I have a customer that routinely deletes sub-folders in their Outlook mailboxes.
These subfolders get re-recreated programmatically later.
They’re using Outlook 2003, and up until a few days ago, were on Exchange 2003.
We just upgraded to Exchange 2010 on the back end.

After the upgrade, the customer is having trouble deleting sub-folders. We press the delete key on the keyboard, or right-click and choose to delete, and nothing happens.
There is no error message in the Application Log to give us a clue about what is happening.

I have seen this kind of problem before, but it only happened when deleting “system folders”, for example when we somehow got a duplicate Calendar folder, or when we want to delete the “Sync Issues” folder.
In those cases, the solution was to open Outlook Web Access and delete the folder from there. So I tried it with this scenario.

Surprisingly, Outlook Web Access delivered a useful error message! Basically, it told me that it could not delete the folder because there was already a folder with that name in the Deleted Items folder.
I went and looked, and found not only a folder with that same name, but also a bunch of others with incrementally numbered names, like Folder, Folder1, Folder2, Folder3, etc.

My conclusion:
With Exchange 2003, if you delete a folder, and there is already a folder with that name in the Deleted Items folder, Exchange simply adds a number to the folder name as it drops the folder into Deleted Items.
With Exchange 2010, it fails to delete the folder and, with the Outlook 2003 client at least, fails to notify you about why it cannot delete the folder.

So it seems that Exchange 2010 is slightly retarded in this aspect. WTF, Microsoft?!

Additional: I have tested this scenario with Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007. It adds a number to the end of the folder, no problem. Unfortunately, I do not have a test platform with Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010 available. However, I will have such a test platform in the near future. I will test this when that becomes available, and update the article with the results.

Tags: Exchange, Outlook, Outlook Web Access

This post is copied from here. Thanks, Josh!

Recently I changed over to a new company (sort of, long story) and had to import all my calendar items onto the new Exchange server. Actually, I wanted all my email, tasks, and everything to move, so I exported my entire mailbox as a PST and then opened it while connected to the new server and moved everything from the PST onto the server. It was all fine until I noticed all my calender items all now begin with “Copy: ” Most annoying. So I wrote a VBA script to take the word “Copy: ” out of the beginning of all my appointments. Actually, the concepts behind the script are useful anytime you’d want to loop through a list of Outlook items. Here’s the script:

Sub deleteCopyText()
Dim counter As Integer
Dim objOL As Outlook.Application
Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace
Dim colCal As Outlook.Items
Dim objAppt As Outlook.AppointmentItem
Set objOL = CreateObject(“Outlook.Application”)
Set objNS = objOL.GetNamespace(“MAPI”)
Set colCal = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderCalendar).Items
counter = 0
For Each objAppt In colCal
If Left(objAppt.Subject, 6) = “Copy: ” Then
‘MsgBox objAppt.Subject
objAppt.Subject = Replace(objAppt.Subject, “Copy: “, “”)
‘MsgBox objAppt.Subject
objAppt.Save
counter = counter + 1
End If
Next
MsgBox “Complete. ” & counter & ” items renamed.”

End Sub

This script will ignore anything that does not begin with “Copy: “. You can uncomment out the msgbox lines if you want to see what change it is going to make one by one. To run it, open Outlook. Pres alt+F11 – this will get you into the VBA environment. Right click Project1 in the Project window and select “Insert -> New Module” Paste the code above (from sub deleteCopyText() to end sub()). Press F5 to run the script or if you want to be cautious, press F8 and it will run it one line at a time (press F8 repeatedly until you are satisfied it is doing what you think it should, then press F5 to run the script without stopping). You probably won’t want to run the script with the msgbox lines uncommented if you have lots of calendar items, otherwise it will pop up two message boxes that you have to clear for each calendar item it is going to change. If that happens to you, press Ctrl+Break to stop the script. You could also comment out objAppt.Save if you just wanted to run the script to see how many calendar items it is going to change (no changes will actually be made).

POSTED BY JOSH AT 9:55 AM on MONDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2009

Recently, I was uninstalling Symantec Endpoint Protection from a Windows XP workstation, and it didn’t want to go quietly.

