Comments on: Microsoft Exchange Intelligent Message Filter and Group Policies

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:14:09 +0000

Adam, you mean that you added a safe sender to your Outlook list? The entries in this list won’t be copied to the server. You have to add every safe sender to the list on the server manually.

By: adam

adam — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:44:44 +0000

Ive successfully managed to get this working, all users now imports the safe senders list from a share on the server.
However, if I add a safe sender to the list, it only updates it locally on my machine and not the file on server for everyone.

The file has the approperiate permissions.
Does anyone know why this wouldnt update?

Adam

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:52:43 +0000

I actually had a bit of trouble with the information posted above. Here is what I did to fix it…

Class User

CATEGORY “Microsoft Office Outlook 2003″
CATEGORY “Tools | Options…”
CATEGORY “Preferences”
CATEGORY “Junk E-mail”
KEYNAME Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail
POLICY “Enable Junk Mail Import Lists”
VALUENAME JunkMailImportLists
VALUEON NUMERIC 1
VALUEOFF NUMERIC 0
END POLICY
END CATEGORY
END CATEGORY
END CATEGORY
END CATEGORY

This will add the entry to the correct location in the Microsoft Office 2003 / Tool | Options area for the junk mail settings. I haven’t pushed this out via group policy yet but I have tested with my Local Settings using gpedit.msc.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:50:07 +0000

Jason, if you pasted the text from the web page then the quotation marks might be the problem. Delete them after you pasted the text and then key them in again. Hope that helps.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:40:38 +0000

Hello Michael, when trying to append the information you posted

Class User
CATEGORY “Junk Mail Import Lists�?
KEYNAME Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail
POLICY “Enable Junk Mail Import Lists�?
VALUENAME JunkMailImportLists
VALUEON NUMERIC 1
VALUEOFF NUMERIC 0
END POLICY
END CATEGORY

to the outlk11.adm file, and open the .adm file in GPO Editor, i get the following.

Error 51 unexpected Keyword

Found: Mail
Expected: KEYNAME,CATEGORY,POLICY,END,EXPLAIN

Cannot load file

Do you know why i’d be getting that error, or what I can do to get around it. Seems like others have got this going so I’m obviously doing something wrong.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:06:39 +0000

no sorry Ian, I never managed to get that to work I just stuck with the one DC.

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 17:35:45 +0000

Nick Were you able to find a fix for the %logonserver%\netlogon\safesender.txt?
I’m having the same problem it works fine with the server name but i dont want all my users coming to one domain controller.

Thank you in advanced.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 08:15:17 +0000

I have various locations in the UK and Europe that will be using the safesender.txt, and would prefer to leverage the file replication of the netlogon share to avoid users coming over internet links to 1 particular server. It’s not a major problem at the moment (the txt file is v small) but just think it would be a “tidier” solution to have each location looking at their local copy. I suppose i could get around it by creating a seperate policy for each location and linking it to a site, but I’m always looking for the “least effort” method.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:06:05 +0000

Why do you need this environment variable? Do you have more than one safesender.txt?

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:35:34 +0000

Guys, Thanks for all the useful advise I now have this up and running, just 1 thing, If I use %logonserver% wildcard in the group policy to specify the location of my safesenders text file the file isn’t read. If i use \\servername it works fine. ie

%logonserver%\netlogon\safesender.txt (doesn’t work)
\\servername\netlogon\safesender.txt (works fine)

Have a feeling this might be an issue in GP but can’t remember anyone used this?
Thanks

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 19:47:53 +0000

John, the SPAM filter of Outlook and the IMF use the same rules. So, you can disable Outlook filtering. The only difference between the Outlook filter and the IMF is that the latter filters mails on the server. That is the reason why you don’t need to run Outlook in cached mode. The Outlook filter can only work after all mails are on the client machine. Otherwise the network traffic would be too high, I suppose.

Thorben, thanks a lot for the tip!

By: John

John — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:17:15 +0000

Michael,
We are using Outlook 2003 as our client. Outlook 2003’s Junk E-mail option will not work unless the Cached Exchange mode is set. I guess I don’t fully understand the IMF in regards to Outlook 2003. IMF is setup on our 2003 server – can it do all of the filtering for Outlook? Thanks again.

John.

By: Thorben

Thorben — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 10:12:11 +0000

Hi all,

to establish the policy as ‘NOT tattooed’, replace the line

KEYNAME Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail

with

KEYNAME Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail

Works also, and the regkey is removed if you don’t want to use the policy anymore.

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 10:24:07 +0000

Hi John,
sorry, I never used Group Policy to enable the cached mode of Outlook. However, I recommend not doing this. I used cached mode myself for a while and I often had problems with it. You don’t need it for the IMF or for importing safe senders. So why you do you want to enable cached mode?

By: John

John — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 21:37:36 +0000

Michael,
The roll out of my “Junk E-mail” filtering policy is still haunting me. The adding of domains by a network shared list is working — Thank you — But enabling cached mode for existing users who did not have cached exchange mode enabled is not working. Basically the policy setting to enable cached exchange mode is not turning on for these users. I have found this article:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/assistance/HA011402591033.aspx
it says to apply this setting “Select Cached Exchange Mode for new profiles drop-down list” I do not see this setting in the outlk11.adm template. How can I turn on Cached exchange mode for all of my existing users who are not currently using cached exchange mode? I am currently using the setting – User –> Administrative Templates—-> Microsoft Outlook 2003 —-> Tools Email Accounts —> Cached Exchange Mode –> Enabled —download full details. Any ideas?

John.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:09:04 +0000

Yeah, they will get spam. My question was more along the lines of group policy trying to apply settings to outlook11 when a client may have outlook10 or outlook9. Any potential issues? I am just trying to determine if it is safe pushing to 900+ users running 3 different versions of outlook with different service pack levels.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:51:26 +0000

As far as I remember IMF won’t work then, i.e. it does not filter mails for these post boxes. These users will just get their SPAM as usual

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:41:13 +0000

What happens if clients don’t have SP2 or are running older versions of Outlook? It doesn’t break anything does it?

By: John

John — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 21:13:35 +0000

Michael,
It is working. I finall created a test user and it worked. I then deleted my Outlook profile and created another one and it worked. Thanks for all the help.

John.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 18:50:20 +0000

Well, it is really difficult to say what went wrong in your case. It seems that you configured everything correctly. Check if the registry key JunkMailImportLists at Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail is really set to 1. Use the registry editor to check this. The IMF settings don’t influence the safe senders list. You should be able to use Group Policies to import email addresses in Outlook even if you don’t have IMF installed. You can also try if you are able to access your safe.txt from the client computer using the Windows Explorer. Maybe your user account doesn’t have the rights to access it. The email addresses in safe.txt have to be separated by line breaks. Hope that helps.