Sharing Contacts in Outlook

[LikeLinus]

Ok guys, I know many of you have probably run into this problem and others, and maybe theres a solution out there I'm missing. I've got a friend whos father owns a construction company. They have approximately 10 computers and 1 server in their offices. They need the ability to share contacts between everyone in the office in outlook or some other application? All the need is contact sharing.

Exchange Server is not an option. It was used before and with no one onsite daily to watch over it is a disaster.

Outlook Folders is an option, and the best I've found. The problem is it cost approximately $1000 for the licenses. Too much money to just share contacts as far as they are concerned.

What other options are there out there? I've even given though to moving them to something like openoffice? Does that support contact sharing and sharing in general?

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or good ideas!!!

 

[burnedout]

What OS is their server currently running?

 

[minendo]

In Outlook, go to tools then options. Select the delegates tab. Set each user as a delegate. Now right click on Contacts in the Folder View. Select permissions and set everyone up as a reviewer.

 

[vi edit]

Daily to watch over their exchange server??? I'm either really lucky, or really good, but once I set up my exchange server a year ago, I've had maybe an hour or two of downtime for scheduled patches/updates. Setting up users is a snap and management is non existant otherwise.

That's not an issue at all.

Exchange is indeed overkill though for 10 users.

I really don't have anything else to add, just wanted to add my $.02 about exchange

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: burnedout
What OS is their server currently running?

Windows 2000 w/ sp3

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: vi_edit
Daily to watch over their exchange server??? I'm either really lucky, or really good, but once I set up my exchange server a year ago, I've had maybe an hour or two of downtime for scheduled patches/updates. Setting up users is a snap and management is non existant otherwise.

That's not an issue at all.

Exchange is indeed overkill though for 10 users.

I really don't have anything else to add, just wanted to add my $.02 about exchange

Well heres the problem. They use another company as their ingoing outgoing email. For some freaking unknown reason, Exchange was intercepting emails sent through a POP3 account and sending back Undeliverables, even though the emails were sent pop3 and all the emails were delivered. There was a bunch of odd problems with the email system.

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: minendo
In Outlook, go to tools then options. Select the delegates tab. Set each user as a delegate. Now right click on Contacts in the Folder View. Select permissions and set everyone up as a reviewer.

Um you'd have to be running Exchange server for that.

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: minendo
In Outlook, go to tools then options. Select the delegates tab. Set each user as a delegate. Now right click on Contacts in the Folder View. Select permissions and set everyone up as a reviewer.

Um you'd have to be running Exchange server for that.

D'oh. For some stupid reason I thought you were already on one. My bad. (Too tired and I misread your post.)

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: minendo

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: minendo
In Outlook, go to tools then options. Select the delegates tab. Set each user as a delegate. Now right click on Contacts in the Folder View. Select permissions and set everyone up as a reviewer.

Um you'd have to be running Exchange server for that.

D'oh. For some stupid reason I thought you were already on one. My bad. (Too tired and I misread your post.)

They did, I proceeded to remove it cause It caused nothing but problems. IT could always be reinstalled, but I'd need help learning how to turn off all email services, it was intercepting emails not even sent through exchange. No reason we could figure out.

 

[Rapidskies]

A free way would be to have one master outlook computer with all the contacts. Export the contacts on this computer then import them on all the other computers. You would have to do this everytime you update the contacts though, but hey you wanted free.

 

[burnedout]

Does the server have the CALs for the clients? If so, have you thought about LDAP with Active Directory?

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: burnedout
Does the server have the CALs for the clients? If so, have you thought about LDAP with Active Directory?

Yeah it has 10 CALS. I havent thought about LDAP or Active Directory, more so cause I dont know much about LDAP.

 

[DamageInc]

We recently had this problem at work. Well, it was a problem from before I was hired 1.5 years ago, and I recently solved it by installing Exchange Server. Sorry, but it's pretty much the only solution if you've got Outlook.

Also, you don't have to use the email function. We just use it for our shared contacts and calendars. We use qmail on Linux for our email. It all works pretty nicely now.

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: DamageInc
We recently had this problem at work. Well, it was a problem from before I was hired 1.5 years ago, and I recently solved it by installing Exchange Server. Sorry, but it's pretty much the only solution if you've got Outlook.

Also, you don't have to use the email function. We just use it for our shared contacts and calendars. We use qmail on Linux for our email. It all works pretty nicely now.

