Moving Legacy X.500 addresses to Office 365 from on-premise servers

I migrated from SBS 2003 to Office365, but I didn't use one of the standard method.  I recreated the users in the cloud and impored PSTs via Outlook.  This works fine except for the problem with internal routing where internal addresses use X.500 addresses and generate NDRs when sending to internal staff.

This is a helpful article on using the NDR text to create the X.500 address, though I found its instructions not quite right.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2807779

In my case, I found a slight adjustment needed to make it work.

Let's say you're getting an NDR that says:
IMCEAEX-_O=DOMAIN_OU=FIRST+20ADMINISTRATIVE+20GROUP_CN=RECIPIENTS_CN=JSMITH@namprd07.prod.outlook.com

For the user jsmith, create a new Exchange email address with a type of X500 (no period in the type - it is X500 not X.500), and enter the value with adjustments as suggested by MS in the article above:
Replace any underscore character (_) with a slash character (/).
Replace "+20" with a blank space.
Replace "+28" with an opening parenthesis character.
Replace "+29" with a closing parenthesis character.
Delete the "IMCEAEX-" string.
Delete the "@mgd.domain.com" string.
Add "X500:" at the beginning.

It looks like this.  It takes 5 to 10 minutes or so from when you add the email alias until it works, but it does work when you do it.

As an example, I turned this:

IMCEAEX-_o=ExchangeLabs_ou=Exchange+20Administrative+20Group+20+28FYDIBOHF23SPDLT+29_cn=Recipients_cn=e0c06d4eee7e4ec8b8a38d105ca7793c-joe@namprd08.prod.outlook.com

into this:

/o=ExchangeLabs/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Recipients/cn=e0c06d4eee7e4ec8b8a38d105ca7793c-joe

In the case above, I moved an Exchange mailbox from one account to another (via exporting the old mailbox to PST and importing into a new mailbox on a new account).

installing Postfix on Ubuntu as an internal mail server

I had a client who wanted to have an internal email server for sending outbound emails.  This email server would be used for sending scans (via scan to email) where the copier didn't support TLS and the email server required TLS and also for email blasts (where users send out mass emails via a local software program like WorldCast).

I successfully implemented Postfix running on Ubuntu.

These directions (relevant on 7/3/14) and derived from here:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-setup-postfix-on-ubuntu-12-04

This will allow you to configure any local mail client to send out unauthenticated emails from these subnets:
192.168.0.0
192.168.1.0
192.168.2.0
192.168.3.0

Just set the SMTP server as the with the IP address of the Ubuntu machine (preferably a virtual machine).

Create a new virtual machine with 2 GB of RAM and 30 GB of HD space.

Download and install Ubuntu Linux from here (964 MB):
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/thank-you/?version=14.04&architecture=amd64

Once installed using all logical defaults, click the search button in the top of the toolbar and type terminal and run the terminal

Run this:
sudo apt-get install postfix

During the installation, you will see a dialogue box appear, asking you which kind of installation you would prefer. Select “Internet Site”.

For domain name, enter:
domainname.com
(where domainname.com is your domain name - though in truth this is irrelevant)

Once Postfix is installed there are a few steps that need to be taken before it is fully functional.

Once Postfix is installed, go ahead and open the main configuration file.
sudo nano /etc/postfix/main.cf

There are a few changes that should be made in this file.
myhostname = domainname.com

Change this value:
alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual
to this value:
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual

For the value, my networks, add a space and then this value:
192.168.0.0/22

So it looks like this:
mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 [::ffff:127.0.0.0]/104 [::1]/128 192.168.0.0/22

The rest of the lines are set by default. Save, exit, and reload the configuration file to put your changes into effect:

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload

Of note - this is an outbound only email server.  Separately, you need to make sure you can send out on port 25 (via your firewall and ISP) and that you're not violating any SPF records with this server (or you may need to adjust SPF records).  

Speed test that doesn't require Flash

When I'm running a speed test on a server, I'm often in a small bind as I can't run my standard tests at www.speakeasy.net/speedtest or www.speedtest.net since most servers don't have flash and it's typically an obstacle to install it.

I found an HTML 5 speed test at www.speedof.me which works just fine, which works just fine on Firefox, which is typically my default browser.

Excel files in use by 'another user' (user on Excel 2010)

I had a scenario where I had a remote user on a Wind 7 Pro SP 1 64 bit machine connecting to my SBS 2011 box and getting an error about Excel files being in use by 'another user.'  I turned off the auto-preview in Windows Explorer to no avail.  I looked through this page also to no avail:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/the_microsoft_excel_support_team_blog/archive/2012/05/14/the-definitive-locked-file-post.aspx

The eventual solution was the registry entry change from the client machine described here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942146

enable ping replies from Windows Server 2008

I had a Windows 2008 R2 server that would not reply to pings.  This server was not the member of a domain (it was a standalone Hyper-V host).  I fixed this by running this from an elevated command prompt:

netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8

I got this from this page:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/082d0229-4137-4210-8b1a-580187c375aa/cannot-ping-windows-server-2008-r2-machine-from-inside-the-network?forum=winserverNIS

display shared Exchange calendars on an iphone/Droid

I'm documenting a solution for display shared calendars (for example your boss's calendar) on an iphone/Droid.  I tried this via two Office365 accounts (on two different domains), and it worked well.

Links to explain the process:
http://www.stevieg.org/2010/11/shared-exchange-calendars-on-ios-devices/

http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/158/t/13878.aspx

In essence, you share your boss's Exchange calendar as an iCal calendar (this does require a publishing process via right clicking on the calnendar and choose Share -> Publish this calendar).  In my tests, a web link to an .ICS files was created.  Send to the employee and the iphone (in my tests) will properly interpret the link as a shared calendar and add it as a calendar in calendars.

Additional mailboxes in Outlook still appearing even after removing them account settings

In my Exchange environments, it's pretty common for me to give one user access to another user's mailbox for any number of reasons.  Sometimes, the user has left the orgaization.  If Joe has left, I'll give Bob access to Joe's mailbox in Exchange Management Console (giving Bob full access to Joe's mailbox) and then Bob will follow these steps to add Joe's mailbox:
http://www.t-solve.com/clients/instructions/view-other-account-in-outlook2010/

Sometimes, I use this feature for common mailboxes like a careers@domain.com mailbox or and info@domain.com mailbox.

Recently (the last year or so as of 5/12/14), I have found that even when you remove the mailbox using from account settings (from the same method you use to add the mailbox in Outlook), the mailbox does not disappear.  An Exchange attribute needs to be changes to remove the user's mailbox.

Let's take the example of Bob opening Joe's mailbox.

Open ADSI Edit.
Drill down until you find the entry representing Joe's account.
Right click on Joe and choose Properties.
Scroll down to MSExchDelegateListLink and double click on that field
Remove Bob's account from the list.

After the steps above are done, Joe's mailbox will disappear from Bob's Outlook.

Screen shot of what you're looking for: