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Viewing Full Message Headers in Outlook 2007

There are occasions where you may need to view the full message headers of a message that you have received in Outlook 2007, e.g., if you need to determine if a message actually originated from the "from" email address used in the message, since "from" addresses are easily spoofed by spammers. The full message headers, which reveal the origination IP address for the message and the email servers through which the message has passed, are, by default, hidden in Outlook. To reveal them take the following steps.

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Configuring Outlook 2003 to Check a Gmail Account

Microsoft Office Outlook can be configured to download email from a Gmail account by following these steps.

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Exporting a Gmail Contact List For Use in Microsoft Outlook

To export a Gmail contact list for use in Microsoft Outlook, take the following steps:

1. Log into your Gmail account.
2. On the left side of the webpage for your Gmail account, you should see Contacts; click on Contacts.
3. Under Export, you will see "Who do you want to export", select the contact list you wish to export by using the dropdown list provided.
4. For "Which export format", select "Outlook CSV format (for importing into Outlook or another application)"
5. Click on the Export button.
6. Save the .csv file wherever you wish to place it on your system.

Now that you've saved the Comma Separated Value (CSV) file on your system, you can import it into Microsoft Outlook. To do so in Outlook 2003, take the following steps:

1. Select Contacts.
2. If you wish to create a new separate Outlook contact list for the Gmail contact list, click on File, select New, then Folder. In the Name field, type a name for the Folder. Leave "Folder contains" set to "Contact Items", then click on OK.
3. Click on File.
4. Select Import and Export
5. For the action to perform, select "Import from another program or file.

   

6. Click on Next.
7. For "Select file type to import from", select "Comma Separated Values (Windows)".

   

8. Click on Next.
9. For "file to import", you have 3 options:

   Replace duplicates with items imported
   Allow duplicates to be created
   Do not import duplicate items

   The selection you make among those 3 options is a matter of personal preference. If you aren't importing into an existing contact list in Outlook, but will, instead, be using the new one you just created, then it doesn't matter much which option you select. If you're importing into an existing list, e.g., you are updating an Outlook contact list again from one you've previously imported into Outlook, you probably don't want to have duplicate entries, so wouldn't want to select the second option to allow duplicates to be created. If the Gmail list is the more up-to-date one, you probably want to select "Replace duplicates with items imported."

   

10. Click on the Browse button and browse to the location of the .csv file you created from the Gmail contact list. When you've selected the file, click on Next.
11. For "Select destination folder", choose the main contact list or the one you created previously, then click on Next.
12. Click on the Finish button.

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Moving Outlook Data from One System to Another

I needed to copy Outlook settings on my wife's Windows XP desktop system to a new HP laptop running Windows Vista. She wanted to have her email, contacts, and stationery available on the new system. I've placed my notes on what I needed to do in Moving Outlook Data from One System to Another.

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Why Do I See a Lot of Strange Symbols When I Compose an Email Message

If you are seeing a lot of unexpected symbols when you are composing an email message in Outlook 2003, such as the ones shown below, then you may have accidentally turned on the display of nonprinting characters.

You may be seeing ¶ symbols at the end of each paragraph. Those are called "para symbols" or "pilcrow signs". You may also see symbols. Those downwards arrows that turn a 90-degree corner leftwards indicate line breaks or carriage returns in your text. These carriage return arrows should appear wherever you've hit the return key when composing a message. You will also see small raised dots between words, i.e. "He took his vorpal sword". The character simply means that there is a space there.

If Outlook is configured to use Microsoft Word to edit your email messages, those characters are embedded in your documents, but are normally invisible to you. Displaying them can help some users when formatting their documents.

You can toggle their display on or off by clicking on the ¶ symbol that you should see in the toolbar menu at the top of your message composition window. You can also toggle the display of these characters on or off by hitting the Ctrl, Shift, and "8" keys, i.e. Ctrl then asterisk, simultaneously. And, if those characters have suddenly appeared in your documents when you don't want them there, it is likely because you inadvertently hit the Ctrl key while hitting Shift+8 to get an asterisk symbol.