Explain how you totally disable the mail feature then. The mail system wasnt even in use! But exchange was intercepting emails sent from a pop3 and sending back System Administrator and Undeliverable messages back to peoples mailboxes.

 

[Rogue]

You could export the contacts into a PST file and put it on a file share on the server, however, I don't think that a PST file allows for concurrent access by users in Outlook, but it's worth a try. I'm guessing that on your Exchange problem, you probably didn't setup the mailboxes or aliases correctly and that's what was causing your delivery problems. A single user can have multiple different e-mail addresses. What probably occurred was that their SMTP address wasn't setup properly or something, so when an e-mail came in with their SMTP address it could not find that address in their Exchange user account to forward it to that box. By default, Exchange creates default addresses based on their display name usually, so unless you went out of your way to put their SMTP addresses in their Exchange account, it probably couldn't route the mail correctly.

Also, you probably needed to do some more configuration of your Internet Mail Connector (IMC).

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: Rogue
You could export the contacts into a PST file and put it on a file share on the server, however, I don't think that a PST file allows for concurrent access by users in Outlook, but it's worth a try. I'm guessing that on your Exchange problem, you probably didn't setup the mailboxes or aliases correctly and that's what was causing your delivery problems. A single user can have multiple different e-mail addresses. What probably occurred was that their SMTP address wasn't setup properly or something, so when an e-mail came in with their SMTP address it could not find that address in their Exchange user account to forward it to that box. By default, Exchange creates default addresses based on their display name usually, so unless you went out of your way to put their SMTP addresses in their Exchange account, it probably couldn't route the mail correctly.

Also, you probably needed to do some more configuration of your Internet Mail Connector (IMC).

Mail that was sent through the pop3 smtp, was getting undeliverable messages from Exchange server. even though the messages were actually sent, received, delivered to the recipients, through the SMTP of the POP3. Exchange should NOT be intercepting emails sent from outlook through a pop3 server, but indeed it was. So how should exchange settings matter if i'm not sending anything through exchange at all? See the problem here? Exchange is doing something it shouldn't be.

How could mailbox settings for an exchange mailbox account they aren't even utilizing help? I'm not sure how having their SMTP addresses setup when they don't use it's functionality. They don't want to use Exchange as an SMTP, so since they use POP3, the smtp services shouldn't even be seeing the emails sent.

Is there a way to just totally turn off the email services in exchange?

 

[Rogue]

Problem is, when you setup Outlook to connect to an Exchange server using the Microsoft Exchange Server client, it's kind of an all or nothing thing. I'm assuming you had an Internet E-mail service setup in Outlook to handle all the e-mail and that it was configured for the ISP completely and had nothing to do with any Exchange server setup on the network then? If that's true and everything was setup properly, I don't understand why I can connect to my Exchange server at work and use it's full functionality while also simultaneously accessing my ISP e-mail on their POP server without issue. The only problem has to be an improper Exchange or Outlook configuration setting somewhere.

Oh and yes, you can turn off the mail handling services in Exchange. I recommend turning of the IMC (Internet Mail Connector) service as I suspect that may have been your problem. You can't really turn off the internal messaging component if you still intend to use shared contacts, calendars, etc.

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: Rogue
Problem is, when you setup Outlook to connect to an Exchange server using the Microsoft Exchange Server client, it's kind of an all or nothing thing. I'm assuming you had an Internet E-mail service setup in Outlook to handle all the e-mail and that it was configured for the ISP completely and had nothing to do with any Exchange server setup on the network then? If that's true and everything was setup properly, I don't understand why I can connect to my Exchange server at work and use it's full functionality while also simultaneously accessing my ISP e-mail on their POP server without issue. The only problem has to be an improper Exchange or Outlook configuration setting somewhere.

Oh and yes, you can turn off the mail handling services in Exchange. I recommend turning of the IMC (Internet Mail Connector) service as I suspect that may have been your problem. You can't really turn off the internal messaging component if you still intend to use shared contacts, calendars, etc.

Well I've looked at all the settings and they are correct as far as I can tell, but I'm no exchange guru. The pop3 ISP account is setup as it's own mailbox and then there is a connection/mailbox for Exchange. When (actually oddly enough it's this 1 user inpeticular) a good number of times when he sends a pop3 email, more so when it's a group email, he gets back system administrator emails saying the emails were undeliverable, but the emails indeed are sent through the pop3 accounts and received by the individual. I've been through all the settings and I can't figure out how/why it's seeing mail sent through that ISP. It would seem outlook would only submit that info through the pop3 account info stream, but it's obvious that some data is also being submitted to the exchange, even though it's not supposed to be in use.

I'll look into disabling the IMC service. I'm not worried about internal messaging components, because I need to utilize them somewhat.

Thanks for the info.

 

[NogginBoink]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: vi_edit
Daily to watch over their exchange server??? I'm either really lucky, or really good, but once I set up my exchange server a year ago, I've had maybe an hour or two of downtime for scheduled patches/updates. Setting up users is a snap and management is non existant otherwise.

That's not an issue at all.

Exchange is indeed overkill though for 10 users.

I really don't have anything else to add, just wanted to add my $.02 about exchange

Well heres the problem. They use another company as their ingoing outgoing email. For some freaking unknown reason, Exchange was intercepting emails sent through a POP3 account and sending back Undeliverables, even though the emails were sent pop3 and all the emails were delivered. There was a bunch of odd problems with the email system.

The "freaking unknown reason" is almost certainly because it was configured incorrectly and the admin didn't know what s/he was doing.

Do not blame the software for the faults of the operator/admin.

 

[Rogue]

Try removing all his services in Outlook and then setting them up again. It's possible that something got "stuck" and that Outlook is routing the mail improperly. It wouldn't be the first time something flaky like that has happened in Outlook.

 

[NogginBoink]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: DamageInc
We recently had this problem at work. Well, it was a problem from before I was hired 1.5 years ago, and I recently solved it by installing Exchange Server. Sorry, but it's pretty much the only solution if you've got Outlook.

Also, you don't have to use the email function. We just use it for our shared contacts and calendars. We use qmail on Linux for our email. It all works pretty nicely now.

Explain how you totally disable the mail feature then. The mail system wasnt even in use! But exchange was intercepting emails sent from a pop3 and sending back System Administrator and Undeliverable messages back to peoples mailboxes.

This demonstrates that you do not know what you are talking about.

POP3 is used for *receiving* emails, not sending emails! You don't send ANYTHING from "a POP3."

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: NogginBoink

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: DamageInc
We recently had this problem at work. Well, it was a problem from before I was hired 1.5 years ago, and I recently solved it by installing Exchange Server. Sorry, but it's pretty much the only solution if you've got Outlook.

Also, you don't have to use the email function. We just use it for our shared contacts and calendars. We use qmail on Linux for our email. It all works pretty nicely now.

Explain how you totally disable the mail feature then. The mail system wasnt even in use! But exchange was intercepting emails sent from a pop3 and sending back System Administrator and Undeliverable messages back to peoples mailboxes.

This demonstrates that you do not know what you are talking about.

POP3 is used for *receiving* emails, not sending emails! You don't send ANYTHING from "a POP3."

Wow and you just demonstrated youre an asshole. I'm just calling it pop3 cause thats what people call isp pop3 accounts. fine mr. Its an ISP SMTP Account, if you have to be technical about it. Everyone fully understood what I was saying.

GG jerk. Thanks for helping.

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: Rogue
Try removing all his services in Outlook and then setting them up again. It's possible that something got "stuck" and that Outlook is routing the mail improperly. It wouldn't be the first time something flaky like that has happened in Outlook.

Done that. I even changed the smtp info for the ISP account to an IP address instead of smtp.server.com because we originally thought it was the ISP server having some problems.

 

[NogginBoink]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: NogginBoink

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: DamageInc
We recently had this problem at work. Well, it was a problem from before I was hired 1.5 years ago, and I recently solved it by installing Exchange Server. Sorry, but it's pretty much the only solution if you've got Outlook.

Also, you don't have to use the email function. We just use it for our shared contacts and calendars. We use qmail on Linux for our email. It all works pretty nicely now.

Explain how you totally disable the mail feature then. The mail system wasnt even in use! But exchange was intercepting emails sent from a pop3 and sending back System Administrator and Undeliverable messages back to peoples mailboxes.

This demonstrates that you do not know what you are talking about.

POP3 is used for *receiving* emails, not sending emails! You don't send ANYTHING from "a POP3."

Wow and you just demonstrated youre an asshole. I'm just calling it pop3 cause thats what people call isp pop3 accounts. fine mr. Its an ISP SMTP Account, if you have to be technical about it. Everyone fully understood what I was saying.

GG jerk. Thanks for helping.

