Posted by Exchange Geek on 05/03/2010
Today when I came in office I saw an email from my boss. He was asked by one the bussiness heads that why the week numbers in outlook would show one week ahead?
Here is a little background about the week numbers:
Week number according to the ISO-8601 standard, weeks starting on Monday. The first week of the year is the week that contains that year’s first Thursday. The highest week number in a year is either 52 or 53 and outlook is fully compliant to this specification.
Normally, when we configure the outlook profile we do not pay much attention to a very small calendar setting which actually manages all this week number related stuff. Its pretty simple to configure. In common situations the calendar is configured to use the 1 Jan of the year as the first week of the year. Which results in this mismatch of outlook calendar numbering.
To correct it you can simply go to
Tools –> Options –> Calendar Options –>
Posted in Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Outlook | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Exchange Geek on 30/01/2010
Rapid transition guide from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010
I am glad to present this Rapid Transition Guide From Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.
This guide will walk you through the most important considerations and steps that you need to perform before, during, and after the deployment of Exchange 2010 server.
This guide is written for the IT administrators of an existing Exchange 2003 organization which contains small to medium scale deployments.
This guide mainly focuses on a typical transition of Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 environment which includes the transition of Exchange 2003 backend and front end servers to Exchange 2010 mailbox server role, client access server role and hub transport server role installed using the typical installation method.
You can download this transition guide from Here
I will appreciate your comments and feedback on this guide. Please feel free to drop me an email at geek @ msexchangegeek . com if you think this guide has some important content missing.
Posted in Exchange 2010, Exchange Server, Exchange Server 2003 | 21 Comments »
Posted by Exchange Geek on 27/01/2010
Today I was playing around with Exchange 2010 Certificates in my labs. My lab contains simple setup as below:
| Server |
Operating System |
Role |
| ExchangeDC |
Windows Server 2003 SP1 |
DC,GC, CA |
| Exchange2003 |
Windows Server 2003 SP1 |
Exchange 2003 SP2 |
| Exchange2010 |
Windows Server 2008 R2 |
Exchange 2010 RTM |
In above setup the domain controller is also an Enterprise Root CA. I requested a new certificate from my internal CA and wanted to import it and then enable it for services on my Exchange server 2010 box. Something was going wrong and the certificate didn’t have a private key. After downloading the certificate the certificate had that “You have a private key that corresponds to this certificate.” missing from certificate. Just as shown below
Now the trouble was the pending request in EMC could yet import this certificate but didn’t let me assign it to the services. After spending good 2 hours at my own I found a solution at https://support.comodo.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=1188
So here is the simplest way to overcome this problem.
- Download the certificate and store it at some place on the server.
- Click Start –> Run and then type MMC, press Enter.
- In the MMC Snap In click File Menu and then select Add/Remove Snap-in…
- Select Certificates.
- Click Add button.
- Select Computer account from the popped up dialog box.
- Click Finish and click OK
- Expand Certificates –> Personal –> Certificates
- Right click in the right hand side pane of the MMC Snap-in and select All Tasks –> Import…
- Specify the file path in the wizard that will pop up and Finish the wizard.
- You should see the certificate that has the little golden key icon missing. The other certificate you may see is the self-signed certificate generated during exchange installation.
- Now double click on the newly imported certificate and select the Details tab.
- Click Serial Number and write down this value or simply copy and paste it into a notepad file. Please note that you will not be allowed to copy using mouse. You can use Ctrl+C instead.
- Open command prompt and type certutil –repairestore my “serial number of certificate” and press enter.
- Now, refresh the Certificates MMC and you should see the private key paired with the certificate.
- In Certificates MMC right click on the same certificate and select All Tasks –> Export…
- Export this certificate into a .pfx file with below options selected during the export wizard.
- Yes, Export the private key on Export Private Key page.
- Include all certificates in certification path if possible on Export File Format page.
- Export all extended properties on Export File Format page.
- Enter the password.
- Select the path where the pfx file will be stored and complete the wizard.
Now open EMS and and run the following cmdlet.
[PS] C:\>Import-ExchangeCertificate -FileData ([Byte[]]$(Get-Content -Path "C:\Users\Administrator.EXCHANGE\Desktop\exchangecert.pfx" -Encoding byte -ReadCount 0)) -Password:(Get-Credential).password
The credentials prompt will pop up. Enter the credentials as the currently logged on user and the password that was specified for the pfx file during export. If the credentials are correct the output should be as below:
Next, you can enable this certificate for the services you want to use it for. Again, simply open the EMS and run Enable-ExchangeCertificate -Server ‘EXCHANGE2010′ -Services ‘IMAP, POP, IIS, SMTP’ -Thumbprint ‘E7DD3356F1DC4359D9AAFD18BC7E36C06C7FC418′
Posted in Active Directory, Exchange 2010 | Tagged: Exchange 2010 | 3 Comments »
