Alexander’s Blog

Microsoft Outlook 2007 allows you to easily add RSS feeds. Here’s the step-by-step procedure.

1. Start Outlook 2007.
2. Go to Tools, Account Settings, and click on RSS Feeds tab.
3. Click New, and enter the address of the feed. For example, to add this blog, type in the address: http://www.techgalaxy.net/blog/rss.xml as shown below.

4. The RSS feed is added to the RSS folder in Outlook as a subfolder.
5. You can further tweak the settings, such as automatically download enclosures for the feed or download the full article as an .html attachment to each item.

If you have been using Microsoft ActiveSync to synchronize your Windows Mobile powered devices in Windows XP and now are planning to upgrade your PC to Windows Vista, this blog entry is for you.

I recently did a fresh install of Windows Vista on a client laptop that was previously running Windows XP SP2. I wanted to make sure that Microsoft Outlook will synchronize with the Pocket PC Phone, just like it did in Windows XP. I assumed that the support for mobile devices is better on Windows Vista so that should be a no brainer. It turned out that I was completely wrong. Microsoft ActiveSync 4.2, which is the latest version of ActiveSync synchronization software for Windows Mobile powered devices, doesn’t work on Windows Vista. It only supports Windows XP and earlier versions. There is a Microsoft ActiveSync 4.5 Beta 2, which is also not supported on Windows Vista.

On Windows XP, you can use ActiveSync 4.2 to synchronize your PC via USB cable, Bluetooth, or infrared connection. According to Microsoft “If you have Windows Vista, your synchronization settings will be managed through the Windows Mobile Device Center. Windows Mobile Device Center is available through Windows Update and the Windows Mobile Device Center page.” I am sure there are good reasons, which I don’t know, for not including Windows Mobile Device Center in Windows Vista.

Although you can download the Windows Mobile Device Center (Beta 3 release) from Microsoft’s Web site, it is only meant for Windows Vista RC1. In addition, Microsoft recommends that you do not use this beta software on your production computer. To summarize, Windows Vista doesn’t support ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center is still in Beta and is only supported on Windows Vista RC1. Just out of curiosity, I downloaded and installed the Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center Beta 3 for Windows Vista (published on 10/6/06), only to find out that it didn’t do the job.

After a lot of googling, I discovered a solution that involved hacking the registry to include a WHOS key. This solution posted on microsoftweblog.com finally solved the problem and showed me the update that was missing after running Windows Update. Here’s the solution.

1. Start the registry editor (regedit.exe).
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft.
3. Right-click the Microsoft key and then select New, Key and add a key called WHOS.
4. Reboot your computer (some people have been able to get this to work without rebooting but I had to reboot to see the results).
5. Run Windows Update. You will notice a new update that will allow you to configure and synchronize using Windows Mobile Device Center. You should reboot again after the update.
6. Configure your mobile device and synchronize with your Windows Vista PC.

Needless to say, there are some questions as to how well Windows Vista supports mobile devices. Windows Vista was RTM’d in November and as of today there is still no official replacement for Microsoft ActiveSync. In addition, you can only add one mobile device at a time in Windows Vista, which is not Microsoft’s intent but perhaps this is an issue because the Windows Mobile Device Center is still in beta. And there is still no support for podcasting.

Despite all these hassles with ActiveSync, do I still recommend that people upgrade their Windows XP computers to Windows Vista, the answer is ABSOLUTELY! The advantages of upgrading to Windows Vista far outweigh the disadvantages.

Microsoft has announced that Exchange Server 2007 has been released to manufacturing. Microsoft is running more than 120,000 mailboxes in production on Exchange 2007 and have exceeded their SLA of 99.95% availability. In addition, more than 200 Technology Adoption Partners (TAP) and Rapid Deployment Partners (RDP) have over 55,000 mailboxes in production operating within their enterprise SLAs.

Microsoft recently announced the release of Microsoft Antigen e-mail security products, including Antigen for Exchange, Antigen for SMTP Gateways, Antigen Spam Manager and Antigen Enterprise Manager. These products will be available to customers on July 1, 2006.

Microsoft Antigen e-mail security products use multiple scan engines to help provide comprehensive protection from viruses, spam and other security threats. In addition to scan engines from industry-leading security companies AhnLab Inc., Authentium Inc., CA Inc., Kaspersky Lab, MailFilters.com Inc., Norman Data Defense Systems Inc., Sophos Plc and VirusBuster Ltd., all Microsoft Antigen e-mail security products now include the new Microsoft anti-virus engine.

Here’s a list of products that will be available.

1. Antigen for Exchange provides anti-virus and content filtering for Exchange Server 2003 and 2000, stopping threats that get past perimeter defenses while simultaneously containing internal incidents.

2. Antigen for SMTP Gateways provides anti-virus and content filtering for Windows Server™ 2003 and Windows Server 2000 Server SMTP Gateways, stopping threats before they reach internal messaging resources and users.

3. Antigen Spam Manager provides anti-spam and content filtering for Windows®-based SMTP and Exchange servers, stopping spam before it can affect user and network productivity.

4. Antigen Enterprise Manager provides centralized management for Antigen-protected servers, improving IT administrators’ visibility into and control of e-mail server security.

5. Antigen Messaging Security Suite provides comprehensive anti-virus, anti-spam and content filtering for Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange 2000 Server e-mail servers and SMTP gateways (includes Antigen for Exchange, Antigen for SMTP Gateways and Antigen Spam Manager).

6. Antigen Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. Provides critical events and alerts on virus, worm and spam activity to Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 from Antigen for Exchange Server 2003, Antigen for SMTP Gateways, and Antigen Spam Manager, and monitors the health and availability of these products.

Click here for more details.

By default Outlook blocks several types of attachments for security reasons. There are two levels of attachment security in Microsoft Outlook 2003. Access to Level 1 files is blocked and you can’t changed that. When you receive an attachment with a Level 2 file type, you will be prompted to save the file to your hard disk. There are no Level 2 files by default but you can add or remove Level 2 type files if you are an administrator. There are dozens of Level 1 type files. For a list of Level 1 file types that are blocked by Outlook, click here.

If you wish to allow certain types of attachments in Outlook 2003, e.g. URLs, you can modify the registry as described below.

1. Clik, Start, Run, and type regedit.exe to start the registry editor.
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Your Version Number\Outlook\Security. The version number will be something like 10.0 or 11.0, depending on your version.
3. Click Edit, New, String Value.
4. For Value name type Level1Remove and press Enter.
5. Double-click the new entry and set the Value data to a list of extensions seperated by semicolon that you want to allow. For example, if you want to allow URLs, EXE and VBS files, enter url;exe;vbs in lowercase. Do not enter a period before file types.
5. Restart Outlook for the changes to take effect.