MAC Entourage error 18500

Ok, so I dont normally 'do' Mac repairs but this is and was a royal pain so I thought I'd be nice for those AppleFans out there. In fact this is so easy to sort yet it presents what I would describe as 'false' errors.

Scenario:
Mac Mini with Office 2008 connected by HTTP - No new emails arriving and everytime we click send it comes back with a HTTP error.

Fix:
Well let me put your mind at ease first by telling you that its not a MAC problem, or an Office problem. In fact its a server issue. Now if your the troubleshooting type like me, you've probably whizzed onto the SBS ran "IISRESET", maybe checked Alias's, heck even reset the users password.

BUT did you check Licensing..? That's right it would seem that this is an error linked directly to Exchange not allowing any more connections. To test this, simply go into services and stop the "License Logging Service" the users mail will pop up and start working instantly. (Please enable this service again and only use this to test, disabling it is considered violation of Microsoft's Licensing Policies and will be upheld by them if they spot check you.)

So there is your resolution, you need to invest in some Small Business Server Cals :)


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Cannot create FAX.TIF in Outlook 2007

I have personally been having this problem and living with it for far too long, today was just the last straw for me. This believe it or not was actually a really easy problem to fix too!

I analysed Outlook and how it used attachments to find that they were all stored in a temporary secure folder in preparation for you opening them in the Outlook QuickPreview, this being said if one particular file becomes corrupt that extension is then inaccessible to outlook entirely.

So the resolution is simple, find the folder and then delete the data.

Resolution

Go to Start
Run
Type "Regedit"
Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12\Outlook\Security
Then take note of the value for "OutlookSecureTempFolder"
This is where the folder is, finally navigate to this folder and delete all of its contents.

Hey presto, you dont even have to close outlook for this to work, it is sorted instantly.

Good luck.

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Microsoft Office Outlook Hotmail Connector

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Download it now for Microsoft Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003.

SMTP: Advanced Queue Failed to Deliver Message in ESM

We noticed a while ago that emails were suddenly disappearing without trace, no NDR being genereated. The email just seems to disappear.

There are multiple ways to resolve this issue but I'll explain my method which will hopefully point most people in the right direction.

Firstly you need to find out exactly what the issue is, in my case we tracked the message in ESM and found the message was received by the server but then never delivered with the message; "SMTP: Advanced Queue Failed to Deliver Message in ESM"

You should enable message tracking, by right clicking the mail server in ESM and checking the tracking box on the general properties page.

Review the log file to find the exact event id from the exchange server.

An example of my case is as follows:
10:33:38 GMT SERVER2K3 user1@domain2.co.uk 1019
user2@domain1.co.uk
10:33:38 GMT SERVER2K3user1@domain2.co.uk 1025
user2@domain1.co.uk
10:33:44 GMT SERVER2K3 user1@domain2.co.uk 1026
user2@domain1.co.uk

You should use the following link to reference the event ID's

Message tracking event IDs in Exchange Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821905

Event 1026 is most likely caused by the 3rd party Anti Spam software
running on exchange server.

Either the message was detected as spam or there may have been some corruption in the message. McAfee GroupShield installed on the Exchange server can also cause this.

We actually found that by disabling the scanning function in Group shield this resolved the error.

I have also however noticed in the past that GFI can cause this issue to, you should look in the Program files directory under GFI for any emails, you will most likely find them there.

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Exchange 2007 - How to Purge Disconnected Mailbox

A feature that took me a little while to click onto was the process of purging Mailboxes. In Exchange 2003 it was simple, delete the user, enter the exchange console, run the cleanup agent and then purge or reconnect.

In exchange 2007 this ability seems to have left the Exchange console and entered the shell world...

Should you face this scenario of having to rebuild an Exchange Mailbox the process of purging is as follows, firstly remove the mailbox in the Exchange console as normal then enter the Exchange Management Shell.

You need to run two commands (Remember - Case Sensitive):

List all of the disconnected mailboxes in the domain so you can find the GUID.
Get-MailboxStatistics | where-object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null } | Select DisplayName,MailboxGuid

Then modify the following command with the GUID of the Mailbox you wish to delete:
Remove-Mailbox -Database "Mailbox Database" -StoreMailboxIdentity -confirm:$false

Be careful though when deleting Exchange Mailboxes before you even get to the purging stage make sure you don't accidently delete the user account which is very possible in Exchange now that it has the added Active Directory Integration.

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SMTP: message submitted to categorizer

Messages just appear to be falling into the realms of Cyber space with this error, when running the tracking console in ESM you simply see the message:
SMTP: message submitted to categorizer

To Resolve:

I've found this to be two seperate issues, most commonly issue one will work.

Resolution 1
It is Anti Spam that is causing the issue - submitted to categoriser is not a standard entry in exchange, meaning its been sent out of exchange to be sorted for spam. I can't stress enough that checking your quarantine or your instant delete settings will solve this issue.

