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Catch All of Your Domain Mail
Learn how to simplify your e-mail management and handle problems more efficiently.
by Ben Schorr and Jim McBee

Posted December 18, 2003

Q: My boss wants to make sure we don't accidentally miss any incoming mail that might be addressed improperly. I configured the SMTP virtual server on our Exchange 2000 server to send all mail to a special mailbox, but the sender of the original messages still gets a non-delivery receipt (NDR).

—Wendy, San Francisco

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A: Ben: Yes, Wendy, the NDR is a feature that allows the sender to know that he or she sent the message to the wrong person. But you would be surprised by how many people ask us this same question. We discussed a way to handle this in the January 2003 issue of our column using an SMTP event sink to direct all mail to a "catchall" mailbox. The event sink works wonderfully, but it directs all inbound mail to a single mailbox.

Jim: I recently found an excellent utility that will do exactly what you want. The utility is an SMTP event sink called MailBasketMD from TurboGeeks; you can configure it to direct only undeliverable mail to a mailbox while delivering all mail to known recipients to their own mailboxes. The sender of the message does not get an NDR report (see Figure 1).

Q: Outlook 2002 remembers the e-mail addresses I have typed in. I like this feature, but it often remembers an obscure address I will never use again. How can I get rid of addresses I don't want?

—Andre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

A: Ben: The easiest way to get rid of one of those AutoComplete addresses that you no longer use is to start typing the letters of the address so that it will appear in the drop-down list box under the To or Cc fields. Highlight the address you no longer want and press the Delete key.

Jim: If you want to get rid of all of those addresses, you can locate the file where they are stored and zap it. The file is in your user profile directory under \Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. The file has an extension of NK2 and its name is the same as your Outlook profile (see Figure 2 for my file).

Q: I could swear I saw someone demonstrating a logon page for Exchange 2003's Outlook Web Access, but I cannot find the page anywhere. Did I imagine that?

—Emerson, London

A: Jim: No, Emerson, you are not imagining the OWA 2003 logon page. The feature is called forms-based authentication; this is one of the nice additions to Exchange 2003, but it is fairly well hidden. You enable forms-based authentication on the Settings property page of the HTTP virtual server (see Figure 3).

Ben: You also might have noticed in Figure 3 that there is a compression feature; you can take advantage of compression if you are using Outlook Web Access 2003 with Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 or later. Once you have enabled forms-based authentication, the system will remind you that SSL must be enabled in order to get the new logon Web page.

Jim: You also might hear people refer to forms-based authentication as cookie-based authentication. This is because an encrypted cookie determines if the session is still valid. The session times out after 15 minutes if you are connecting to OWA from a public computer or 24 hours if connecting from a private computer. You can select public or private computer from the OWA login screen.

Ben: The other thing that people like about the OWA 2003 logon page is that it is an ASP page, so you can customize it.

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