The fact is that the Exchange server would not be able to generate an undeliverable response if the mail messages weren't being sent to the Exchange server. Without knowing how you had things configured, we can't help you fix the problem.

By attempting to lay the blame at Exchange instead of your ability/inability to configure Exchange Server properly, you are not addressing the true problem. The problem is not that Exchange Server is broken, the problem, in all likelihood, is that Exchange Server was not configured properly.

If Exchange was delivering an undeliverable message, then another SMTP server was attempting to deliver mail to your Exchange server. I'm not aware of any other way to generate an undeliverable message. If external mail servers were attempting to deliver SMTP messages to your Exchange server, then I would suspect your MX record in DNS was set up improperly.

If internal clients were sending SMTP messages to your Exchange server, which was replying with undeliverable messages, then either the Exchange server wasn't configured to deliver those messages to the Internet properly, or the clients were using Exchange as the SMTP server instead of the ISP's SMTP server.

Another possibility is that the undeliverable messages were delivered to internal clients who had sent email to the Exchange server using the Exchange Server protocols instead of SMTP.

We really need more information to figure out where the problem is/was.

I apologize for being a jerk. It bothers me to see people blame the software when the problem is more likely than not in their misuse of the software than with the software itself.

Now, if you can provide further details, I'm confident that the collective experience here can help.

What email clients were you using and how were they configured to contact the Exchange server?

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: NogginBoink

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: NogginBoink

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: DamageInc
We recently had this problem at work. Well, it was a problem from before I was hired 1.5 years ago, and I recently solved it by installing Exchange Server. Sorry, but it's pretty much the only solution if you've got Outlook.

Also, you don't have to use the email function. We just use it for our shared contacts and calendars. We use qmail on Linux for our email. It all works pretty nicely now.

Explain how you totally disable the mail feature then. The mail system wasnt even in use! But exchange was intercepting emails sent from a pop3 and sending back System Administrator and Undeliverable messages back to peoples mailboxes.

This demonstrates that you do not know what you are talking about.

POP3 is used for *receiving* emails, not sending emails! You don't send ANYTHING from "a POP3."

Wow and you just demonstrated youre an asshole. I'm just calling it pop3 cause thats what people call isp pop3 accounts. fine mr. Its an ISP SMTP Account, if you have to be technical about it. Everyone fully understood what I was saying.

GG jerk. Thanks for helping.

The fact is that the Exchange server would not be able to generate an undeliverable response if the mail messages weren't being sent to the Exchange server. Without knowing how you had things configured, we can't help you fix the problem.

By attempting to lay the blame at Exchange instead of your ability/inability to configure Exchange Server properly, you are not addressing the true problem. The problem is not that Exchange Server is broken, the problem, in all likelihood, is that Exchange Server was not configured properly.

If Exchange was delivering an undeliverable message, then another SMTP server was attempting to deliver mail to your Exchange server. I'm not aware of any other way to generate an undeliverable message. If external mail servers were attempting to deliver SMTP messages to your Exchange server, then I would suspect your MX record in DNS was set up improperly.

If internal clients were sending SMTP messages to your Exchange server, which was replying with undeliverable messages, then either the Exchange server wasn't configured to deliver those messages to the Internet properly, or the clients were using Exchange as the SMTP server instead of the ISP's SMTP server.

Another possibility is that the undeliverable messages were delivered to internal clients who had sent email to the Exchange server using the Exchange Server protocols instead of SMTP.

We really need more information to figure out where the problem is/was.

I apologize for being a jerk. It bothers me to see people blame the software when the problem is more likely than not in their misuse of the software than with the software itself.

Now, if you can provide further details, I'm confident that the collective experience here can help.

What email clients were you using and how were they configured to contact the Exchange server?

I dont have time to get into all of this right now, but as stated

1. Outlook is the client software
2. Exchange is added to the client via the normal email accounts wizard "add exchange server"
3. I know for a FACT that Exchange is intercepting emails because as stated, the System Administrator message comes back with an undeliverable message with the information from an email sent through an ISP SMTP (totally different email account). It doesn't do it all the time, its kinda here and there. Sometimes it just all the sudden sends back like 10 undeliverables. Then it waits like 2 days, and sends an system administrator email. But the emails do reach their said destination right after being sent. It would seem to me, regardless of how exchange was set up, it should NOT be seeing emails sent from outlook through a totally different SMTP.

Thanks anyway