Exchange System Management for Vista
Hallelujah, Microsoft has finally released a tool to be able to manage an Exchange 2003 server from a Windows Vista client! What a novel idea - being able to manage Microsoft products with other Microsoft products! You are sheer genius, Microsoft - who would think of such a wonderful concept??? Ok, sarcasm aside, because it's about to get worse before it gets better.
Yes there is a tool. Yes it works. But I sure hope you've never attempted to get Exchange tools to work BEFORE this tool, or happen to use another Microsoft product so obscure as, I dunno, say Outlook? Because you can't install this tool with Outlook installed. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Thanks a lot Microsoft.
Ok, so here's the procedure, the real life procedure, not the "Release Notes" procedure you'll get from Microsoft. But you're a diligent I.T. professional, you'll read the release notes anyway, right? You should. Ok, first the link to the tool and the release notes:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3403d74e-8942-421b-8738-b3664559e46f&displaylang=en.
That page gets you to the tool and the release notes. As you diligently read through the release notes, you will notice several prerequisites - go ahead and do them - the ones about getting Windows Server 2003 SP1 Admin Tools Pack installed and turning on IIS features in Vista. So far so good. Now you get to the "Microsoft Exchange Server MAPI Client and Collaboration Data Objects 1.2.1" prerequisite. Not so fast, there sonny.
The link for this tool is found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=94274318-27c4-4d8d-9bc5-3e6484286b1f&DisplayLang=en
Assuming that link still works, use it - because when I clicked the one in the release notes it took me to the right page, or so it seemed, but clicking the download button gave me a big fat 404 (page not found). Thanks again, Microsoft.
Now for the fun - this tool will not install with any version of Exchange (i.e. the management tools you tried to get to work despite being told it didn't work in Vista), or ANY VERSION OF OUTLOOK. WHAT??? Yup, that's right. But don't fret, where there's an idiotic Microsoft stumbling block placed in your way, there's a convoluted workaround. Hooray.
First the easy - you can simply uninstall Outlook and reinstall it later. However, getting rid of Exchange might not be so easy. Now if you're lucky, you weren't like me and didn't try to get it to work, so you don't have any leftover remnants of Exchange hanging around. But if you do, you'll need to uninstall them. But don't just do the typical Uninstall from the "Programs and Features." That doesn't work - or didn't for me at least. You can choose "change" for exchange, and then "remove" for the client tools, which does remove the client tools, but remnants of Exchange will still be hanging around and you won't be able to proceed. Luckily there's a Microsoft KB on manually uninstalling Exchange, found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833396
Scroll down to "Manually remove Exchange 2003." Not all of the services and registry settings apply, but stop/delete those that do.
Ok, NOW you can run the "Microsoft Exchange Server MAPI Client and Collaboration Data Objects 1.2.1". Phew it worked! If not, don't ask me - ask Google. At this point it worked for me, so I don't have any more information for you if it doesn't, other than to say make SURE all remnants of Outlook and Exchange are gone. NOW that that's installed you can install the ESM for Vista. Wow, worked again! I launch my MMC, go into AD, and wipe away a tear or two as I double click a user and see all the exchange tabs. What a beautiful thing. Of course, I am only crying because of the pain and months and MONTHS its taken to get there. I can finally stop RDP'ing into the server to do anything Exchange related and have all my tools in one lovely mmc (assuming you've gone through the rigamaroll to get AD Users and Computers working, DHCP tools working - they don't by default - and the new group policy management tools - all topics for another day!!!)
Just to be sure, I reinstall Outlook, which goes without a hitch, and everything still works as far as both ESM and Outlook. At least so far...
Yes there is a tool. Yes it works. But I sure hope you've never attempted to get Exchange tools to work BEFORE this tool, or happen to use another Microsoft product so obscure as, I dunno, say Outlook? Because you can't install this tool with Outlook installed. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Thanks a lot Microsoft.
Ok, so here's the procedure, the real life procedure, not the "Release Notes" procedure you'll get from Microsoft. But you're a diligent I.T. professional, you'll read the release notes anyway, right? You should. Ok, first the link to the tool and the release notes:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3403d74e-8942-421b-8738-b3664559e46f&displaylang=en.
That page gets you to the tool and the release notes. As you diligently read through the release notes, you will notice several prerequisites - go ahead and do them - the ones about getting Windows Server 2003 SP1 Admin Tools Pack installed and turning on IIS features in Vista. So far so good. Now you get to the "Microsoft Exchange Server MAPI Client and Collaboration Data Objects 1.2.1" prerequisite. Not so fast, there sonny.
The link for this tool is found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=94274318-27c4-4d8d-9bc5-3e6484286b1f&DisplayLang=en
Assuming that link still works, use it - because when I clicked the one in the release notes it took me to the right page, or so it seemed, but clicking the download button gave me a big fat 404 (page not found). Thanks again, Microsoft.
Now for the fun - this tool will not install with any version of Exchange (i.e. the management tools you tried to get to work despite being told it didn't work in Vista), or ANY VERSION OF OUTLOOK. WHAT??? Yup, that's right. But don't fret, where there's an idiotic Microsoft stumbling block placed in your way, there's a convoluted workaround. Hooray.
First the easy - you can simply uninstall Outlook and reinstall it later. However, getting rid of Exchange might not be so easy. Now if you're lucky, you weren't like me and didn't try to get it to work, so you don't have any leftover remnants of Exchange hanging around. But if you do, you'll need to uninstall them. But don't just do the typical Uninstall from the "Programs and Features." That doesn't work - or didn't for me at least. You can choose "change" for exchange, and then "remove" for the client tools, which does remove the client tools, but remnants of Exchange will still be hanging around and you won't be able to proceed. Luckily there's a Microsoft KB on manually uninstalling Exchange, found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833396
Scroll down to "Manually remove Exchange 2003." Not all of the services and registry settings apply, but stop/delete those that do.
Ok, NOW you can run the "Microsoft Exchange Server MAPI Client and Collaboration Data Objects 1.2.1". Phew it worked! If not, don't ask me - ask Google. At this point it worked for me, so I don't have any more information for you if it doesn't, other than to say make SURE all remnants of Outlook and Exchange are gone. NOW that that's installed you can install the ESM for Vista. Wow, worked again! I launch my MMC, go into AD, and wipe away a tear or two as I double click a user and see all the exchange tabs. What a beautiful thing. Of course, I am only crying because of the pain and months and MONTHS its taken to get there. I can finally stop RDP'ing into the server to do anything Exchange related and have all my tools in one lovely mmc (assuming you've gone through the rigamaroll to get AD Users and Computers working, DHCP tools working - they don't by default - and the new group policy management tools - all topics for another day!!!)
Just to be sure, I reinstall Outlook, which goes without a hitch, and everything still works as far as both ESM and Outlook. At least so far...
posted by Josh at 9:00 AM
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