G
Guest
I have kind of an odd situation. I have some custom content filters set up
on our email server that copy any messages that they filter into one special
"filtered" account. Our IT staff then sets up that IMAP account in Outlook
so we can look in there and take appropriate action for any false positives
which includes moving (as in deleting from the "filtered" account) them to
the proper recipient. IMAP works nicely for this as it helps prevent us in
IT (there are 4 of us in 3 geographically remote locations) from sending any
of these false positives to the recipient multiple times. Procedure is, move
the message to the users inbox on the server which removes it from the
"Filtered" account thus other members of IT no longer see the message in the
"Filtered" account's inbox. For obvious speed reasons (this "filtered"
account gets several hundred to thousand messages per day ranging in size
from a few hundred bytes to 10MB+), we set the IMAP accounts up in Outlook to
only download header information. Almost a great idea. Problem is, Outlook
doesn't download the "To" header until you actually open/download the entire
message (yes, I'm aware of the "field chooser" and how to make Outlook
display columns for the various headers and yes, I have it set up to display
"To" but it is empty for all except the messages I actually open). I guess
the theory there is that the "To" header SHOULD be yourself so there's no
need to download it. Well, in this case, there is a need. The "To" header
of emails in this account could be any one of a few hundred different email
addresses. We try to keep an eye on this account and forward the obvious
false positives on. Sometimes, it would be nice if we could easily see who
these messages were originally intended for. Example: One of our
accountants was enquiring about a "missing" email this morning. This would
have been a 2 minute find if Outlook would download the "To" header. I could
have simply sorted the messages by that column and very easily found it. As
it is though, I had to guess a subject, hope the user was giving me the
correct email address of the sender (sometimes this info is not known),
search through SMTP logs, get timestamps, etc., etc. Not impossible, but
again, if I could make Outlook include the "To" header when I select
"Download headers only", this would be a much more efficient process. It
would also make it real quick and easy to see how many messages for each user
are being blocked. Now I know there are enterprise spam/content filtering
tools available but none are perfect and even fewer are free as the system
I've developed is (free that is, I'm in no way claiming it to be perfect).
Is there a way to have Outlook include the "To" header or is my only other
option to have it download the entire message? I guess I could have my
custom filters precede the subject line with what was the "To" header in the
original message (this is actually what I'll probably do if there's no way to
make Outlook download ALL headers without downloading the entire message).
Having Outlook simply download the "To" header that is already there makes
the most sense to me in this case though. Can it do it?
Thanks for your time and attention.
on our email server that copy any messages that they filter into one special
"filtered" account. Our IT staff then sets up that IMAP account in Outlook
so we can look in there and take appropriate action for any false positives
which includes moving (as in deleting from the "filtered" account) them to
the proper recipient. IMAP works nicely for this as it helps prevent us in
IT (there are 4 of us in 3 geographically remote locations) from sending any
of these false positives to the recipient multiple times. Procedure is, move
the message to the users inbox on the server which removes it from the
"Filtered" account thus other members of IT no longer see the message in the
"Filtered" account's inbox. For obvious speed reasons (this "filtered"
account gets several hundred to thousand messages per day ranging in size
from a few hundred bytes to 10MB+), we set the IMAP accounts up in Outlook to
only download header information. Almost a great idea. Problem is, Outlook
doesn't download the "To" header until you actually open/download the entire
message (yes, I'm aware of the "field chooser" and how to make Outlook
display columns for the various headers and yes, I have it set up to display
"To" but it is empty for all except the messages I actually open). I guess
the theory there is that the "To" header SHOULD be yourself so there's no
need to download it. Well, in this case, there is a need. The "To" header
of emails in this account could be any one of a few hundred different email
addresses. We try to keep an eye on this account and forward the obvious
false positives on. Sometimes, it would be nice if we could easily see who
these messages were originally intended for. Example: One of our
accountants was enquiring about a "missing" email this morning. This would
have been a 2 minute find if Outlook would download the "To" header. I could
have simply sorted the messages by that column and very easily found it. As
it is though, I had to guess a subject, hope the user was giving me the
correct email address of the sender (sometimes this info is not known),
search through SMTP logs, get timestamps, etc., etc. Not impossible, but
again, if I could make Outlook include the "To" header when I select
"Download headers only", this would be a much more efficient process. It
would also make it real quick and easy to see how many messages for each user
are being blocked. Now I know there are enterprise spam/content filtering
tools available but none are perfect and even fewer are free as the system
I've developed is (free that is, I'm in no way claiming it to be perfect).
Is there a way to have Outlook include the "To" header or is my only other
option to have it download the entire message? I guess I could have my
custom filters precede the subject line with what was the "To" header in the
original message (this is actually what I'll probably do if there's no way to
make Outlook download ALL headers without downloading the entire message).
Having Outlook simply download the "To" header that is already there makes
the most sense to me in this case though. Can it do it?
Thanks for your time and attention.