Outlook 2011 – Get the Unread Mail folder back
In Outlook 2007 and 2010 for Windows, it always offered an ‘Unread Mail’ folder, where you could instantly see all of your unread mail regardless of folder. I use a lot of rules to push mail into different folders, alerts from servers, reports on stuff, facebook alerts, twitter, etc etc. I want the mails but just not in the mail Inbox.
Anyway, I tried to live without it, but it just irritated me until I HAD to replace it. So, here’s my step by step, it’s not rocket science, and about halfway through you’ll get it and probably ignore the rest… Here goes.
Outlook 2011 has a concept of ‘Smart Folders’ you should see them in the LH folders column.
Open Outlook, click the search box.
This opens the search ribbon, click ‘All Mail’ button.
Now click Advanced.
On the dropdown (little arrows) that appears and will currently say ‘Item Contains’,
click it and select ‘Read Status’
This brings up 2 more boxes, you want ‘is’ and ‘unread’
Now click the little + symbol to add another condition.
This time change the second condition to be ‘Folder’ ; ‘Is Not’
On the 3rd option, click it and select ‘Choose Folder’
In the pop up box, type ‘Deleted Items’ and then select it from the results and click Choose
By now you should see all your unread emails, in all your folders, and your search conditions will look like this
We now need this to be repeatable, so, now click ‘Save’
This should prompt you to give a folder an appropriate name under SMART FOLDERS, I called mine Unread Mail
That’s it, you’re done. Now whenever you just want to see all your unread email, just click on the smart folder you saved.
Also, you can now sort that folder in whatever way you like, my preference is to sort by folder or conversation.
Hope it helps!
Office Service Pack 14.2 – yes please!
Microsoft’s latest update for Office 2011 is great, some really significant improvements for Outlook especially. Yes, there are improvements for Word and PowerPoint and some bits and pieces for all apps in terms of improved document handling and Lion features, for me Outlook is the biggy.
For me it was the Outlook stuff that made me pay attention. In the organisation I work for, we’ve been having terrible trouble with Outlook wanting to do database rebuilds at every opportunity and then when it does, it will pretty reliably duplicate either contacts or calendar entries. We’ve been caning our DPM server doing multiple mailbox restores! Recently we’ve simply been using a piece of freeware to remove duplicates in a Windows based outlook profile instead.
All that aside, back to the update, the headlines are:
The database and the rebuild utility are improved
As mentioned above, this ha been a real issue for us, not only wasting user time, but also admin time. Time will tell if things are vastly improved, but I thought it was worthwhile to comment on the upgrade process itself. It’s pretty lengthy, when you complete the install of the patch and load outlook for the first time it will prompt you to select which profile you would like to upgrade. This is also good news as you might want to leave a backed up profile alone. One you start the process, it is pretty length and is of course entirely dependant on the size of your mailbox. Be prepared to give up some time to it, you can NOT cancel it once it’s started.
Which identity would you like to upgrade
IMAP account sync that includes support for synchronising with Gmail is improved.
Not tried this as yet, but as a lot of organisations fall in love with the Cloud, reliance on Gmail will inevitably increase.
Outlook for Mac performance in key scenarios is improved.
So far so good! My Outlook session has been grinding to a halt more and more lately, and since the install I’ve noted a vast improvement in reaction speed and in opening mail items.
Exchange email message sync is improved.
We’ve got a lot of people who are connecting via wifi and 3G, and although that is normally ok, when you’re on the edge of coverage, or something like Edge (E) or HSDPA (H) or GPRS (G) then you can really struggle. Being able to pull just headers and also pull the message in parts is great for poor bandwidth areas
Support for calendar scheduling resources is improved
The scheduling area in the calendar is vastly improved, a picture tells a thousand words, so here’s what it now looks like.
Week numbers are added to the calendar display.
AGain this is configurable, so you can put the week numbers into the Calendar view. It’s not a huge one for me, but I can see how that will be a vast improvement for some people.
Distribution list expansion functionality is included.
A real user improvement, our organisation uses loads of distribution lists and mail enabled security groups, and our users have been used to being able to check membership or alternatively be able to expand a group to remove 1 person (say when it’s about a birthday treat or something)
Some of the other bits I liked were the improved 2 line ‘Toast’ email alert, you get a wee bit more info now to make you decision on whether or not to read.
