I am no longer maintaining this document,
which as of this writing is obsolete by at least two years.
For timely news and information about Microsoft's Exchange,
Windows Messaging, and Outlook email clients,
please visit the Slipstick Systems Exchange Center.
I regularly hear a number of questions about Microsoft Exchange, mostly from folks wrestling with it as their mail client on Microsoft Windows 95, where it is also known by the euphonious name of Windows Messaging. Here I'm recording my answers (plus many corrections and amendments suggested by correspondents) to a few of the most frequently asked client usage questions.
For email development issues, please see the parallel FAQ on that topic, which is one of my fields of expertise. I am an expert on the use of Microsoft Exchange and Outlook only in the same sense that a cow is an expert on cheese.
If you still have questions after reading this document, be sure to check out some of the other resources cited herein.
All trademarks used herein are the copyrighted property of their respective owners.
The Slipstick Systems Exchange Center maintains a canonical list of Exchange migration utilities.
Use multiple profiles, with the Personal Address Book entry of each profile naming a different address book (PAB) file. Alternately, you can change the PAB file being used on the fly through Tools.Services.Personal Address Book.Properties.Path in Exchange, or Tools.Options.Personal Address Book.Properties.Path in the Address Book UI itself.
You cannot view more than one Personal Address Book at once. A single profile may name only one instance of the Personal Address Book at a time. Do not be misled by the presence of the pulldown control in the upper right-hand corner of the Address Book window; that control allows you to select between different address books offered by different messaging services, such as the Global Address List (GAL) offered by Microsoft Mail or the various containers of recipients available through the Microsoft Exchange Server directory service.
You need a directory service, plus MAPI service providers for same, so that its contents appear in the address books of your Exchange users. Microsoft Exchange Server offers one such, while HP OpenMail offers another. Alternately, many directories (including both the Netscape Directory Server and Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0) offer LDAP.
HCC Ltd. has announced work on an MAPI service provider providing a publicly modifiable address book front end over an ODBC database back end. Contact them for pricing and other information.
You can use multiple profiles, with each containing an instance of the Internet Mail provider that names a different POP mailbox.
While you can't add more than one instance of Microsoft Internet Mail to a single profile, you might be able to add one instance of MS Internet Mail and one instance of Netscape Internet Mail. In such a case, check the Delivery order. The SMTP service listed first will send all outgoing SMTP messages.
The Outlook IMEP release promises to correct this.
Until somebody writes a MAPI service provider for IMAP, you can't. Try asking the IMAP folks at the University of Washington.
Control Data Services once announced that they would release service providers for IMAP4 (and LDAP, as well) as part of their PIX Server project.
Nexor, Ltd. offers a free beta of its MAPI address book provider for LDAP.
Install the MAPI service provider for CompuServe mail. You will find one version on the retail Windows/95 installation CD, under \drivers\other\exchange\compusrv. To obtain a more recent version, GO CISSOFT on CompuServe.
Transend Corporation has written a MAPI service provider for cc:Mail, their MAPI ConnectorWare for cc:Mail. Phone 415-324-5370.
Take a look at the mail4u MAPI service provider, released as shareware by Softwareentwicklung und Systemdesign.
Stop right there. That's completely out of my field of expertise. Please try instead Chris Hall's MS Mail and Exchange Bar and Grill.
If you use Microsoft Exchange Server, you have recourse to the Inbox Assistant command in your mail client, which will handle this. Note that the Inbox Assistant will only manage messages received through Microsoft Exchange Server.
Ludek Mokry offers a shareware filter solution, ExLife.
The Microsoft BackOffice Resource Kit for Exchange Server 5.0 contains SMH, a very flexible tool for automated message management.
Users of Microsoft Outlook 97 can install the free beta of its Rules Wizard.
If you use Microsoft Exchange Server, you have recourse to its Advanced Security features to send signed or sealed messages to other users within your organization. To this end, Exchange Server uses Northern Telecom's ENTRUST technology.
Jon Whalen has written an Exchange client extension to sign, encrypt, and decrypt Exchange messages using Phil Zimmermann's Pretty Good Privacy (aka PGP). While Jon apparently no longer maintains or supports it, it remains available on various Windows PGP utility archives, as well as on Sue's exhaustive Slipstick resource.
Commercially, Glück & Kanja GmbH offers CryptoEx, which signs and seals Outlook or Exchange mail with PGP.
Deming Software offers their Secure Messenger for Microsoft Exchange to sign or seal messages using the S/MIME protocols.
The OpenSoft ExpressMail client adds an Internet Mail service to Exchange (Windows Messaging) with S/MIME support.
