I have been trying out a Blackberry for the last few days. One of my customers, Virocom, gave me a free account for a couple of weeks to try it out. In-fact, they are a customer and a Partner too. I support their network. They sell communications: any internet connection, BlackBerry accounts, mobile communications, PBX and phone lines etc.

Sounds nice, but in fact they gave me two handsets! So I have wasted another couple of days on BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), integratng with my Exchange Server and generally playing. So expect an announcement of Support Services for BES very soon!

I gotta say, this was like entering a new World for me. Almost on a par with trying-out Linux. However, what this has reinforced to me is that you do not need to be constantly monitoring email. Email is not and should not be seen like IM. If you need an instant reply, get them on IM or on the phone.

A year ago or so, I started answering emails in batches, instead of instantly. I had notced that I started breaking off from money earning work to reply to non-urgent emails. It’s called time management. All said, I still have to check every email as soon as it arrives.

Note to Mobile Operator - I’d like a new Windows Mobile 5 device with direct push to check out. I keep getting given Mobile 5 devices without the Messaging and Security Feature Pack. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving the free phone thing, but it’s like being given a Ferrari for the weekend that’s limited at 60mph.

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I just noticed a free download of Exchange 2007. This is not a windup. It comes from the head of Unified Communications UK. Check out his blog post here:

http://blogs.technet.com/markdea/archive/2007/01/1...w.aspx

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I had a customer enquire about configuring Exchange to pull down email addresses from a SQL Server database. It’s never been something I’ve seen. So putting this one out to the community. Any ideas?

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For the last day, I have been downloading email to outlook using a pop3 connection - Don’t ask! Long story.

Anyway, the Junk email folder works amazingly well with POP3. All the horrible spam emails for viagra and, errr, extensions, have gone straight in there. I’ve gotta say, I didn’t get the same results with the exchange or RPC over HTTP connection. Seems like POP3 is the new black.

I noticed today on the exchange team blog How to add the Exchange Team Blog as a search provider in Internet Explorer 7. This is a great feature for quickly searching different channels.

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I have created a public chat for Exchange Server on the new Skype 3 Beta. If you need help or assistance with Microsoft Exchange Server, join the public chat and ask for help. Think of this as the community version of Concierge and your first stop for KB articles and advice on essential Exchange tasks. I’m hoping we get a few other experts online soon and make a great channel for Exchange administrators and users to hang out and provide a service to the Exchange community.

I’ll be monitoring this Public Chat, so you’ll get me most of the time (GMT).

Click here to join in the conversation on Exchage Server.

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I had a nervous moment last night and this morning. I was setting up a POP 3 connector to connect from an SBS server to our main Exchange Server and download mail to a mailbox on the SBS server. I configured the POP3 connector and retrieved all the email messages. I watched as the email disappeared from one inbox. But it was never received on the SBS mailbox.

I looked in all the usual places for the missing email and couldn’t see any. So as a last ditch attempt, I decided to connect to the main Exchange Server mailbox using Outlook with a normal exchange connection. I made the DupsterAlwaysOn registry hack, as described in a previous post. This allows you to Recover deleted items from any folder in outlook, including the inbox. As the POP3 connector deletes the email in the process of the download, this meant that all the messages were available to be restored. What a result!

Follow these steps to setup the DupsterAlwaysOn value in the registery. Please note, this is done on the PC where outlook is installed, no settings are required on the Exchange Server.

1. Open up the Registry editor:

2. Click Start, run. Enter Regedt32 and click OK.

3. Navigate to the following entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options

4. Right click the Options folder, click New and then select DWORD Value. Enter the following details:

Value name: DumpsterAlwaysOn
Data type: DWORD
Value data: 1

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I have a habit of hard deleting my email. I always do this. By hard delete, I mean pressing SHIFT + Del to delete my messages, which nukes the message right out of outlook. This means that if you try to recover the deleted message in outlook, the message isn’t showing.

Fortunately, there is a registry setting which will allow you to get your hard deleted messages back. I used KB246153 to solve this issue.

1. Open up the Registry editor:

2. Click Start, run. Enter Regedt32 and click OK.

3. Navigate to the following entry:

5. Close the registry editor and reboot.

6. Open Outlook, navigate to the folder where the email was hard deleted.

7. In Outlook, go to the Tools menu, click Recover Deleted Items. Then select the email you wish to recover and restore.

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I recently submitted an article for publication on the main msexchange.org website. What started off as a short article, ended up as a two part series, and I’m pleased to say that Part 1 will be published on 24th October 06. Migrating from SBS 2003 to Exchange 2003 Standard.

Needless to say, I’m over the moon at being given the opportunity to write on the main website, and look forward to writing some different articles in the coming months.

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We have been using and selling Live Meeting for close to a year now. In this time it has only impressed me more and more.

For network support, it is second to none. Who needs to set firewalls? Just send the email invitation, or invite someone into your lobby.

I have been on a couple of support calls with serious client server downtime, and Microsoft support staff have always used Live Meeting.

Even with the most challenging of support calls, I have always managed to get the user to join the meeting in quick time.

Oh, and we’ve also had some excellent collabortion meetings with clients on projects and training sessions. How can I live without Live Meeting?

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ADModify.net is an excellent tool for Exchange administrators allowing bulk changes of Active Directory properties.

I recently experienced the death of a power supply on an Exchange server, which set the clock ticking straight away. So to get users sending and receiving email quickly, I used ADModify.net to change the users mailbox location from the dead server to a spare exchange server. I also added the IP address to the spare exchange server. This got everyone sending and receiving real quick.

After recovering the hardware, I moved the users mailboxes back to the original server using ADModify as above. I then merged the mailbox data by mounting the databases used on the spare server in a recovery storage group and merging. Follow this tutorial by Henrik Walther to do that.

Here’s how I did it:

Download ADModify and double click admodify.exe. Click “Modify Attributes”.

From the drop down lists, select the domain you need to change properties and the Domain controller to use. You can then select the OU or User(s) you wish to change and click “Add to List”, then select the user in the right hand window and click “Next”.

To change the mailbox location, hit the “Exchange General” tab and simply select the appropriate server from the drop down lists of homeMTA and homeMDB.

Force active directory replication and send a test email to the mail box, and the user will now have a mailbox on the spare server. I use Email Generator to send test messages and check POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP connections.

Reverse the process to move mailboxes back and then merge the mailbox data collected while used on the spare server with the original data on the recovered server.

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