Outlook 2003 IMAP UNICODE

[Will G]

Is there a way to force individual pre-existing installations of Outlook
2003 to generate a Unicode PST file (rather than an ANSI PST file) when
establishing the initial connection to a IMAP server?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

No...

On all of my IMAP accounts, Outlook creates an ANSI pst. I can't use a
Unicode pst with IMAP... which makes sense as an ANSI pst is more than large
enough for my IMAP mailbox limits.

 

[Will G]

For convoluted reasons, I need to set up an IMAP server to hold accounts in
excess of 1GB. My desire is to have Outlook users hit an Exchange 2003
Server as their primary server, but to have old mail on an Exchange 2003 box
that is totally unrelated to their primary server (Not the same Exchange org
or AD forest). Since Outlook can not connect directly to two different
Exchange organizations, I am trying to do this via IMAP. But Outlook 2003
creates a PST file for the IMAP account and caches not only the mail header
information but also the entire message when that message is viewed.

So I either want Outlook to use the Unicode format for the PST file, or
force Outlook 2003 not to cache message bodies.



???



Will

No...

On all of my IMAP accounts, Outlook creates an ANSI pst. I can't use a
Unicode pst with IMAP... which makes sense as an ANSI pst is more than large
enough for my IMAP mailbox limits.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)

Is there a way to force individual pre-existing installations of Outlook
2003 to generate a Unicode PST file (rather than an ANSI PST file) when
establishing the initial connection to a IMAP server?

 

[Will G]

Here is my convoluted scenario:



Outlook 2003 with the main server as Exchange 2003 with new mailbox size
limits. I would like to move old mail to a different Exchange 2003 server

for archival storage. This is archival in name only. Messages here will

be accessed on a regular basis. Since Outlook can only connect to one
Exchange server, I thought I would have Outlook hit the "archival"

Exchange box as an IMAP client. This works fine, except that every time an
IMAP message is viewed it is stored in the local PST folder that is

also storing the message-header information. I would prefer not to be

duplicating all the "archival" storage on the client's local drive.



More detail:

I had a departmental Exchange 5.5 box running happily for several years to
serve a research center. It was the only exchange server in that Exchange
organization. Many of the folks on this box were upper level administrators
and were accustom to keeping their permanent record of correspondences and
large attachments in their Exchange account. Some of these accounts were
well over 1 GB. My small operation has now been merged with the larger
School wide Exchange organization which has a mailbox size quota of 40MB.

The department and research center had already purchased a license for
Exchange 2003 ent. and the hardware to run it before the decision was made
to merge into the School wide Exchange Org. I would like to utilize Ex2003
and our hardware to store the bulk of my (old) users mail, and have it
accessible via their Outlook client. The catch is that the Outlook clients'
main server will be one of the School wide Exchange servers. The exchange
box I would like to use to store old mail cannot be part of the School wide
Exchange org.

No...

On all of my IMAP accounts, Outlook creates an ANSI pst. I can't use a
Unicode pst with IMAP... which makes sense as an ANSI pst is more than large
enough for my IMAP mailbox limits.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)

Is there a way to force individual pre-existing installations of Outlook
2003 to generate a Unicode PST file (rather than an ANSI PST file) when
establishing the initial connection to a IMAP server?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

For convoluted reasons, I need to set up an IMAP server to hold accounts

in
excess of 1GB.

ANSI supports 1.75 GB safely.

My desire is to have Outlook users hit an Exchange 2003
Server as their primary server, but to have old mail on an Exchange 2003
box
that is totally unrelated to their primary server (Not the same Exchange
org
or AD forest). Since Outlook can not connect directly to two different
Exchange organizations, I am trying to do this via IMAP.

I do this with 3 exchange servers.

But Outlook 2003
creates a PST file for the IMAP account and caches not only the mail
header
information but also the entire message when that message is viewed.

So I either want Outlook to use the Unicode format for the PST file, or
force Outlook 2003 not to cache message bodies.

Once viewed, the bodies are cached. The only way I can think to avoid this
is to use a script to delete the pst... outlook will create a new pst. Note
that if the mailbox is big, which it will be if you approach even 50 megs in
the pst, IMAP is slow, especially since it freshes the headers each time you
view a folder. I can't tolerate folders with more than about 2000 headers
per folder over the internet (broadband), 5000 on a 100mbit LAN. It's
slightly faster (but still painful) to use IMAP and download the full
messages.

 

[Will G]

Is there a local policy setting, registry modification, or other means to
prevent the IMAP message body from being stored in the PST?

 

[Will G]

A few years down the road, I am sure the accounts will surpass 1.75GB.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

and a few year down the road there might be a much better version of outlook
that handles IMAP much, much better....

As to the policy question, none that i'm aware of. If you don't want bodies
cached, have you considered using OWA to access the mailbox?

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)

 

[Will G]

Yes, I have considered OWA. But I would like my users to be able to use
their regular Outlook client to search their old email.

Thank you for your responses. They may not have been exactly what I wanted
to hear, but I do appreciate them, and they have saved me some time banging
my head against a proverbial wall.

If something ever comes to mind on how to resolve my issue, please contact
me off list at (e-mail address removed)





Thanks again,

Will

and a few year down the road there might be a much better version of outlook
that handles IMAP much, much better....

As to the policy question, none that i'm aware of. If you don't want bodies
cached, have you considered using OWA to access the mailbox?

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)

A few years down the road, I am sure the accounts will surpass 1.75GB.


megs
in time
you

 

[Terry Liu [MSFT]]

Hi Will,

Thank you for posting here!

