Configuring Outlook with a Google account (Google settings change needed after July 2014)

You need to an adjustment to your Google settings to get Google email working in Outlook.  I got this message when trying to set up a Google account in June 2016:

Your IMAP server wants to alert you to the following: Please log in via your web browser:
http://support.google.com/mail/accounts/bing/answer.py?answer=78754 (Failure)


The link above doesn't help as far as I can tell.

I got the answer from Microsoft's site:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2984937

On 7/15/14, Google disabled basic authentication, so you need to enable basic authentication to get Outlook (or Apple Mail or others) to successfully authenticate with Google accounts.

You can enable basic authentication here (assumes you are logged into your Google account):
https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

Firefox will not display SSL enabled web sites - Sendori alters SSL certificate appearance

I was working on a computer with Firefox 20.01, and the browser would not display any SSL secured websites - not google, not facebook, not Citibank, not anything.  Chrome and Internet Explorer had no trouble with these sites.

What I found was a piece of software called Sendori that was installed the previous day that had somehow altered the SSL cert information for each site.  Example is below for the cert that was showing for Google.

I tried uninstalling Firefox, opening a new profile, deleting cert8.db and all sorts of things.  But it was this Sendori program altering certificates that was my problem.  I could see that Sendori was listed as the certificate issuer and the "valid from" date was set today for all SSL sites.

I was able to uninstall Sendori from add/remove programs.

importing autocomplete in Outlook 2010 from 2003 with complicating Google factor

I had a weird situation where I was taking an autocomplete database from Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2010 where the account was on Google Apps.

When you set up a Google Apps account, it pulls down an autocomplete database from the Google Apps account (presumably the autocomplete that exists from when you use webmail).  But if you were primarily using Outlook (2003 in this case), there is a much larger autocomplete database that you need to add.

You're supposed to be able follow the methods listed here, but they weren't working for me using the NK2 file I had and trying to bring them into Outlook 2010:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980542

What I ended up doing was creating a POP account that allowed me to to import the NK2 file (in my case, I put the NK2 file in the appropriate location \appdata\roaming\microsoft\outlook and created an Outlook profile with a POP account with the same name and it imported automatically).  With that, I had NK2 file in the autocomplete stream file.

I tried several times to rename the existing autocomplete stream file with the stream file with no success.  The file would revert back to an 1 KB file with no autocomplete data.  I can't explain, but I just kept trying and eventually, one time of renaming the stream file with the data I wanted with the name that was associated with Outlook worked.  I can't explain what I did differently, but I just kept trying (with the ocassional reboot) and it worked.

EMail hosting options for the small business for late 2012

Email hosting options have changed drastically in the last couple of years.  This post will cover the three main options I see for a company of 20 employees.  I'll lay out the costs as well so that companies with larger or small numbers of employees can make their own analyses.

I see three main options for corporate email hosting:
1) internal Exchange hosting
2) Hosted Exchange
3) Google Apps

Each has their own pros, cons, and costs which I will go over here.

Internal Exchange hosting:
For a long time, hosting Exchange internally was the only cost effective way to get Exchange.  When it cost more than $30 per user per month to get 2 GB of mailbox storage when hosting externally, it seemed like a no-brainer to get in-house Exchange for $8k to $12k.  For some people, internal Exchange hosting is still preferred.

Pros:

• you have complete control over your data (required for some law firms)
• you can open your Outlook in your terminal server
• Mailbox sync with the server when in the office is lightning fast
• you have full ability to customize your server with no limitations
• costs are generally one-time fees for hardware/software purchase and not ongoing and internal hosting is often cheaper over the long run (definitely the case for single server implementations as if often the case with small businesses)

Cons:

• implementation costs nearly double to get redundancy (redundancy typically requires two servers)
• anti-spam options are generally not as good for internal hosting options as they are for external hosting options
• problems (whether they be internal like a hardware failure or software crash or external like an ISP outage or power problem) can lead to long periods of time without email particularly if IT support is outsourced

Costs:
If we're talking about a company of 20 users, I'd say you could get a server for $8k that would suffice and handle up to 75 users.  Then I'd personally get Windows SBS 2011 for $750 (includes 5 licenses) and approximately $60 per license for the next 15 licenses.  We'd also want to get anti-spam software.  My current favorite is Vamsoft ORF.  For an SBS server, the price is $375.  Let's also add 20 hours of IT support time to build the server and 2 hours per month to maintain the server at a cost of $125 per hour (a total of 44 hours).  In total, we're looking at $15,525 for the first year and approx $3000 per year thereafter (24 hours of IT support at $125 per hour).  I might also include $240 per year in costs for online backup at ibackup.com in recurring costs and two 2 TB USB hard drives for on-site backup at a cost of $250 in one time costs.  So in total, I'd say we're looking at $15,775 for the first year.  Recurring annual cost beyond the first year is $3240.


