Techish.net

If you don’t know what I mean by “Auto complete” it is the feature in Outlook that finishes what you are typing. For example, when I am about to type out an address in the “To” field of an email it will show me a list of matches as I type:

Unfortuantely these addresses are not saved on the server – even when you are only using exchange as your primary email source. Why is this bad? Because a large number of users consider their auto complete an official address book.

It is surprising the number of times I have completed an upgrade of a network and suddenly get calls that all of the address books are missing. This is after I have painstakingly exported all of the old address books and moved them over properly. When I sit down with the user to see what they mean…it is simply the auto-complete that is no longer working for them.

This happened so much that I needed to find an way to backup and restore this data. After running the filemon utility from Sysinternals I discovered that outlook stores this data in a single file

The file is placed in the users profile folder under “Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook”, and always has the extension .NK2. The name of the file matches the outlook profile name.

So we can see in the above folder listing that there are a few files in this folder. We are interested in the NK2 files. Notice that there are only two. If we open up our outlook profiles in the control panel we can see that they match up to their respective names:

The trick to the restore is to make sure Outlook is closed, copy over the old NK2 file, and replace the current NK2 with the one with all of the data in it.

So lets imagine we are moving to a new machine. The old machine has an Outlook profile named Exchange. We find Exchange.nk2, copy it over to this machine.

Now we have Exchange.NK2 from the old computer. It contains all of our autocomplete data. We need Outlook to see this. We determine the name of the current profile on the new machine. In this case it is “Outlook”. If we drill down to the users current NK2 folder we find an Outlook.NK2.

Make sure Outlook is closed. Delete Outlook.NK2, and copy in Exchange.NK2 and rename it Outlook.NK2. Now when you launch Outlook it will use the restored autocomplete data when typing out email addresses.

Keep in mind that this procedure is mildly complicated and it is easy to make a mistake. A few things to note about this process:

-Please make sure you backup all of your NK2 files before making any changes.

-A New profile will not have a corresponding NK2 file until you have opened Outlook once and typed out an email address at least once for the current profile.

-If there have been multiple profiles in the past with the same name then a new NK2 file will be created each time. Outlook handles this by adding a number to the end. This means you may find systems where the profile is named “Exchange”, and there are NK2 files named Exchange.NK2, Exchange-2.NK2, and Exchange-3.NK2. You need to do a little investigative work to find the right one. Look at the date and time stamp to see what has the most recent update.

Finally you need to make sure you can view hidden files and folders if you want to drill down to that folder where the NK2 files are located. This can be done by opening any folder in windows, click on the tools menu, then options…scroll down and make sure the option is selected to “Show Hidden Files and Folders”

Now if we can convince users to actually use their address book…then everything would be perfect

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Sometimes you cannot uninstall the existing 2003, 2007 or 2010 Microsoft Office suite on your computer by using the Add or Remove Programs feature in Control Panel of Windows XP or the Programs and Features feature in Control Panel of Windows Vista if one of the following conditions is true:

• The installation process did not complete when you tried to install a new program. Therefore, you are left with a partially installed program. When you try to install the program again, you are unsuccessful.
• A previously installed program cannot be removed because the installation files are corrupted.

Steps to resolve this problem

Verify that you cannot uninstall the Microsoft Office system by using the Add or Remove Programs feature or Programs and Features feature. To do this, follow these steps:

For Windows XP or Windows Server 2003

1. Click Start, click Run, type control appwiz.cpl in the Open box, and then press ENTER.
2. Click to select the Office system product from the application list, and then click Remove.

For Windows Vista

1. Click Start, type programs and features in the Search box, and then press ENTER.
2. Click to select the product to be uninstalled from the listing of installed products, and then click Uninstall/Change from the bar that displays the available tasks.

If you can uninstall the Microsoft Office suite by using Add or Remove Programs, you are finished with this article. If you cannot uninstall the Microsoft Office suite, you may have issues with the Add or Remove Programs dialog box, or some Microsoft Office components can not be uninstalled. In these cases, you cannot reinstall the Microsoft Office suite. Go to the next section to uninstall the appropriate Microsoft Office suite by using an alternative method.

You can uninstall the Microsoft Office system by going to the appropriate “Fix it for me” section that matches your version of Microsoft Office. The Fix It solutions below do not remove any Office program that was installed separately from the Office suite. For example, if you have Microsoft Office Professional 2007 and Microsoft Office Visio 2007 installed on your computer, the Fix It solution only removes Microsoft Office Professional 2007 from your computer. Visio 2007 will not be removed. Additionally, you must reboot your machine if you use one of the Fix it solutions below.

Notes:

• The wizard may be in English only; however, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.
• If you are not on the computer that has the problem, save the Fix it solution to a flash drive or a CD and then run it on the computer that has the problem.

Steps to resolve this problem

Verify that you cannot uninstall the Microsoft Office system by using the Add or Remove Programs feature or Programs and Features feature. To do this, follow these steps:

For Windows XP or Windows Server 2003

1. Click Start, click Run, type control appwiz.cpl in the Open box, and then press ENTER.
2. Click to select the Office system product from the application list, and then click Remove.

For Windows Vista

1. Click Start, type programs and features in the Search box, and then press ENTER.
2. Click to select the product to be uninstalled from the listing of installed products, and then click Uninstall/Change from the bar that displays the available tasks.

If you can uninstall the Microsoft Office suite by using Add or Remove Programs, you are finished with this article. If you cannot uninstall the Microsoft Office suite, you may have issues with the Add or Remove Programs dialog box, or some Microsoft Office components can not be uninstalled. In these cases, you cannot reinstall the Microsoft Office suite. Go to the next section to uninstall the appropriate Microsoft Office suite by using an alternative method.

You can uninstall the Microsoft Office system by going to the appropriate “Fix it for me” section that matches your version of Microsoft Office. The Fix It solutions below do not remove any Office program that was installed separately from the Office suite. For example, if you have Microsoft Office Professional 2007 and Microsoft Office Visio 2007 installed on your computer, the Fix It solution only removes Microsoft Office Professional 2007 from your computer. Visio 2007 will not be removed. Additionally, you must reboot your machine if you use one of the Fix it solutions below.

Notes:

• The wizard may be in English only; however, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.
• If you are not on the computer that has the problem, save the Fix it solution to a flash drive or a CD and then run it on the computer that has the problem

Fix it for me

Office 2003 suites

To uninstall the 2003 Microsoft Office suite automatically, click the Fix this problem button or link. Click Run in the File Download dialog box, and then follow the steps in the Fix it wizard.

Office 2007 suites

To uninstall the 2007 Microsoft Office suite automatically, click the Fix this problem button or link. Click Run in the File Download dialog box, and then follow the steps in the Fix it wizard.

Office 2010 suites

To uninstall the 2010 Microsoft Office suite automatically, click the Fix this problem button or link. Click Run in the File Download dialog box, and then follow the steps in the Fix it wizard.

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This is very handy to know, especially when you get odd errors from failed installations in the eventlogs that really don’t tell you anything useful.

To enable MSI logging, start Registry Editor (start -> run -> regedit).

Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer

Right click on the right pane and select New -> String Value
Name it: Logging
Set the value to: voicewarmupx

Alternatively, copy the text below into a new text document and save as “Enable MSI Logging.reg”.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer]
"EnableAdminTSRemote"=dword:00000001
"Logging"="voicewarmupx"

That’s all there is to it.

The logs will be in %TEMP% directory and all start with MSI*.log