Resolution 2
It's an issue with the listing in exchange for the GC, follow the below steps to resolve.

Step 1.
Open ESM, expand "Servers", right click on the server and select "Properties", click "Directory Access", select "Global Catalog Servers" from the dropdown and uncheck "Automatically discover servers" (Bypass the warning) and add the GC (Servername in SBS environments) manually.

Step 2.
Then Restart exchange services to find that all mail begins to deliver to store as per normal.

Exchange 2003 to 2007 Migration (Exmerge)

Just some little handy tips to share around in regards to migrating users from a Microsoft Exchange 2003 server to the all new singing and dancing Exchange 2007.

As most of you will probably know just from looking at the new Exchange management console it isnt quite as easy as copying and pasting the priv1.edb or Exmerging in and Exmerging out the old data.

The techniques are now slightly different:

Although the method is the same there is a slight change if you are doing this for a Server 2003 with Exchange 2007 or an SBS 2008 with Exchange 2007. If you are runnning SBS 2008 then you must download the Exchange Management Tools and the Windows Powershell add-on from the Microsoft site and run this on a 32-Bit machine seperate to the SBS box. (Please note that if you are doing import mailbox procedures then you need to download Exchange 2007 SP1 from the site)

So first step then is the data extraction; from 2003 this is very basic and straight forward using Exmerge from Microsoft you can take out all of the previous mailboxes into PST's and store them on the new server.

The second step is to go into the Exchange management shell and enter the following commands bearing in mind that all scripts are case sensitive.

Grant the Administrator Account full access to all Mailbox's:
"Get-Mailbox | Add-MailboxPermission –user Username –AccessRight FullAccess –Inheritancetype all"

Begin the import procedure for all users
"Get-Mailbox -Database “SERVER\Mailbox Database” | Import-Mailbox -PSTFolderPath "

This will then go through the motions for importing all of the pst files into their correct user accounts.

If you want to look at importing an individual mailbox to an individual user then the process is again very similar but the command is as follows:
"Import-Mailbox -Identity -PSTFolderPath "




TIP:
Typing -whatif at the end of a command in Exchange powershell runs a simulation of the command without actually doing anything with the data.



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List of Handy UK DNS Servers

BT Broadband
62.6.40.178
194.72.9.38
194.74.65.69
194.72.9.34
194.72.9.38
194.74.65.68
194.74.65.69
194.72.0.98
194.72.0.114
62.6.40.162
62.6.40.178

Demon
Primary DNS Server:- 158.152.1.58
Secondary DNS Server:- 158.152.1.43

Eclipse
212.104.130.9
212.104.130.65

Plusnet
212.159.13.49
212.159.13.50

Zen
212.23.3.100

Visual Basic Dialogue when opening new email in Word 2003

There are only two possible solutions to this from what I understand and then one workaround,

Resolution one:
In Outlook, Go to Tools > Macro's> Security and lower the security then restart outlook.


Resolution two:
Close Outlook, Go to Word > Tools > Macro's > Security > Then enable the checkbox that says Trust VBA project.

If neither of these work I have found a workaround of simply stopping Outlook from using word as the default editor, to do this go to Outlook, Tools > Options > Mail formatting and uncheck the box.

C Drive Filling with Exchange .log files

This is one that doesnt explain itself very well, whether it be fault, feature or otherwise you can decide.

The solution is simple: Exchange has a "Self protect" feature by recognising if it has been backed up or not. If it detects that the database isnt properly backed up either using NTBackup the SBS Backup or another body which correctly cleans the database then the exchange will begin logging every email in plain text into a Text document in the C:\Progr~\Exchsrv\MDBDATA directory.

So the solutions are simple if you are using a backup program then make sure it is running ok. if you are using your own custom built backup script like Xcopy or something like, you may need to look at Circular Logging to stop the build up of log files.

The only other reason I have so far found that this can happen however are Database corruption; to check this again is relatively simple if you have used the ESEUtil application before.

Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Progr~\Exchsrv\Bin\
Then run Check the value "State" which should display Clean, if it instead displays "Dirty" or "Inconsistent" you will need to repair the database using ESEUtil and the transaction logs created so do not delete them.

To repair look at following the below articles:

How to remove Transaction logs

OR

How to Maintain after repair

Modifying Recipient Policies in Exchange 2003

This is just a handy one for people to keep hold of, I know there has been many times when it is just so much easier to setup an organisations email in one policy and then let the server do the rest for you...

So here are your most common:

%s : Surname (last name)
%g : Given name (first name)
%i : Middle initial
%d : Display name
%m : Exchange 2003 alias

All that needs to be done is edit the recipient policy and click add SMTP, then use any of the above given examples to constuct a default email address.

I.E

%g.%s@domain.com - kris.haynes@domain.com