In short, this one gets my vote, some proper improvements and some listening has obviously been done by our friends at Microsoft.
Extending your MeetingPlace Express installation lifeline
Whilst I’m always in favour of migrating to the latest technology and taking advantage of the features they offer, every once in a while you have some existing installation that simply does the job and you are happy with what it offers.
We’ve had an old installation of Cisco MeetingPlace Express 2.1, which dates back to circa 2006/7, it offers conference call facilities, screen sharing and presentation, all nice and simple. It’s been replaced by the latest Cisco offering of WebEx. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great product, but we simply can’t justify the expense of it when the feature set we have now fulfils our needs. We’ve gone OSX on our desktop, and whilst MeetingPlace Express is strictly only supported under Windows, for the plugins etc, it’s perfectly useable from within the web based client. In order to use our existing install, we needed to make it use our backend Active Directory infrastructure and also change it to our current domain suffix, from a legacy one.
Initially, integrating it to Active Directory appeared daunting, as we had existing, stand alone users configured, with existing repeat meetings etc.
There is plenty of good documentation available here, but when we followed it, we managed to import users, but they were detached from their meetings, and as those meetings had no owners, they in turn vanished. This could have been a disaster, but we had of course made a full system backup before we did anything.
So, the aim was essentially 2 separate processes; change the DNS suffix and lookup; make the system AD integrated somehow.
In integrating MeetingPlace Express with an external directory, there are 2 methods to do it, LDAP and AXL SOAP API. They will both authenticate against CUCM or a CUCM related/generated directory. It pretty much depends which version of Call Manager (CUCM) you’re running, for 4.x and earlier, ldap is recommended and for 5.x and above, AXL is supported. As I wanted to authenticate against Active Directory and not CUCM, I opted to do it with ldap, it’s by far the simplest way.
The procedure is like this:
Export all users to csv text file.
Log in to Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express and click Administration. Click System Configuration > Usage Configuration.
Complete the fields available
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager/ Cisco Unified CallManager version: Set this field to Cisco Unified CallManager Release 4.x
- LDAP URL: (Make sure that this URL starts with ldap) ldap://server.whateveryourdomain.com:389 (Make sure that there are no spaces after the URL)
- Directory username: Use the format of an LDAP distinguished name: cn=serviceaccount,dc=whateveryourdomain,dc=com
- Password: Self explanatory
- Cisco base: Leave blank if you are not using the Cisco Unified CallManager DC-Directory to authenticate Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express users.
- User base: dc=whateveryourdomain,dc=com
- Directory type: ADS (Active Directory Services)
- Click Test LDAP Configuration to test that the configuration parameters work correctly.
- Click Save.
The test should dictate your success.
So, if like us you have existing users and want to convert them to AD authentication, you will need to take your exported file and modify it.
The procedure is like this:
1 Export all users again as before, safety first.
2 Open the file in Excel and then import as comer separated CSV
3 Edit text file, and modify field ISUSERLOCAL set to NO
4 Save the file, as csv, (however you cannot import using csv, the file MUST be text or it will corrupt on import)
5 Drop into a file manager and rename the file extension to .txt
6 Now import user TXT file and select the option to overwrite any existing users
7 Check you can now still login with AD credentials
8 Check meetings are all still visible. Test
Don’t change settings for admin users, or guest user as these must stay local.
You should not have all your users still with their existing meetings, but authenticating against Active Directory!
Now to change the domain suffix…
To change network parameters post installation, you can use the net command to modify the network configuration settings. To access the net command, you can use the Meeting Place terminal via the GUI, or SSH into it as the user called mpxadmin and then enter the command net.
In order to change the network settings, you must shut down the application by entering the following: sudo mpx_sys stop
The options pretty much speak for themselves, to change the DNS suffix, option 5; to change the DNS servers, option 6 and so on.
Option 8 when you’re done modifying settings, and don’t forget to reboot for the settings to take effect. (shutdown -r now)
With MeetingPlace now authenticating against your domain, any users who weren’t already enrolled will have accounts created on the fly when they attempt to login. It’s great, lowers the support overhead and is much quicker for the users too.
