Mailhelp

According to Computerworld, Microsoft is warning that Windows Home Server can corrupt files used by many programs, including Outlook 2007. I don't use Windows Home Server, and have no experience with this myself, but apparently if you save Outlook 2007 files on Windows Home Server, they can be corrupted. If you are thinking about using Windows Home Server, I suggest you check out the story linked here. --Bill

One topic that people are really buzzing about it IMAP access to Gmail accounts. This is especially valuable to anyone who runs Outlook on multiple machines (home and work, for example) or who needs mobile access without an Exchange server hosting their mail. If you're interested in this, visit the Gmail section of the site for complete instructions. --Bill

Thank you to all of you who sent me suggestions for topics to cover on the site. I'll be working as many of them as I can into the site over the coming weeks and months. --Bill

As part of SP3 for Outlook 2003 (and included in SP1 for Outlook 2007) we’ve made a change to the way command line parameters are parsed to ensure Outlook is always doing the right thing.  As part of this change, a less common way of attaching files to new e-mail messages through command line parameters with Outlook may be broken in some solutions.

Previously, Outlook under some circumstances would handle an implicit command line parameter without a switch. For example, if a command line argument was provided without a switch, and was a path to a folder in the file system, Outlook would treat the argument with an implicit /select switch flag, displaying that folder in the Explorer window.  If the argument was a path to a file on the file system, Outlook would use an implicit /a switch and attach the file to a new message.

As part of making sure that our command line parameters were handled in a predictable manner, we removed the implicit logic in these service packs.  You must now explicitly specify the appropriate switch before the path to a folder to display or file to attach.  If a solution calls Outlook using an argument without a switch or with an invalid set of switches, the following error is displayed:

For more information on the valid command line switches that are supported by Outlook, take a look at our online documentation for command line switches.

There are a few applications that I’m aware of that have already run into this problem.  I wanted to blog about it and make sure everyone knew what was going on and how to fix a solution that no longer works as expected. Command line parameters should always be preceded by a command line switch specifying what to do with the parameter.

Edit: This change was included as part of Outlook 2007 RTM, not just SP1 as I originally stated.