References:

1. What do all those funny marks, like the dots between the words in my document, and the square bullets in the left margin, mean?
   Frequently Asked Questions - Microsoft Word MVP FAQ Site
   Article contributed by Suzanne Barnhill and Dave Rado
2. Turning Display of Paragraph Markers On and Off in Microsoft Word
   MoonPoint Support
3. List of XML and HTML character entity references
   Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Adding an Email Address to Outlook's Safe Senders List

Outlook 2003 provides the capability to add an email address to a "safe senders" list. Outlook will not apply its junk e-mail filter to email from senders on the safe senders list. However, you may have Outlook rules that will still route email from addresses on the list to the junk e-mail folder.

[ More Info ]

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Out of Office Assistant Disabled

An Outlook 2003 user reported that she received the message "The command is not available. See the program documentation about how to use this extension" when trying to change her out-of-office message to reflect the fact that she was no longer out of the office. I found that by going to "Tools", "About Microsoft Office", and then re-enabling the disabled outex.dll add-in, I was able to correct the problem.

[ More Info ]

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Configuring Outlook 2000 to Leave Email on the Server

If you go on travel, but need to leave Outlook open on your desktop system or, perhaps, need to have someone else open Outlook on the system at your office to check old email while you are on travel, then you may need to configure Outlook to leave email on your POP server while you are on travel.

[ More Info ]

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Viewing Message Headers in Outlook 2002

If you receive a spam message or anti-virus software on your system reports it detected a virus or worm in an incoming message, you can't rely on the "from" address to reveal the true orgination point of the message. It is highly unlikely that such messages actually came from the user listed in the "from" address. Most spammers and mass-mailing worms use spoofed "from" addresses, i.e. addresses that are fictitious, real addresses that were found by a worm scanning an infected system for email addresses, addresses found by spam spiders, which are programs that search the web for valid email addresses posted on websites, or addresses that are likely to be valid on a domain, such as info, information, admin, administrator, root, etc.

Sending a reply message to the "from" address warning the user at that address that his or her system is infected with a virus or to complain about spam will likely be fruitless, since that user never sent you the spam or virus. So how can you determine where the message actually orginated? By looking at the message headers. Most email clients commonly used on Windows systems hide the message headers from users by default, but, commonly, there are ways to still view the message headers.

In Outlook 2002, the procedure is as follows:

1. Double-click on the message in Outlook to view it.
2. Click on "View" and then "Options". A "Message Options" window appears with the Internet headers displayed at the bottom of the window.

If you want to copy those headers to an email message or file, click inside the "Internet headers" section, hit the Ctrl and A keys simultaneously to select the entire contents of that section or just click and drag with the mouse to highlight all of the information. Then hit the Ctrl and C keys simultaneously to copy the information into the Windows clipboard. Then inside an email message you are composing or a file you've opened, hit the Ctrl and V keys simultaneously to paste the information into the message or file.

Scrolling through the message headers will reveal the origination point of a message. Don't expect to find an email address associated with the true sender, but the headers will show the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the sending system and path the message took from that system to your system.

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Repairing Outlook PST File Corruption at 2 GB Limit

Outlook 2000 and earlier versions put all messages, attachments, contact lists, the calendar, etc. in one file. There are advantages and disadvantages to that approach. But Microsoft's Outlook developers coded the software in such a way that when that file size nears 2 GigaBytes (GB), the file becomes corrupt. And Outlook provides no forewarning that one is nearing the 2 GB limit. Once you reach about 1.96 GB the file becomes corrupted and you may not even be able to start Outlook.

Microsoft's Inbox Repair Tool, scanpst.exe, can't repair the damage. The only repair mechanism Microsoft provides is the Oversize PST Recovery Tool, PST2GB. That tool will arbitrarily truncate the PST file to less than 2 GB, which then allows it to be repaired with the Inbox Recovery Tool. However, you have no control over what data is removed by the truncation process, so some messages will be lost.

For instructions on how to repair a file that has reached the limit, see Repairing Outlook PST File Corruption at 2 GB Limit

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