If you use Windows Messaging or the Microsoft Exchange client released with retail Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, you do not have this command in your default mail client. To remedy this shortcoming, I've written an Exchange extension, Internet Idioms, that supplies this and several other missing features. You can find it and some other utilities I've written elsewhere on this web site.
Users of the Microsoft Exchange Server client can use its Tools.AutoSignature command for signatures.
Internet Idioms does this, too.
In proof that great minds think alike (while fools seldom differ), David Boreham has also written an extension to format replies Internet-style, Exchange Buddy.
If you use the WordMail feature of Microsoft Office 7.0, take a look at Scott Marquardt's useful Exchange WordBasic macros, which accomplish much the same end as David's and my extensions.
To change the default font used for sending new messages, go to the Send page on the Tools.Options property sheet. To change the default font used for replying to messages, go to the Read page on the same dialog.
To change the default font for reading an incoming message, install my Internet Idioms extension. However, this will not work on messages received through the Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Connector.
To change the font used by the folder contents view in Exchange, open the Display icon in the Control Panel, select the Appearance page, and modify the font and style for item Icon, just as you would to change the font used by the Windows Explorer.
(What? You dare request something beyond my utilities??)
The Slipstick Systems site has the best collection, though it's difficult to navigate. The Amrein Engineering collection has a strong Exchange Server orientation.
Microsoft Exchange is the standard Windows mail client, the front end to the Windows Messaging Subsystem that Microsoft bundles in Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. Microsoft Exchange Server is a scalable client-server messaging system, part of the Microsoft BackOffice. Among other things, Exchange Server contains a more featureful version of the Exchange client for use on its users' desktops.
To discover other pages about Exchange Server, visit Microsoft's Exchange Server Community site, which exists to coordinate peer support resources for Exchange Server.
Windows Messaging is an updated release of the mail client included in the Microsoft Windows 95 retail package, and the standard mail client included in Windows NT 4.0. Microsoft renamed it to this from "Exchange" in an attempt to reduce the confusion between it and the same-named client of Microsoft Exchange Server.
As Sue Mosher has written an excellent FAQ describing this release, I can do no better than to direct you to her.
Microsoft Outlook is an desktop information management application, resembling a fusion of Exchange, Schedule+, and the old Office Binder. It appears as a component of Microsoft Office 97. If you install Office 97 and elect to include Outlook, Outlook will replace Exchange and Schedule+ on your system.
Be careful: even if you don't elect to include Outlook, Office 97 may replace portions of Exchange (the message send and read forms) with its equivalents from Outlook.
Outlook is enormous. I recommend 32Mb RAM, and a P5/133.
Sue has a good writeup on Outlook, too.
Essentially, this is a revised version of the old Internet Mail message service provider, the layer that allows a MAPI application such as Microsoft Exchange, Windows Messaging, or Microsoft Outlook 97 to send mail via SMTP and read mail via POP3. You can read about it on the Microsoft Outlook web site.
Unfortunately, the IMEP setup program requires Outlook. Windows Messaging users can use this provider only by first installing Outlook, then installing the IMEP, and finally switching back to Windows Messaging.
Because it's a large and complicated program. (I know, so what else is new?) Furthermore, many users make it even more complicated than it is already by loading profiles that contain FAX, CompuServe, MSN, and even multiple flavors of Internet Mail providers all at once. Exchange has to load and set up each of these components before it presents itself to you. Instead of launching a mail program, you're launching four mail programs and a FAX program, all at once.
You can greatly improve the load time of Exchange by using a pared-down profile that contains only the services that you use. FAX and MSN are the worst performance offenders, but anything that you don't use you should move into another profile. I habitually run with a profile that contains only Personal Folders, Personal Address Book, and Internet Mail. I also don't use Microsoft Word as my email editor.
If you have 8 Megabytes or less of RAM, Exchange will thrash painfully as it squeezes its vast bulk into memory. For best performance, opt for a memory upgrade to 16Mb. For running Windows 95 Exchange, a 50Mhz 486DX2 with 16Mb RAM will handily outperform a 133Mhz P5 with only 8Mb RAM.
The recent Windows Messaging upgrade for Windows 95 will give you much superior performance in low memory installations. Note, however, that this is a much less featureful release than the Exchange Server client that you may already be running.
Other factors that slow load time include large PST (Personal Folders) files, or the presence of many client extensions (add-ins such as my Widgets and those of many others).
Incidentally, if you consider Exchange unusably slow, don't even think of running Outlook on your current hardware.
Either intentionally or accidentally, you have been sending messages in Microsoft rich text format to recipients using mail programs that cannot decipher this format.
When Exchange thinks that it is sending mail to another Exchange user on the Internet, Exchange (more properly, the Internet Mail message service provider) encodes the message, along with attached files, embedded OLE objects, and their associated icons, into a special data block called the TNEF (pronounced tee-neff) block. This block encapsulates the complete original content of the Exchange message, so that the message arrives at its destination with all proper formatting intact, including boldface, underlining, fonts, and colors. Otherwise, Exchange formats the message in an Internet-standard fashion, discarding all rich text attributes and ensuring that all attached files appear as standard attachments.
The problem arises when people not using Exchange or Outlook receive a message in the TNEF format: instead of seeing a formatted message, they see a big chunk of UUENCODE data if the sender used UUENCODE format, or a MIME body part application/ms-tnef if the sender used MIME. Depending on which mail program they use, they may either see a long sequence of hexadecimal digits, or they may see an attached binary file named WINMAIL.DAT.
Exchange specifies whether it emits TNEF or not as a property of the recipient, appearing as a field on the property page of the underlined recipient object within an Exchange To or Cc field. (The underline in the To field means that Exchange has recognized the name, and associated an address and other information with it.) To see this recipient property page, double-click the underlined recipient: when using either the Internet Mail provider or Microsoft Exchange Server, the popup that appears should include a check box labeled Send to this recipient in Microsoft rich text format. If this check box is set, Exchange/Internet Mail will use a TNEF block when sending messages to that user; otherwise, it will strip the rich information and send plain text. The sender can also set and clear this flag on entries in the Personal Address Book. Should the sender address a message using an entry from the Address Book, Exchange will use the setting of this flag from that entry.
Never set this check box if you suspect that your recipient isn't using Exchange or Outlook, or if you are sending mail to an Internet mailing list. Otherwise, your mail will include binary garbage.
Unfortunately, even if you never set this checkbox, there are several ways to send Internet mail messages in TNEF format by accident.
Some workarounds:
Microsoft has their own explanation of this phenomenon in the KnowledgeBase article Q136204.
The entire preceding discussion assumes that you are using either the Internet Mail (SMTP/POP3) or Microsoft Exchange Server messaging service. If instead you are using the Microsoft Mail messaging service, and depending on a Microsoft Mail gateway to carry your message onto the Internet, you are out of luck, unless you have a gateway clever enough to strip WINMAIL.DAT.
By default, the Microsoft Exchange client released with retail Windows 95 sent its message text in logical paragraphs, allowing the receiving client to format the paragraph to the dimensions of the reader's window. If you want to send lines instead of paragraphs to users on TTYs, you have several options. (These instructions assume that you are using the Microsoft Internet Mail message service.)
First of all, you can do exactly what those users do: press RETURN at the end of each line. This is easier if you compose your mail in a monospace font, such as Courier or Terminal, since that way you will have an idea of where to end each line. You can configure the fonts that Exchange uses for Compose.New message and Compose.Reply commands from the Tools.Options dialog.
Second, you can tell Exchange/Internet Mail to send your message using MIME; MIME will bundle the message text into a Quoted-Printable section, Non-MIME-savvy clients will see your message as containing equals signs at each soft line break, while MIME-savvy clients will reassemble your message into its original paragraphs. All MIME-aware mail clients support word wrap in one manner or another. If you use MIME, and your correspondents still complain about long lines, tell them to turn on word wrapping messages in their mail client.
Note that Exchange does not use the MIME rich text format, instead burying its rich text information in an application-specific section; hence MIME recipients will not see rich text unless they are actually running Exchange.
Note also that messages passing through the Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector will usually not contain those equals signs, as the IMC inserts hard line breaks in its plaintext whenever possible.
Finally, you can upgrade your Windows 95 mail client with the Windows Messaging update, or else upgrade just the Internet Mail message service provider component. Using this more recent release, outgoing messages in UUENCODE format will contain hard line breaks in their plaintext, instead of the logical paragraphs of the retail release. This is the most satisfactory solution, as your correspondents don't have to look at equals signs at the end of each line.
(The forthcoming IMEP will address this problem.)
You are sending your messages in the MIME message format. The Microsoft Windows95 Plus! Internet Mail transport bundles message plaintext into a MIME format called Content-Transfer-Encoding: Quoted-Printable. See RFC 1521 for more information.
If you find this noisome, you have several options. You can keep all of your lines less than 76 characters long, in which case the Internet Mail service provider will not have to insert these soft line break sequences. You can send your mail in a format other than MIME, via the Message Format setting. If your correspondent is using Exchange, you can specify that Exchange send rich text along with the message. Or your correspondent can use a MIME mail reader, which presumably will know how to handle this encoding correctly.
(The forthcoming IMEP will address this problem.)
If your message contains extended characters, the Internet
Mail service may intersperse equals-sign MIME escape sequences
into the plaintext body of your message, and may append the
following preamble to your message:
<Sender composed mail containing characters not in the
US-ASCII set.>
<These characters have been transformed into a printable
form.>
To correct this, change your default character set from ISO 8859-1 to US ASCII, or else take any of the precautions listed above. For more information, see the KnowledgeBase article Q146629.
Note that the Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector only encodes content this way on multipart MIME messages. When the IMC processes a message lacking extended characters or attachments, it instead hard wraps the plaintext.
You have a missing or damaged \Windows\Forms\frmcache.dat file. Microsoft Exchange uses this file to determine how to open a message. You will see it any time that you attempt to instantiate a window rendering a single message, such as happens during the course of a File.Open or Compose.Reply to sender command.
You need to restore this file. Unfortunately, the obvious solution - reinstalling Exchange - will not do this.
Before doing anything, stop Exchange completely. (Would you change your fan belts while leaving the engine running?) One component of Exchange, the message spooler process, will continue to run for a while after you close Exchange; to stop this component immediately, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to view the task list, select the row corresponding to the spooler ("Mapisp32"), and issue the End Task command.
First, look in your \Windows\Forms folder. You should find there a file named frmcache.dat. Rename it to something innocuous, such as frmcache.bad. If you find there a file named frmcache.bak, copy it to frmcache.dat.
If that didn't work, remove the provisional frmcache.dat, then run the mlset32.exe utility, which you should find in your \Program Files\Microsoft Exchange folder. If you cannot find the mlset program, get it from your installation disk by issuing the command extract /a /l c:\ win95_02.cab mlset32.exe.
As a last resort, you can read Microsoft's official solution to this problem. Go to the Microsoft KnowledgeBase and retrieve the KnowledgeBase article Q137245, titled Cannot Open or Compose Message in Microsoft Exchange.
I know of three possible causes of this.
1. You are reading your messages from Exchange using a profile that does not contain the Microsoft Internet Mail provider. Solution: quit Exchange, then restart it using a profile containing that provider.
2. You are using the Microsoft Office95 WordMail feature, which does not support Exchange client extensions within its forms. Solution: either stop using WordMail, or else request Properties from the Exchange viewer window instead of from within the note form window.
3. You have a damaged registry entry, such as can take place when removing certain old betas of the Netscape Navigator. Solution: remove and reinstall MSIE. Alternately, save the following text into a file minet32.reg, then merge it into your registry by double-clicking the file in Explorer.
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Extensions]
@=" "
"Internet Mail"="4.0;minet32.dll;2;;;IMAIL"
The email world is much, much larger than the Internet. The Microsoft Exchange mail client sends Internet mail only through an installed MAPI service provider, such as the Microsoft Plus! Internet Mail service or the Netscape Internet Mail service, or through the graces of a gateway such as the Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector; its reply and quoting mechanisms are designed to work in a different world.
While I wish that the Plus! Internet Mail service included these features, at least it gave me an excuse to write something useful.
(Note that the client released with Microsoft Exchange Server supports signatures, and the Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector can munge indented rich text replies to prefix them with bracket characters. See the release notes accompanying your copy of Exchange Server.)
This was a bug in the version of the Microsoft Internet Mail provider included in the Windows 95 Plus! package and Internet Explorer 2.0. A fix for this is now available on the Microsoft WWW site.
After installing the recent Windows 95 Kernel Update patch, the problem appears less frequently. Contrary to my previous assertions, however, this patch does not fix the bug.
I run Windows NT 4.0, which doesn't suffer this problem.
Microsoft Technical Support has compiled a list of answers to Exchange Server client questions.
Bob Cerelli has written a step-by-step introductory guide for new users of Exchange Internet Mail.
Sue Mosher's Slipstick Systems hosts an enormous array of information about Exchange in her Exchange Center.
Jürg Amrein and Amrein Engineering AG maintain a list of resources for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Exchange Server in their Exchange Resource Center.
Finally, Microsoft sponsors a number of newsgroups on their NNTP server msnews.microsoft.com. Try microsoft.public.win95.exchangefax or microsoft.public.messaging.misc for Windows 95 users, or microsoft.public.exchange.clients for users of Microsoft Exchange Server.
Last modified: 21 May 1998
(but with no content changes for the last 2 years)
Copyright 1996-1999 Ben Goetter. All rights reserved.