Hosted Exchange:
In 2007 or so, the hosted email world was dramatically changed by the release of Google Apps.  Google began offering 25 GB mailboxes for $5 per mailbox per month.  Because they offered  comparable Exchange functionality at a *much* lower price point, Google destroyed the pricing structure that all outsourced Exchange hosts were using at the time.  It took years, but Microsoft itself finally caught up in mid-2011 with their hosted Exchange product, Office365.  In my mind, there is only one Office365 plan that small businesses should look at, the Hosted Email (Exchange Online) plan for $4 per user per month (plus tax) for a 25 GB mailbox.  This option provides all the important features of hosted Exchange that the more expensive plans offer.

Pros:

• servers where email are hosted are maintained by world class tech support in state of the art data centers
• email servers are redundant
• upgrades are automatic with no additional costs
• there is no hardware to buy or maintain
• spam filtering is state of the art
• virtually unlimited storage

Cons:

• More advanced configuration changes need to be made via Exchange Shell, not a GUI
• using Outlook in a terminal server will be too slow to be usable, will require webmail in a terminal server
• Support response time for mail server issues is not anywhere near as fast as a qualified local sysadmin/consultant

Costs:

An organization of 20 users would require 20 mailboxes at $4 per mailbox per month.  At $80 per month, annual cost would be $960 per year.  The transition to the hosted Exchange would probably take an hour per user.  Let's average 45 minutes of support for Exchange per month for a total of 9 hours per year at $125 per year.  First year cost - $4585 ($960 for hosting and 29 hours of labor at $125 per hour).  Recurring annual cost beyond the first year is $2085.

Google Apps:

Google Apps email service is a very good service.  I consider it the only real alternative to Exchange that exists in the corporate email world.  There are isolated cases where I might put in a POP solution, but I recommend against it and do my very best to only ever implement Exchange or Google Apps.  Google recommends using Google from within Google Chrome - and actually using the web browser to manipulate your calendar, contacts, and email.  The experience in Chrome is good, but in the corporate world, most employees are used to (and prefer) Outlook.  Luckily, Google makes a plugin that allows you to have full functionality (email, calendar, and contact synchronization) in Outlook for the PC.

Pros:

• familiar Google interface for those who like that interface when working within the browser
• works very well when staff user Outlook for the PC
• servers where email are hosted are maintained by world class tech support in state of the art data centers
• email servers are redundant
• upgrades are automatic with no additional cost
• there is no hardware to buy or maintain
• spam filtering is state of the art
• virtually unlimited storage

Cons:

• requires using the browser when working on a Mac (IMAP is available for programs, but that doesn't allow calendar and contact synchronization)
• unable to use Outlook inside a terminal server, will require using webmail
• sharing calendars and contacts between users requires going into webmail (cannot be done in Outlook like it can be in Exchange)
• Support response time for mail server issues is not anywhere near as fast as a qualified local sysadmin/consultant

Costs:

An organization of 20 users would require 20 mailboxes at $5 per mailbox per month.  At $100 per month, annual cost would be $1200 per year.  The transition to the hosted Exchange would probably take an hour per user.  Let's average 45 minutes of support for Google Apps per month for a total of 9 hours per year at $125 per year.  First year cost - $4825 ($1200 for hosting and 29 hours of labor at $125 per hour).  Recurring annual beyond the first year is  $2325.

link for getting application specific passwords for gmail 2 factor (2 step) authentication

Gmail 2 step authentication is a security measure that greatly reduces the hackability of your gmail account.  But it's also a but of a pain as several items (like the password you enter in your iphone) are no longer your password, but an "application specific password" that google creates for you.

In order to get your application specific password, you need to log on to your google account and go here:
https://www.google.com/accounts/IssuedAuthSubTokens

From there, you'll be able to get your application specific password for entering into different locations that need your gmail password after you've enabled 2 step authentication.

