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Archive for Exchange – Page 2

How to fix WinMail.dat attachment issues with Exchange

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 30 2014

From time to time I will encounter an Exchange Server where the customer reports that attachments to emails they send out are being received as WinMail.dat files by some recipients. This hold true whether it’s an image file, a PDF file, etc.

The cause is quite simple: The Exchange server has an option to define whether or not to send attachments in “rich-text format”. If this option is enabled, this will cause attachments to be converted by some email clients into a WinMail.dat file. This is due to a methodology called “Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format” (TNEF) for sending messages across the Internet.

The solution is also quite simple: we just need to set the option on Exchange to “never use”. No rebooting of Exchange or the server is required after making this change.

Here are the detail steps (based on Exchange 2010):

  • Open up Exchange Management Console (EMC)
  • Drill down Organization Configuration –> Hub Transport
  • Click (to select) the Remote Domains tab
  • Right-click on Default, then click Properties
  • Click  (to select) the Message Format tab.
  • Under Exchange rich-text format section, click (to select) Never use
  • Click Apply and OK

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Categories : Exchange, Outlook, SBS
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Microsoft fixes OWA Premium issue when using IE11

by KW · Comments (0)
Jun 26 2014

My fellow MVP’er, Oliver Sommer, posted on his blog site yesterday (6-25-2014) that Microsoft quietly resolved an outstanding issue (KB 2866064) with Internet Explorer 11 and Outlook Web Access (OWA), where it would only display the “lite” version of OWA instead of the full “premium” version.

The fix is included in the following rollups:

Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3 Rollup 13

Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 Update Rollup 3

Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 3

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Categories : Exchange, Outlook, SBS
Tags : , ,

Exchange 2010 Queue Viewer Error

by KW · Comments (0)
Apr 21 2014

Customer is running Exchange 2010 SP3 on a Windows 2012 Server. Email is running fine. But whenever I open up Queue Viewer and try to drill down to a message detail, I get the following popup error message:

Cannot process argument transformation on parameter ‘BookmarkObject’. Cannot convert the “Microsoft.Exchange.Data.QueueViewer.PropertyBagBasedMessageInfo” value of type “Deserialized.Microsoft.Exchange.Data.QueueViewer.PrpopertyBagBasedMessageInfo” to type “Microsoft.Exchange.Data.QueueViewer.ExtensibleMessageInfo”.

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It appears that others have been encountering this same error for over a year (see this thread from Microsoft forum). The very last post in this thread offers a “resolution” to the issue, if you wish to call  it a resolution.

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In KB2931150, Microsoft says that this error is a known bug, and instead of using the Queue Viewer utility from EMC, you should use the Exchange power shell “Get-Queue” command.

So let’s open up the EMC Power Shell and try a couple of commands!

To get a list of queued messages, type get-queue and press enter.

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To get details on a particular message, first take note of a specific message identity you wish to view. Then type get-queue –identity exchangeserver\messageid | fl and press enter

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For a full list of options with the Get-Queue command, type get-help get-queue and press enter

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Open up the EMC Shell, and type “get-queue” and press Enter. A list of queued messages will display

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Categories : Exchange, Servers, Tools, Windows
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Outlook 2010 displays Autodiscover Security Certificate Alert window at startup

by KW · Comments (0)
Mar 06 2014

I had a customer with an SBS 2008 server who called this past week to say that they were getting the following popup alert when starting up Outlook 2010:

The name on the security certificate is invalid or does not match the name of the site

SNAGHTML17ae3bd2

I ran the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer to test Autodiscover for this customer. And sure enough, it was failing the test to validate the server name.

Certificate name validation failed. Host name xxx.com doesn’t match any name found on the server certificate.

The first article I reviewed was KB 940726. Although the title of this KB article indicates that it was written for Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007, it is also applicable to Outlook 2010 and Exchange 2010. It covers how to change the internal URL for the Autodiscover service stored inside Exchange via Exchange PowerShell commands.

However, in my case, the PowerShell command get-ClientAccessServer | fl was showing that the AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri field was showing the correct URL.

SNAGHTML17bae007

In talking with other MVPs, it appears that the issue may have to do with someone making changes to the domain name “A” or “cName”. I am still tracking that down.

But meanwhile, I was looking for a quick solution to at least suppress those popup alerts on a short-term basis, as I was going to be traveling for the next several days.

More research lead me to this blog post from Tipst3r titled: “Turn off Autodiscover for Outlook”, which was a recommendation for adding a registry key called “Exclude ScpLookup”. I gave it a try, but it did not appear to work. Also, I wanted more information as to what this registry key did, and why.