Microsoft Office 2011 and the Me contact
If you deploy Microsoft Office 2011 from a central repository and have your macbooks/mini’s/imac enrolled in Active Directory, you may find some puzzling results when your users send you emails.
When a new user signs into the macbook with his Active Directory credentials, his account is created on the fly (assuming you’ve deployed your topology to do so). At the same time your Outlook 2011 profile will set itself up with your email address, and providing your Exchange DNS records are configured correctly, all server addressing will be configured on the fly.
So, here’s the scenario, new (to the macbook) user signs into Outlook, all appears well, his mail is there, contacts etc. He or she sends an email to colleagues who receive an emails where the From: field appears fine, as in it shows their name.
However when you reply, you notice that the To: field derives a ‘Microsoft Office User’ preface to the full email address.
You get a result that looks like this:
From: Luke Darby <Luke@lukedarby.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:24:11 +0000
To: Microsoft Office User <lukedarby@lukedarby.co.uk>
Subject: RE: I have a name you know!
Initially this was a huge issue for us as it seemed to be linked to the “This product is licenced to” field. In short, it’s not directly related, but indirect.
Outlook 2011 creates a contact for you when you first create a profile, called ‘Me’ If it doesn’t have all information available, it uses your email address and the licences to field. In Essence you get a ‘Me’ contact which has ‘Microsoft Office User’ as the contact First and Last Name and your Work E-mail completed with your primary SMTP alias.
Me contact
You find this contact by clicking on Contacts -> Organize -> Me
Outlook Me contact
Once in there, you can manually complete the details you want, OR….
Scroll down and you should see your AD Directory contact detail. A handy ‘Update Contact’ button is provided for convenience to fill all the fields for you.
Once done, restart Outlook for good measure and you won’t see the issue again. It’s annoying, but simple to solve, and the user can do it themselves.
If you gave the bulk distribution licences to name as something else, then you’ll need to change THAT name in your Me contact.
Communicator 2011 13.1.2 Release – Lion patch at last
As many of you who have upgraded to Lion in either beta, GM (Gold Master seed) or the release version will know, if you were/are running Communicator 2011 and patched it under Snow Leopard to anything other than 13.0.0 (release version) then you’ll know it crashes as soon as you message someone (or they message you) once you were running Lion.
The ‘solution’ to this was to roll back to 13.0.0 which is pretty messy to be honest, and with Lion having been around for a while most of us expected the patch to have followed the release VERY closely.
Anyway, all that said, Microsoft have released the patch, download it here.
However take note of the kb, pre reqs:Before you install the Communicator 2011 13.1.2 Update, make sure that the computer is running Mac OS X v10.5.8 or a later version of the Mac OS X operating system.
In other words, if you’re running the pre-release, GM or the full release, AND have regressed your Communicator 2011 install to 13.0.0 then the upgrade won’t work. A neat guideline is that if Microsoft Autoupdate doesn’t ‘find’ it, then you’ll get an install error like this
Thanks for the image Nick!
This is pre-release btw. To resolve this error make sure you install the ‘broken’ 13.1.x version update first, THEN the patch will install.
This is made clear in the KB : Additionally, you must install Microsoft Communicator for Mac 13.1.0 Update or a later update before you install the Communicator for Mac 13.1.2 Update.
Successful install of Communicator2011-13.1.2
So to recap, the patch will install on pretty much any version of Lion or Snow Leopard(tested), but you must have patched Communicator to 13.1.0 minimum for it to install. If you regressed your install to 13.0.0, then patch it again, THEN install 13.1.2. Easy way to do this is let AutoUpdate work for you.
Anyway good news for a lot of folk who have put their money into Communicator/Lync etc, justifying the spend on these products is tough enough without having to explain to CEO’s that you’re waiting for a patch and have to roll them back to an inferior version (no screen share, EDGE etc)
Oh and connecting via EDGE … If you’re running Snow Leopard it still works with 13.1.2… Currently testing it on Lion, I’ve had 2 successes and 1 fail, so far I’m going with it still works! good news.
I know it’s life on the leading edge, but still, come on Microsoft, keep up!
Luke Darby
Technology Infrastructure | Media | Communication | Broadcasting
United Kingdom
