrator had to restore the Private or Public Information Store. With Exchange 5.5, you can configure your server to retain these deleted items for a set period of time. During this period, which is configurable by the Exchange administrator, a user can retrieve the deleted mail simply by highlighting the Deleted Items folder and selecting Tools | Recover Deleted Items (Outlook 98 or later).

CHANGING THE EXCHANGE SERVICE ACCOUNT PASSWORD

You can change the Exchange Service account's password within the Service Account Password Properties tab in the Site Configuration object. After you change the service account's password, the Exchange Administration application will remind you to change the password through User Manager For Domains. If you don't change the password in your domain, you'll have a service logon failure the next time you stop and start Exchange Services.

HOW THE INTERNET MAIL SERVICE RESOLVES NAMES

The Internet Mail Service will first try to resolve a name by looking to the HOSTS file on the NT server where it's running. If the name map isn't present, the IMS will hand off the resolution to the NT server, which can use DNS, WINS, or LMHOSTS. Because Exchange goes to the HOSTS file first, it's possible for you to manually PING a host by name even when the IMS can't resolve the name. This discrepancy could arise from a typo or bad entry in the HOSTS file. The reason PING works is because NT knows to resolve the value using DNS.

RECOVER THE .OST

If you have a server crash or otherwise lose a mailbox and need to recover data from an .ost file, STOP! Before you do anything else, start the Outlook client in Offline mode as if nothing ever happened to your Exchange server. When it comes up, go to File | Import And Export and export all the folders and items to a .pst file. Only when you're satisfied that all the items have been successfully exported can you create the new server/mailbox and adjust the Outlook profile to connect to it. Once you can connect to the new mailbox, go to File | Import And Export and import the data from that .pst file you created into the new mailbox. It's VERY important that you start the Outlook client in offline mode to access that .ost file before you do anything else. If you connect to the new mailbox with that Outlook client, it will lock you out of the .ost file, and there's no known way to recover it at that point.

MONITORING YOUR TRAFFIC

Most Exchange administrators are curious about how much traffic their servers actually handle. Luckily there's a fairly easy way to find out. Performance Monitor includes several counters that you can use to measure your total or average message throughput.

Within the Private Information store, you can check out Messages Submitted or Messages Submitted/Min to monitor total traffic. Want to monitor your Internet Mail Service traffic? Depending on whether you prefer to see it measured in bytes, messages, or connections, you can find a counter to suit your needs in the MSExchangeIMC object (e.g., Outbound Messages/Hr and Inbound Messages/Hr).

You can also monitor the number of concurrent clients you're supporting at any given time by checking the MSExchangeIS Private object's Client Logons object, which tells you how many clients (including system processes) are currently logged on. The Peak Client Logons object will tell you the maximum number of concurrent logons you've had since the service was started.

SEPARATE YOUR EXCHANGE LOG FILES AND DATABASES

When setting up an Exchange server, you should put your log files on a separate spindle from the database. This is because of the way Exchange accesses a disk when writing to logs and databases. When the system writes a piece of data to a log, it's appended to the file

Sequentially. When the system then applies this change to the database, the disk is accessed randomly. To maximize your system's performance, you want the head to move as little as possible. If you put all the logs and the databases on one drive, the head will continually jump all over the place, and your performance will suffer significantly. If Exchange wasn't installed this way on your server, you can use the Exchange Optimizer, which offers you the option of moving the database files to a different disk drive if one's available.

COMPACTING THE INFORMATION STORE

Over time, the Information Store tends to become fragmented, and that can mean longer response times for your users. Although Exchange 5.5 normally takes care of this itself, there may be times when you want to manually defragment the Information Store. For this reason, Microsoft includes the ESEUTIL.EXE utility with Exchange 5.5.

To run the utility, you must first stop the Information Store service (for the Private or Public Information Store) or the Directory Service (for the Exchange directory). The syntax for ESEUTIL.EXE is:

Eseutil /d [/ds | /ispriv | /ispub ] [/l [<path>]] [/s [<path>]] [/b<filename>] [/t [<filename>]] [/p] [/o] where:

* /d = sets ESEUTIL to defrag mode.

* /ds = defragments the directory store.

* /ispriv = defragments the Private Information Store.

* /ispub = defragments the Public Information Store.

* /l = specifies the log file.

* /s = specifies the location of the system files.

* /b = creates a backup copy of the store with the specified filename.

* /t = sets the temp database filename.

* /p = leaves the original file uncompacted.

* /o = suppresses the normally displayed logo.

After the file has been defragmented, you must restart the Exchange Service so users can again access their mailboxes.

DETERMINE SMTP ADDRESSES OF PUBLIC FOLDERS

One convenient way to post messages to a public folder is to send the message to the folder's Internet (SMTP) address, and to do so, you

obviously need the folder's SMTP address. To find a folder's SMTP address, you must have access to the Exchange Administrator console or

to an Exchange Administrator. In lieu of those methods, here's a technique within Outlook to resolve a public folder's SMTP address:

1. Start Outlook with View/Folder List enabled.

2. Right-click a particular public folder.

3. Select Properties (depending on whether you have Owner rights to the folder, select either the Summary or Administration tab).