So, on further searching, I found Microsoft’s KB 2212902 titled: “Unexpected Autodiscover behavior when you have registry settings under the \Autodiscover key”. This article listed seven different optional registry settings that one might create and use.

I started working with these options, and found that using the following three options (setting them to a value of “1”) would disable the “security certificate is invalid or does not match” popup window from appearing:

  • ExcludeScpLookup
  • ExcludeHttpsAutoDiscoverDomain
  • ExcludeSrvRecord

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I’m not one to generally implement a workaround. So part of this was just a desire to understand more what was going on “under the covers”, so to speak. I will be testing out making the recommended changes to the domain records later, but since I will be gone for a week, I did not want to make such changes at this time.

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Categories : Exchange, Outlook, SBS
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Changing Exchange Capitalization on Email Domain

by KW · Comments (0)
Feb 04 2014

I recently had a customer running SBS 2008 with Exchange 2007 ask me if they could have the domain name part of a user’s email address displayed with proper capitalization. As an example, instead of Joe@whitehouse.gov they wanted the email address to go out as Joe@WhiteHouse.gov.

This should be easy to do, I thought. So, I went into EMC and changed the spelling of the email to use capitalization, but it would never take hold. It turns out that simply changing the capitalization of the email address is NOT enough for EMC to recognize that a change has been made.

So here are the three steps required:

  1. Edit the email address for capitalization, but also make a change to the user (left side) part of the email address, then save
  2. Then re-edit the email address, fixing the left side of the email address
  3. Update the Offline Address Book (OAB)

So, let’s give it a try:

Step 1:

  • Go into EMC –> Recipient configuration –> Mailbox –> double click on the specific user –> click on the Email Addresses tab
  • Select the email address to be changed and click Edit
  • Change Joe@whitehouse.gov to JoeXX@WhiteHouse.gov and save

Step 2:

  • Select to edit the email address again
  • Change JoeXX@WhiteHouse.gov to Joe@WhiteHouse.gov and save

Step 3

  • From EMC, click Organization Configuration –> Mailbox –> Offline Address Book tab
  • Right click on ‘Default Offline Address Book’ and click Update
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  • Note: you call also do the OAB update using the following PowerShell command:
    update-offlin eaddressbook –identity “default offline address book
    image

These steps should be applicable to both Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010.

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Categories : Email, Exchange, SBS, Servers
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Exchange 2007 Rollup 11 SBS 2008

by KW · Comments (0)
Sep 29 2013

I generally like to wait a month before installing Exchange rollups. If you’re running SBS 2008 and Exchange 2007, you may have noticed that Rollup 11 for Exchange 2007 was released on August 13, 2013.

As with all previous Exchange rollups, you can install it via WSUS, or you can install it manually – which is my preference. There is a small trick you need to know to install the rollup manually, so let’s jump in:

  1. Go ahead and download the latest rollup. Rollup 11 can be found here.
  2. You will be asked to select whether to download the 32-bit (x6) or 64-bit (x64). For SBS 2008, you want the x64 version.
  3. Download and save the file to your preferred folder on your server.
  4. Now, if you simply click on the downloaded file and try to install it, it’s not going to work! you will get the following error message “The Installer has insufficient privileges to modify this file: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange server\RelNotes.htm”.
    image
  5. So you say to yourself, “Oh, I guess I need to right click on the file and ‘run as’ administrator”.
    Go ahead, and try it, and you will be in for a surprise – you won’t find a ‘run as’ option, because this is a .msp file.
    What are you going to do now?
  6. Kudos to my good friend and MVP buddy, Philip Elder, who discovered the following trick to get around this issue:

    Start up a command prompt window using the ‘run as’ administrator, and then within the command prompt window, navigate to the folder where the Rollup file was stored, and type in the full name of the file (including the .msp suffix)
    image

  7. You can now proceed to install the rollup. Be sure to reboot your computer after the installation is completed.
Comments (0)
Categories : Exchange, SBS, Servers, WSUS
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Adjusting Exchange 2010 Memory Usage

by KW · Comments (0)
Jul 25 2013

The folks at ThirdTier have a great article on the how’s and why’s of adjusting Exchange 2010’s memory usage. I suggest you read their blog post first. My intent here is to highlight and clarify the process, as there are some steps that were not clearly obvious to me.

As always, before starting – make sure you have a recent backup of your server. And be aware that you will need to restart Exchange at the end of this process!

