J
John Henriksen
Okay, I'm trying to figure out the definitive answer on sharing
personal distribution lists. I want to be able to send a personal
distribution list to another person and have them able to use it.
Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people fall into the small group
that this works for out of the box and they cannot understand when
people complain that it doesn't work. The default answer of "send as
RTF" DOES NOT always work, and I've just spent several hours proving
as much.
So, I decided to put together a spreadsheet to see what the
interaction was exactly. And man! is it a complicated mess!
These tests were done using Outlook 2003, sending a receiving between
2 different computers.
Test #1
both sender and receiver set as POP3/SMTP users
POP3 account exists on Exchange
SMTP server is Exchange
Does it work? No. Can I force it to work with Outlook RTF? NO
Why? Discovered that the Exchange Server 2003 POP3 server does not
pass Exchange RTF by default. Once I turned this on, the winmail.dat
attachment started to flow through fine and everything started
working, with no other changes needed. I didn't even need to set the
mail format to RTF...I left it as HTML and all was well
Test #2
both sender and receiver set as POP3/SMTP users
POP3 account exists on a linux box (Qmail)
SMTP server is a shareware product called Desknow
Does it work? Flawlessly...no changes needed in client end at all.
Email format set to HTML.
Test #3
sender is POP3/SMTP user
receiver is Exchange/Outlook 2003 user
POP3 account doesn't apply in this scenario
SMTP server - both Exchange and Desknow used for testing
Does it work? Flawlessly...again email format set to HTML and now
changes needed
Test #4 - THIS WAS THE BUGGER!!!
sender is Exchange/Outlook 2003 user
receiver is POP3/SMTP user
POP3 account on Qmail & Exchange tested
SMTP - Exchange of course, as sending done via Exchange
Does it work? Nope, unless you tweak it like mad...and I ripped my
hair out over this one.
-POP3 on Qmail (and I assume any other POP3 server) - changing email
format to RTF DID NOT HELP. With Outlook 2003, I actually had to
right-click on the email address in the To: line and choose Outlook
Properties. From there I could force Outlook to send using RTF instead
of "deciding the best format" itself. THIS MADE IT WORK
-POP3 on Exchange - you can't choose the message format for a user
when you are sending to an exchange user, even if that user downloads
via POP3, so the fix here is turning on Exchange RTF on the POP3
server in Exchange
Test #5
Sender and receiver both Exchange users
Does it work? Yes, flawlessly...even with HTML message format
I'd love to get any further input or tests that anyone else as done on
this. It seems ridiculous that MS is still so reliant on ms-tnef
(winmail.dat) for Outlook Personal Distribution Lists, but that is
what I have found.
personal distribution lists. I want to be able to send a personal
distribution list to another person and have them able to use it.
Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people fall into the small group
that this works for out of the box and they cannot understand when
people complain that it doesn't work. The default answer of "send as
RTF" DOES NOT always work, and I've just spent several hours proving
as much.
So, I decided to put together a spreadsheet to see what the
interaction was exactly. And man! is it a complicated mess!
These tests were done using Outlook 2003, sending a receiving between
2 different computers.
Test #1
both sender and receiver set as POP3/SMTP users
POP3 account exists on Exchange
SMTP server is Exchange
Does it work? No. Can I force it to work with Outlook RTF? NO
Why? Discovered that the Exchange Server 2003 POP3 server does not
pass Exchange RTF by default. Once I turned this on, the winmail.dat
attachment started to flow through fine and everything started
working, with no other changes needed. I didn't even need to set the
mail format to RTF...I left it as HTML and all was well
Test #2
both sender and receiver set as POP3/SMTP users
POP3 account exists on a linux box (Qmail)
SMTP server is a shareware product called Desknow
Does it work? Flawlessly...no changes needed in client end at all.
Email format set to HTML.
Test #3
sender is POP3/SMTP user
receiver is Exchange/Outlook 2003 user
POP3 account doesn't apply in this scenario
SMTP server - both Exchange and Desknow used for testing
Does it work? Flawlessly...again email format set to HTML and now
changes needed
Test #4 - THIS WAS THE BUGGER!!!
sender is Exchange/Outlook 2003 user
receiver is POP3/SMTP user
POP3 account on Qmail & Exchange tested
SMTP - Exchange of course, as sending done via Exchange
Does it work? Nope, unless you tweak it like mad...and I ripped my
hair out over this one.
-POP3 on Qmail (and I assume any other POP3 server) - changing email
format to RTF DID NOT HELP. With Outlook 2003, I actually had to
right-click on the email address in the To: line and choose Outlook
Properties. From there I could force Outlook to send using RTF instead
of "deciding the best format" itself. THIS MADE IT WORK
-POP3 on Exchange - you can't choose the message format for a user
when you are sending to an exchange user, even if that user downloads
via POP3, so the fix here is turning on Exchange RTF on the POP3
server in Exchange
Test #5
Sender and receiver both Exchange users
Does it work? Yes, flawlessly...even with HTML message format
I'd love to get any further input or tests that anyone else as done on
this. It seems ridiculous that MS is still so reliant on ms-tnef
(winmail.dat) for Outlook Personal Distribution Lists, but that is
what I have found.