I went through this KB article from Symantec’s website, but I found it to be incomplete in a very frustrating way. Specifically, I call your attention to this section:

Step 5: Restore Network Adapters

1. Right-click on My Network Places and click Properties.
2. Right-click on the network adapter and click Properties.
3. If the “Teefer2 Driver” is listed under “This connection uses the following items:”, then select the “Teefer2 Driver” and click theUninstall button to remove the driver.
4. Click Close to close dialog box.
5. Right-click on the adapter Connection and select Repair. (Only available on Windows XP and 2003)
6. Repeat this process for each affected network adapter.

NOTE: The Teefer2 driver no longer shows under network adapter properties as of mr3.

Well, guess what revision we had? MR3 or higher, because there was NO Teefer2 driver visible in the NIC properties. Does that mean the driver wasn’t hijacking your network card? Oh, you wish!

After following the KB article, SEP seemed to be (mostly) gone (Security Center still complained that it was not started), but the network card was basically non-functional. IPCONFIG resulted in a blank readout. Running a repair failed with an error message about not being able to communicate with TCP/IP (sorry, I didn’t write that one down). It worked OK in Safe Mode with Networking though.

I proceeded to rip the Teefer2 driver out of Device Manager with the “show hidden devices” option turned on, and yanked it out of the registry wherever I could find it. I ended up with a broken network card driver. It had a yellow exclamation mark. When I removed it and let Windows re-detect it, I got this error: “An Error Occured During The Installation Of The Device. The system cannot find the specified file.”

After a fair amount of web searching, I found this thread.

Basically, the solution was this: using regedit, backup and then delete the REG_BINARY value ‘CONFIG’ (not the “network” key) from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network.

That’s it! After doing that, I told Device Manager to look for new hardware, and it found the NIC drivers and I was surfing the web in no time.

There is a Microsoft KB article on a similar topic. It’s a different situation, but it shows that the removal of this registry value is a valid troubleshooting step for clearing out the config of a messed-up network card, in case you have any doubts.

I tried sending an e-mail to Lance. I was going to send him a thank-you gift, but the e-mail bounced. Thanks, Lance, wherever you are!

A question came up among the BrainPool group regarding the use of Microsoft Company Store software in a for-profit business environment.

I’m sure you’re familiar enough with this scenario:

Customer needs MS software. Customer knows a friend, or a friend of a friend who has access to the Microsoft Company Store. Customer obtains software from that source and asks consultant to install it for us in their for-profit business. Consultant knows this is not appropriate, but finds it difficult to convince the customer that this does not comply with Microsoft’s licensing policies. This is especially difficult because the EULA included with the software does not include any language covering this scenario. Consultant is now faced with a difficult decision: A. Install the software, knowing that the customer may be in violation, and maybe be exposing themselves and the consultant to legal actions, or B. Refuse to install the software, alienating the customer in the process.

I did a fair amount of searching online for it, but was unable to find a clear, concise stated policy on the subject. So, I contacted the Customer Care department at the Microsoft Company Store, to get the word straight from the horse’s mouth. The helpful telephone representative found the policy and e-mailed it to me. I’m posting it here so I can easily find it again later, and so others can benefit from this.

Even armed with this information, it is still a difficult situation for a consultant to face. However, if the consultant explains the problem to the customer in a politely concerned manner, reinforcing it with the official policy from Microsoft which clearly describes acceptable uses of the software, it may be easier to follow the correct path on this one. Handled well, and with luck, the customer will realize that the consultant is looking out for the customer’s interests, and that it is in their interest to obtain the software from the correct source.

Here’s the skinny:

Tags: Company Store, EULA, Licensing, Microsoft

During an SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migration, one user could not open his mailbox after it was moved to the new server. I rebuilt his Outlook profile, but still got the following error:

“Unable To Open Your Default Mail Folders. The Attempt To Log On To The Microsoft Exchange Server Computer Failed”.

Other clients using Outlook 2000 work fine.

A quick Google search came up with an Experts Exchange article in which the “Accepted Solution” was that Outlook 2000 is not supported with Exchange 2007. Well, it may not be “supported”, but it worked for 14 other users, so obviously it can work.

Turns out, this user was the only one who did not have Office 2000 SP3 installed. That cleared the problem right up.

Tags: Exchange 2007, Outlook, SBS 2008