  • Log into your Exchange 2010 server (I’m running SBS 2011 Standard and Exchange 2010)
  • Click on Start, type adsiedit.msc and press enter.
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  • In most cases, ADSIEdit will start with the Configuration node already selected. If not, KB 266768 explains what you need to do.
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  • Now, drill down the Container module as follows: Services –> Microsoft Exchange –> Your organization –> Administrative Groups –> Your administrative group –> Servers –> Server name –> Information Store
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  • Right click on the Information Store, then click Properties
  • Scroll Down and locate the two attributes: msExchESEParamCacheSizeMax and msExchESEParamCacheSizeMin
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  • You will want to double click on each of these two parameters, and enter your desired value.
    image   image
  • What value should you use? Thirdtier suggests using 10GB/5GB for your max/min values. Adjust accordingly.

Please note: the ThirdTier article incorrectly states a value of 326780 for 10GB. The correct value is 327680.
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  • Click OK when finished.
  • Restart your Exchange services for the changes to be implemented.
Comments (0)
Categories : Exchange, SBS, Servers, Windows
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Exchange 2010 Forms-Based Authentication Service Doesn’t Start

by KW · Comments (0)
Jul 16 2013

After installing or migrating to Exchange 2010, one of the first things I check out is Outlook Web Access (OWA). But more often than not, I’m unable to login to OWA.

If you have been working with Exchange 2010 this may be nothing new. But, I am seeing a last minute flurry of activity with installing or migrating to SBS 2011, and thought that a quick post might be beneficial.

The key is to check that all Exchange services that are set to Automatic have in fact started. Quite often you will find that on a reboot of the server that Microsoft Exchange Forms-Based Authentication Service is not running.

Having to remember to start it manually each time you reboot the server is not acceptable!

The solution to this issue is very simple:
Change the startup type for this service from Automatic to Automatic (Delayed Start).
Next time you reboot your server, you will find that this service is running.

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Categories : Exchange, SBS
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Install Exchange 2010 SP3 on SBS 2011

by KW · Comments (1)
May 26 2013

Carl Gray (“Oxford SBS Guy”) has a very good, step by step blog on installing Exchange 2010 SP3 on SBS2011, including screen shots. So, there’s no need for me to replicate what he has already posted.

However, there are two critical steps he did not include:

    1. Before you start the SP3 upgrade, please go into Services and stop the Windows SBS Manager service.
    2. Please make sure that you DO NOT have Windows Management Framework (WMF) 3.0 installed on the server. Look for KB2506143. You will need to uninstall this patch and then reboot the server before you install the SP3 upgrade.

Susan Bradley has previously posted on both of these issues (see Stop SBS Manager and Uninstall WMF 3.0)

I also offer some additional advice to add to his process, which you may find helpful:

  1. When downloading the Exchange2010-SP3-x64.exe file, put it into an empty temp folder (say ..\Downloads\E2010SP3temp). Then when you double click on the .exe to extract all the files, it will extract the files to this same temp folder. Once the SP3 upgrade is completed, all you need to do for cleanup is to delete this one temp folder.
  2. I highly recommend that you make sure that you have a full, recent backup of your server before you start.
  3. I also recommend that you reboot the server BEFORE starting the upgrade process.
  4. If you are installing SP3 remotely (using RWA), be aware that you will lose your remote connection during this process. DO NOT PANIC. The SP3 upgrade will stop the RDP/Gateway service. Just be patient. Give the upgrade about 30-40 minutes to complete. Eventually you will be able to connect back in via RWA, and when you do, you should find that the upgrade has completed.
  5. If SP3 has been installed successfully, I would suggest rebooting the server again. It doesn’t hurt, and in some cases, it may help!
  6. Finally, Carl says to check that the version of Exchange is correct. Here is how I perform that step:
    1. Open up Exchange Management Shell
    2. Type the following: get-exchangeserver | fl name,edition,admindisplayversion
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    3. The build number for Exchange 2010 SP3 is: 14.3.123.4
Comments (1)
Categories : Exchange, SBS, Servers
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Calcheck – Microsoft’s Calendar Checking Tool

by KW · Comments (0)
Mar 07 2013

While working on a user issue with calendar items syncing properly, I came across this free Microsoft utility called CalCheck (how original!) that they released in 2012. They say that this utility works with Outlook 2003/2007/2010 and Exchange 2003/2007/2010.

Please note – this utility does NOT fix anything. Rather, it looks for calendar items that may be corrupted, creates a log file report, and optionally move those items to a separate Outlook folder for you to review.

INSTALL THE SOFTWARE:

  1. Download the CalCheck utility to your workstation, and unzip the file
  2. Locate and run CalCheck.exe with admin privileges (Run As…)
    image
  3. When finished, locate and review the CalCheck.log file that was created.

It appears that most Calendar item issues flagged are associated with one of the scenarios described in Microsoft’s KB  2714118 (“Calendar items that are copied are missing in Exchange Server 2007”)

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I’ll report back on my findings as it relates to the issue at hand.

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Categories : Exchange, Windows
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