AT&T Uverse error on google - 404. That’s an error. The requested URL /cgi-bin/redirect.ha was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

One of my clients recently changed their internet service to AT&T UVerse. AT&T (in San Francisco) says they are no longer offering DSL, only UVerse. After setting up UVerse, one of my users was getting this error in Firefox when going to www.google.com:

404. That’s an error. The requested URL /cgi-bin/redirect.ha was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

She got a similar error when going to www.yahoo.com. After some research, this seemed to be a common theme in Uverse. I resolved this by clearing the cache in Firefox:

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/How%20to%20clear%20the%20cache

Annoying, but easy fix. Of note - she did not have this issue on IE 9. Just Firefox 11.

moving Google Docs from one account to another

Functionality changes - so this data is really only relevant in and around late 2011.

I had a client with Google Apps that changed their company and domain name. As such, I created an entirely new account. I moved email, calendar, and contacts by downloading their email with the Google Apps Sync for Outlook, exporting to PST, and then uploading the data to the new mailbox.

But Google Docs wasn't so easy. You're supposed to be able to download all your Google Docs into a single ZIP file. But that wasn't working for me. So here is how I moved Google Docs from one Google Apps account to another that were in different domains.

On the old account, I used this utility to download the Google Docs into a single folder:

http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup

Now, I had all the docs in a single folder and they were all in the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, etc format.

Unlike their download function, Google's built in upload function was working fine. I clicked on the upload button and there were options for "file" and "folder." I chose the folder where I downloaded all the files using that utility above and it imported each Word file into a Google document and each Excel file into a Google spreadsheet, etc. I lost the collaboration information and the dates of the files, but I was able to keep the file content with relatively little trouble.

google app migration thoughts from small Exchange domain

I did my second organization wide (only 8 users) migration from Exchange to Google Apps over the weekend, and I thought I'd just summarize what I saw what I think are best practices for a migration.

1) Check with necessary staff to make sure you have a complete list of all mailboxes, aliases, and distribution lists you need.

2) Create all accounts before any other processes.

3) investigate the size of mailboxes you are migrating. One of the mailboxes I was migrating was 11.5 GB (he intentionally didn't want it to archive). It took 70 hours to download and upload using my home FIOS. In my case, I would rather have gotten his Exchange data on the LAN instead of the 33 hours it took to download the data from the server. I'd say it's pretty important to plan bandwidth utilization as it's very easy to choke up the bandwidth with a large upload. Ideally, you're uploading one mailbox at a time over the fastest upstream internet connection you have available to you.

4) alter the MX records (ideally on a Friday night)

5) wait at least 12 hours for DNS records to change so all mailboxes on the Exchange server are static and are not longer receiving an email

6) begin uploading data from the fastest internet connection possible - or multiple connections - if you can - I've had one instance where I've had trouble with the Google Sync for Outlook - https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gappssync - though I still think it's the preferred tool. Another option for uploading mail, which doens't seem any quicker and still allows you to upload only one mailbox at a time is the Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook tool here - http://tools.google.com/dlpage/outlookmigration. The problem I had with the migration for Outlook tool was that it wasn't naming the labels/folders correctly. If you had a label folder of Inbox/General - it showed up as PSTNAME/Inbox/General and not as a subfolder of inbox. Strange - though easily fixed. I guess the real difference between the two is whether an admin is doing it or if it's being done on the user's computer. On an admin's computer, he/she can use the Google migration tool to upload a PST file while he/she has his own Outlook open. For a user on his/her computer, you'd want Google Apps sync so Outlook would be usable while the data is uploading. Though from personal experience, you don't want people uploading data during the daytime. It can completely choke off your upstream bandwidth.

7) emulate functionality as best you can of Outlook using these options:

a) enable iphones to use ActiveSync -> as a Google admin -> Service Settings -> Mobile -> Turn on Google Sync

a) set up iphones using this link for instructions - http://www.google.com%2fsupport%2fmobile%2fbin%2fanswer.py%3fanswer%3d138740%26topic%3d14252

c) enable calendar sharing using these instructions - http://mail.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=170958

d) enable users to allow delegation of their accounts - as a Google admin -> Service Settings -> Email -> Let users delegate access to their mailbox to others in the domain. (of note - this seems to be available in the premier version but not the education edition as of 11/15/10)

e) tell users how to delegate their mailboes using these instructions - http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=170957

8) make sure each computer is set up properly with Outlook configured for the google apps account (using Google Apps Sync at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gappssync). Set it up as the default profile and also rename the NK2 file so that the autofill address book is retained.

a) be aware that the autofill address book will contain some old Exchange specific addresses that will fail when sending from google apps. As such, it's probably best practice to manually open a new message on the computer and delete each user on the Exchange/Google server since each entry was probably an X400 address and wouldn't work on the Google Apps server and will just cause confusion.