As the Unicode PST files you mentioned, I'd like to explain that the
Unicode PST files are a little larger than the old ones, but the it have no
limitations on the 2GB PST file size. We suggest customers to use Unicode
PST file instead of the old ones.

When you deploy Outlook 2003, you can use the Custom Installation Wizard or
Custom Maintenance Wizard from the Office Resource Kit (ORK) to determine
what kind of .pst files users can create. On the wizards' Change Office
User Settings page, look for the PST Settings options under Microsoft
Office Outlook 2003/Miscellaneous. You can set values for "Default location
for .pst files" and "Preferred PST Mode (Unicode/ANSI)." A Unicode .pst
file is the new type supported in Outlook 2003; ANSI refers to the older
type that's limited to 2GB. Setting the Preferred PST Mode adds a string
registry value named NewPSTFormat to the
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook subkey.
NewPSTFormat can have the following values:

Prefer Unicode PST: 0 (default)
Prefer ANSI PST: 1
Enforce Unicode PST: 2
Enforce ANSI PST: 3

By using a value of 2 or 3, you can restrict all new .pst files to either
the old format or the new format.

The corresponding set of policies listed in Group Policy Editor (GPE) under
User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office Outlook
2003\Miscellaneous\PST Settings goes one step further than the ORK tools
and provides a way to limit the growth of both old and new .pst files
without totally restricting their use. A bit inconsistently, the policies
use the term "Large PST" for the Unicode format and "Legacy PST" for the
older ANSI format, but for each .pst format, you can set an absolute
maximum size and a separate "Size to disable adding new content."

With this array of policies and registry settings, Outlook--particularly
Outlook 2003--lets you control end users' access to .pst files, set .pst
file size limits, control the type of .pst files Outlook 2003 users can
create, prohibit the use of new .pst files, and even suppress the menu
command for opening an existing .pst file.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

Terry Liu
MCSE 2K MCSA MCDBA CCNA
Microsoft Online Support Engineer

Get Secure! - <www.microsoft.com/security>
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[Will G]

Hi. Thanks for your reply.

Can this key be added registry after installation?
If it can be added and the key is st to "2", will that enforce Unicode for
the IMAP PST that will be created upon adding an IMAP server?

Will

 

[Will G]

I ran the Maintenance Wizard to add the registry key.

However, now when I try to connect to the IMAP server I get a warning box
that states:

"The IMAP store could not be created. File access is denied. You do not
have the permission required to access the file C:\Documents and
Settings\wgrever\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook<IMAPservername>-00000011.pst."



I can finish the IMAP configuration, but the folder does not appear in
Outlook. When I restart Outlook and try to edit the IMAP configuration I
get the warning message:

"The IMAP store could not be properly updated. You may want to restart
Outlook before proceeding."



Is there a configuration setting to make IMAP connections use Unicode or do
IMAP connections have to use ANSI pst files?



Thanks,



Will

 

[Terry Liu [MSFT]]

Hi Will,

Thank you for taking the time to update.

This key should be added before the installation. If you add the key to
"2", it will enforce Unicode for the IMAP PST. Regarding the error message,
I suggest you check the users' permission. e.g. assign the local
Administrator right and domain user right to check the issue again.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post back!

Best regards,

Terry Liu
MCSE 2K MCSA MCDBA CCNA
Microsoft Online Support Engineer

Get Secure! - <www.microsoft.com/security>
=====================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
=====================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Will G]

Hello again,
The client profile logged onto windows was the domain administrator.
Can you verify that IMAP can use an Unicode PST?
Thanks,

Will

 

[Terry Liu [MSFT]]

Hello Will,

It is nice to hear from you again.

After performing further research on the IMAP and Unicode, I would like to
let you know that IMAP and HTTP do not support Unicode

Outlook can run in one of two mailbox modes on Microsoft Exchange Server:
Unicode or non-Unicode. Unicode mode is recommended and is the default mode
if the configurations of your profile, Exchange server, and administrator
settings allow it. The mode is automatically determined by Outlook based on
these settings and cannot be changed manually.

Running Outlook in Unicode mode will enable you to work with messages and
items that are composed in different languages. If Outlook is running in
non-Unicode mode on the Exchange server and if you would like to switch to
Unicode mode, contact your administrator.

Note: Earlier versions of Outlook provided support for multilingual Unicode
data in the body of Outlook items. However, Outlook data, such as the To
and Subject lines of messages and the ContactName and
BusinessTelephoneNumber properties of contact items, were limited to
characters defined by your system code page. This limitation is no longer
the case in Office Outlook 2003, provided Outlook is running in Unicode
mode on the Exchange server.

POP3 accounts also have the capability to support multilingual Unicode data
in Office Outlook 2003, provided the items are delivered to a Personal
Folders file (.pst) that can support multilingual Unicode data. By default,
new POP3 profiles that deliver to a new .pst file created in Office Outlook
2003 support multilingual Unicode data.

Hope it helps.

Best regards,

Terry Liu
MCSE 2K MCSA MCDBA CCNA
Microsoft Online Support Engineer

Get Secure! - <www.microsoft.com/security>
=====================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
=====================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Will G]

It is not what I wanted to hear; but it does help to have a difinitive
answer to the IMAP/Unicode question.

Thanks for your help.

Will

 

[Terry Liu [MSFT]]

Hi Will,

Thank you for taking the time to respond on this thread.

Personally, I am sorry for the inconvenience brought to you. However,
please feel free to post here if you have any questions in the future.

We do appreciate your presence in the newsgroup.

Have a nice day!

Best regards,

Terry Liu
MCSE 2K MCSA MCDBA CCNA
Microsoft Online Support Engineer

Get Secure! - <www.microsoft.com/security>
=====================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
=====================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.