As I am sure many IT Pros have done before, users have gotten new computers or been moved around, and with them their personal files move as well.  One of the most “fun” is all e-mail related content.  Outlook, the mail client for many companies, does not provide a real easy way to backup all Outlook related files.  Most recently I needed to backup a users nickname file.  If you are not familiar with this file, it is the file that populates the “To”, “CC”, “BCC” fields with commonly used addresses and people.  It is used in combination with the contacts folder to populate the drop down list.  The problem with many users is that they rely on this drop down list rather than entering a contacts information into the Contact folder, and therefore when you move the PST file you loose those entries in the drop down list.  During my research on the topic I found the following article on Experts Exchange:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Office_Productivity/Groupware/Outlook/Q_23106296.html

NOTE: You have to scroll all the way down to see the actual responses on Experts Exchange

As it turns out the nickname file “*.NK2” is found right along side the PST files.  However as some will discover it is not an easy file to find.  I recommend setting the following Folder View Options:

1. Show Hidden Files and Folders
2. Show Extensions
3. Show Hidden Operating System Files

The last item did the trick for me with Windows Vista Ultimate.  It may be different in XP, but I did not test this process with XP.  The only thing I dislike about this file, other than the fact that it is hidden and not built into the PST is that its is a binary file so there is no easy way to edit or review the contents, say delete a bad entry.  I know there are tools to remove bad entries and a Google search can reveal those.  For those of you (including me) that are upset with the contents not being integrated with the PST let me offer this one view point; In Outlook 2007 you can have multiple PST files, ideally for different email accounts, so how can Outlook figure out which nicknames to relate to which PST file?  You could argue that only store the nicknames that mail is sent to from the sending email account.  In other words, if you send a message to Bill Gates from Mail Account A then store Bill Gates in PST File A, and not PST File B.

I would be curious if anyone else has similar problems or findings with Outlook file backup and recovery.

-Brent

I previously posted how to backup the auto-complete list in Outlook by using the NickName file.  I ran into a much more common problem today where old entries in the nickname file are no longer valid and caused me to send messages to the wrong people or old addresses.  I did a quick Google search and came up with a few helpful bits of information.  The first of which is a handy utility that will let you modify the contents of the nickname file and in my case remove the old address.

1. NirSoft’s NK2View – Freeware http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/outlook_nk2_autocomplete.html.  They also have a lot of other handy little utilities for Outlook management and other systems.
2. When adding new addresses the best way to do it is actually create a contact entry in the PST file, but as many people know contact email addresses do not always appear in the drop down list.  Still best practice says to add a new contact.
3. ALWAYS backup the nickname file (read Part 1) because if the file gets corrupted your out of luck!

Good Luck!

-Brent

I was recently searching for links to many of the Microsoft Posters that are available in PDF format.  These posters are usually very large and can be printed out either on a printer or taken to a store like Kinko's or the UPS Store to be printed on poster paper.  This list will change or get added to as I find new posters or the links change.

Posters:

1. Exchange 2007 Component Architecture
2. Windows Server 2008 Components
3. TechNet Active Directory Jigsaw
4. Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Components
5. .NET 3.5 Namespace Poster

Again, most of these posters are meant for printing on paper large than 8.5x11.

-Brent

Using Dual Monitors is common in many work places and really can help and increase productivity.  One common example would be to have two Excel Documents open to view one document and work in the other document.  Seems simple enough, however since the beginning of time this has been no easy task with relation to Excel.  For some reason Excel simply does not allow (by default) two different Excel workbooks to be open at the same time.  They still use the same parent window.  In Windows XP a few work-a rounds were available by changing File Associations.  A simple Google search for “Excel Dual Monitors” will return lots of results.

The big problem is that with Windows Vista the File Associations tab has been removed from Windows Explorer.  So the big question now is, how do we override this limitation.  I found a great blog post that describes simple ways to accomplish the task for both Office 2003 and 2007.

http://www.lytebyte.com/2008/05/13/how-to-open-two-excel-files-side-by-side-in-separate-monitors/

I have not noticed any problems with disabling the DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) settings, however it does change some of the copy and paste functionality present in Excel.