Creating an Empty Copy of an Outlook Personal Folder Hierarchy

Have you ever needed to duplicate a personal folder hierarchy in Outlook without duplicating the messages contained in the original folder hierarchy? For example, you may want to create a 2008 folder and copy all of the subfolders from your 2007 folder into the 2008 folder. This is very straightforward and can be done by right clicking on the folder, selecting copy “folder_name”, and following the wizard. Done and done. But what about all of those mail items that you just duplicated in your mailbox?

Here is one way to duplicate the folder hierarchy without duplicating all of the mail items in Outlook 2003.

1. Click File | Import and Export

2. Select Export to a File and click Next

3. Select Personal Folder File (.pst) and click Next

4. Select the parent folder of the folder hierarchy that you would like to duplicate

5. Mark the Include Subfolders checkbox

6. Click on the button labeled Filters

This is where you will have to use a little creativity. The idea is to set a filter that will exclude all of the mail items in the folder hierarchy. In this example, I will assume that there is a max mail size of 10 MB set for the Exchange Org and will set the filter to only export mail items larger than 10 MB, which should give use empty folders. You will need to play with the filters and see what works best for you.

7. Click on the More Choices tabbed page

8. At the very bottom of the page, change the Size (kilobytes) drop down box to greater than

9. Enter 10240 (10 MB as kilobytes) into the size field and click OK

10. Click Next

11. Select a location to save the exported file and click Next

12. Click OK

If your filter was successful, a .pst file containing only the folder hierarchy will be exported to the location that you selected in step 11. Now we need to import the folder hierarchy back into the mailbox.

13. Create a new parent folder for the folder hierarchy that you are going to import. In our example, we are exporting our 2007 folder hierarchy and importing it to create a 2008 folder hierarchy, so our parent folder will be named 2008.

14. In your mailbox click to select the newly created 2008 folder. When Outlook imports the folder hierarchy, we will choose an option to import into the currently selected folder.

15. Click File | Import and Export

16. Select Import from another program or file and click Next

17. Select Personal Folder File (.pst) and click Next

18. Navigate to the file that you exported in step 11 and click Next

19. Select the folder that you would like to import

20. Make sure that the Include Subfolders checkbox is marked

21. Select Import items into the current folder and click Finish

You now have an exact duplicate of an Outlook personal folder hierarchy with out duplicating all of the mail items stored in the original folder.

IE Security Zones, A Registry Roadmap

Here is a very useful collection of registry keys and values that you can leverage to configure Internet Explorer. In my environment, we use Desktop Standard's Policy Maker to push registry changes with Group Policy.

For those of you not familiar with Policy Maker, it is an application that snaps into the GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) and allows you to push individual registry changes in a very straight forward manner. Desktop Standard was purchased earlier this year by MS and according to the Desktop Standard website, Policy Maker will be part of the GPMC in Windows Server 2008.

Regardless of how you deploy registry changes to your clients, KB 182569 is a great resource for keys and values that you can use to configure Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2 and later.

Delivering Email to Disabled Accounts

When using MS Exchange, mail sent to a disabled account bounces. If you need to allow mail to be delivered to the inactive user's mailbox, you will need to grant SELF the Associated External Account permission. This is probably the best solution, if you only have to manage a small number of mailboxes or if you sometimes choose to bounce the mail. If your policy is to always accept the mail, you may want to look into the hotfix that MS recently released.

Take a look at KB 319047 for information on setting the required permissions for SELF or KB 903158 for information on the hotfix.

RDP Connection Manager

If you use terminal services in administration mode for remote access to your servers, you may be aware of a MS tool named Remote Desktops. Remote Desktops allows you to set up connections for each server and choose them from your connections list. For those of you that shy away from the command line, it even has a checkbox on the connection properties to allow you to connect to the console.

This is a great tool if you don’t have to manage a large number of connections. There is no good way to group or organize your connections. Connections are placed on the list in first come first served order, oldest at the top and newest at the bottom. I have spent what feels like an eternity searching up and down the list for a connection. Hey Bill, why isn’t something as simple as connection management built in?

Enter Royal TS. Royal TS allows all of the same functionality of Remote Desktops, but adds very easy to use connection management. Connections can be placed into folders and folders belong to documents, giving you the ability to create a hierarchy that makes sense for your environment.

In addition to connection management, Royal TS also allows you to easily connect to the console, either on the fly or as a connection default, and to change the default RDP port. If you prefer the command line, Royal TS allows you to launch a connection from the command line.

rtsapp.exe /connect:connection_name

Copying PuTTY Saved Sessions

PuTTY stores Saved Session information in the following location of the registry: HKCU\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions

Note: Simon Tatham is the author of PuTTY, this is not a user specific reg key.

To copy Saved Sessions from one machine to another, you must export the keys from the registry of the machine were the Saved Sessions were created and import them into the registry of the new machine.

To export the registry keys:

1. Open regedit
2. Explore to HKCU\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions
3. Click File | Export
4. Select the location to save the export file
5. Name the file and click the Save button

To import the registry keys:

1. Install PuTTY
2. Copy the .reg file to the new machine
3. Double click the .reg file to import the keys