Programador informático nas áreas de Outlook, Exchange, MAPI, MS Office, Delphi e Visual Basic. Desenvolve aínda o site http://faq.outlookfolders.com

Nota: Os artigos do Thomas, estão em inglês, mas em breve vou traduzi-los para português.

Artigos:

Why can´t I send emails

How to export Outlook data with user defined fields

01 de Maio de 2002 - Why can't I send emails

In recent days, it is important for a provider to protect their SMTP servers agains spam mailers. Otherwise some some spam mailer will find it and send a lot of mails like "sexy girl"s and make "quick money at home" to a lot of email addresses. The provider will be in a black list very soon.

The easiest way to check the error message is to configure you account in Outlook express and send a test mail to somebody at another domain.

Symtoms: 

• Outlook is returning your email saying that there is no service for sending.
• Outlok Express is giving an error messsage such as "Can not send, this domain is not in the list of my allowe
• Outlook XP is able to send a test mail but fails to send a mail to somebody else.

Checking your IP

Some providers check your IP address, in other words, you must dial in to that provider in order to send. If you you are unable to dial in, for example because another provider is cheaper or you are traveling to a distant country, you will not be allowed to send. There is nothing you can make other to dial in to your provider.

Authentication using POP3

If you are retriving you emails, Outlook sends a username and password to your provider. The provider will now allow you to send for a limited time, for example within 30 seconds.

Symtoms:

If you are sending a mail it is rejected and you get a non delivery report from system administrator. If you send it again, it works.

If you are writing an email, Outlook is trying to send it, then it is checking your mail in order to see if the provider returned some error report. If you try again, you are authenticated because Outlook as been checking your email.

You can not do anything to avoid this, because the problem lies on the provider side.

Authentication using SMTP AUTH

The recommanded way of protecting is using SMTP AUTH using a digest method like CRAM-MD5. A digest is an encrypted foot print of a password, the provider sends some random digits, the client mixes them up with the password and sends them back. The provider mixes up the user password in the same way and compares the values. This way, no password is send over the line.

Unfortunally, SMTP AUTH is hard to implement and therefore rare to find. Furthermore, Outlook does not support all authentification methods that are documented in the internet standard documents, it only supports Kerberos and two Microsoftt specific methods.

In order to use SMTP Auth, your provider must support, one of these authentification methods: LOGIN, NTLM or Kerboeros. you can check it by dialing in with telnet on port 25, entering ehlo test.com. You will see something like this

220 <yourprovider> Mailservices ESMTP
ehlo thomas
250-{mp002-rz3} GMX Mailservices
250-AUTH=LOGIN CRAM-MD5 PLAIN
250-AUTH LOGIN CRAM-MD5 PLAIN

If you do not see 250-AUTH, you can not use authentification. If you see LOGIN, NTLM or Kerberos, you can use Authentifcation with Outlook or Outlook express.

SSL

A very limited number of providers are supporting SSL secure connection. This is the same security that is used on secure sites, where you for example can order products with your credit card. The whole connection is encrypted using your password digest.

If everything fails

If everything fails, you might consider installing your own SMTP server, this will look up the ip of the recipients mail server and sends the mails directly to it. For example, you can consider using OLWorkgroupFolders internal mail server. If you only want to use our SMTP server, no licence key is needed.

How to set it up:

Start the server. On first installation, ignore everything except the mail server. You will find a menu entry called "Mail services", enable "Start proxy" and enter the DNS address and your name. You may also add your local IP to the trusted hosts lists.

In Outlook enter the ip address where you installed OLWServer in your internet mail on the servers tab. If both work on the same machine, you may also enter "localhost". Enable "This server requires authentification". On sending a mail, the server must be started. It will send your emails directly to the recipients mail box without using the SMTP server from your provider.

You will find the software here: http://www.outlookfolders.de/english/olw/download_eng.htm

30 de Abril de 2002 - How to export Outlook data with user defined fields

If you have custom fields in your forms, the export wizard does not allow you export it. However you can get everything into any application via the clipboard, it is also much faster.

To do this, first define a view, containing all fields as you like to export them, then select everything by pressing CTRL-A and copy it to the clipboard, for example with CTRL-C.

Next you can import  the data using CTRL-V or Edit/Pasteinto any application, such as Excel:

The export also works with big tables, it is not limited to the rows you can see on the screen.

In Outlook you can define some custom views that need your need for exporting data.

Limits:

Big fields, such as the body can not be exported, since the table view restricts all data to a maximum of 255 bytes.

Já está à venda em várias livrarias do País

O meu segundo livro: "Domine a 110% o Outlook 2003"
da editora FCA. 

Tudo sobre o livro.

Leia o Press Release

(21-06-2004)