4. Under the "Add address to:" field, click Personal Address Book (PAB), assuming you have a PAB.

5. Repeat this step for each public folder that you want to determine the SMTP address for.

6. Open your PAB.

7. Double-click the folder for which you want to find the SMTP address.

8. Click Ex-E-mail Addresses and voila--the folder's SMTP address.

PROBLEMS WITH CIRCULAR LOGGING

If you run the default Exchange installation, your Information Store and Directory Synchronization transaction will be set for circular logging. This means there is only one log file , EDD.LOG, in the \exchsrvr\<databasedata> directory. The problem with circular logging is that it is unlikely that all of the information that has changed and not been written to the database since your last backup is in the log file. If transactions are happening quickly, the system will not have time to write the transactions before they are overwritten. Keep in mind that circular logging is controlled on the server advanced property page and is configurable server by server. Therefore, turning it off on one server will not remove it from other services.

HOW TO RECOVER FROM RUNNING OUT OF DISK SPACE

If you start the Information Store service and get the error message, "The MS Exchange Information Store returned the specific error 4294966796," it means you have a problem writing the transaction logs to your server, probably due to a lack of space. When you run out of space, the system first uses the reserve logs and enters a notification in the event log. If you don't correct the problem, the Information Store shuts itself down, and when you try to restart it, you get the above error. Although you could go in and delete all of the old log files out of the \exchsrvr\<databasedata> directory, we suggest that you initiate a full backup and allow Exchange to delete the logs for you. This way, you'll also have a backup of the logs in case you need to replay them to restore your database.

THE DOWN SIDE TO DIAGNOSTIC LOGGING AND THE INTERNET MAIL SERVICE

The Diagnostic Logging Properties page of the Internet Mail Service lets you set the logging level in any of several categories.

One of the categories you can choose to turn on from here is the SMTP Protocol Log. Enabling logging in this category causes Exchange to

write information to a log file in the \exchsrvr\imsdata\log directory. Basic transaction information and the text of the message are stored in

the log file. So, anyone who can read your log file can also read e-mail traveling across the IMS unless the e-mail has been sealed.

Message Archival is another category that captures the text of your messages traveling across the IMS. When set to Medium or Maximum,

Exchange saves the text in separate files under the \exchsrvr\imsdata\in\archive or \exchsrvr\imsdata\out directories. Therefore, you should probably turn this option on only for troubleshooting purposes and securing the directories where the logs are stored with NTFS read rights to Domain Administrators only.

THE QUIRKY X.400 CONNECTOR

The x.400 connector provides greater control and flexibility than a site connector does, because it's not dependent on RPC and doesn't require a permanent LAN/WAN connection. The x.400 connector is a good way to connect Exchange sites across slow network links. However, one quirk on the x.400 connector that could cause you some grief is that it's case-sensitive. When setting up the connector, type the name of the MTA in all uppercase letters on the General and Stack Properties pages. If you don't, messages may still get through if you have enough of the address correct to specify a unique recipient; however, delivery will be unreliable at best.

WARNING EXCHANGE CLIENTS ABOUT MAILBOX SIZE LIMITS

(Contributed by Ric Liang, rliang@wei.org)

Many organizations limit the size of clients' mailboxes to avoid overstuffed mailboxes and the continual disk upgrades that IT departments must perform as a result. Part of the process of limiting mailbox size is warning clients when their mailbox size nears the limit. If you warn clients too infrequently, they might reach or exceed their storage limit before they receive a warning. Conversely, if you warn clients too frequently, they might become annoyed and might not have a chance to clean up their mailboxes before the next warning message arrives. I recommend warning clients twice daily--once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Exchange uses a 1-hour grid as the default view for setting the times when events occur. When you schedule the warning interval, use the 15-minute view; otherwise, a client will receive a warning at the top of the hour, quarter-past, half-past, and quarter-to. To schedule the warning messages to appear at 9 A.M. and 3:00 P.M.

Run Exchange Administrator.

Select Site-name/Configuration/Information Store Site Configuration.

Select Storage Warnings tab.

Change the Detail View to 15 Minutes.

Click the columns to select 9:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M.

A SHORT COURSE ON MTACHECK

The utility MTACHECK.EXE is in the \exchsrvr\bin directory. This utility checks the consistency and integrity of Exchange's MTA queues.

Over time, messages in transit may become corrupt. When the MTA service will not start, crashes, or shuts itself down after a system crash, you need to manually run the MTACHECK utility. To run MTACHECK use the following syntax:

MTACHECK /f <filename> where <filename> is the complete path and filename of the desired log. When MTACHECK is run, it examines each queue in the database. When an error is found, the item is removed from the queue and placed in the \MTADATA\MTACHECK.OUT file for further diagnosis.

SAVING CONTACT INFORMATION WITHOUT CLOSING

(Contributed by Ric Liang, rliang@wei.org)

Many people find that when they are entering or changing Contact information in Outlook, they don't want to close the screen every time they need to save the changes. On the toolbar, the default button says Save and Close. If you want to save the information and keep the Contact screen open, select File/Save or press Ctrl+S. Also keep in mind that if you want to create a new contact from the same company, select Actions/New Contact from Same Company.

READ-ONLY ATTACHMENTS IN PUBLIC FOLDERS

(Contributed by Ric Liang, rliang@wei.org)

Frequently, clients complain that items with attachments in Public Folders are read-only. In most cases, this phenomenon occurs because

you open an attachment from within the Outlook Preview Pane instead of within the message body. When you open an attachment within the Preview Pane, the document appears in read-only mode. If you want to edit an attachment, you must open the attachment from within the message body. Another possible cause for read-only mode attachments is that some clients have only Reviewer permission. You must have Editor or Author permission to edit the contents of a Public Folder item.

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