Recipe7.23.Controlling Global and Internet Message Format Settings

Recipe 7.23. Controlling Global and Internet Message Format Settings

Problem

You need to associate MIME types with specific extensions, define default message format settings, or adjust them on a per-domain basis, throughout your Exchange organization.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

To add a new MIME types association to a specific extension, do the following:

Open the Exchange System Manager (Exchange System Manager.msc).
Expand Global Settings, right-click Internet Message Formats, and click Properties.
Click Add. In the Type field, enter the MIME content type. In the Associated Extension field, enter the extension. Click OK.
Click OK.

Setting message format settings on a per-domain basis, do the following:

Open the Exchange System Manager (Exchange System Manager.msc).
Expand Global Settings and click Internet Message Formats. You will see a listing of the current domains (* is the default) that have specific format settings in place.
If you wish to create a new domain-specific setting, right-click Internet Message Formats and click New Domain. Fill in the name and the SMTP domain and click OK.
From the list of domains, right-click the domain to modify and click Properties.
Click the Message Format tab and select the message encoding and character set options you wish to use.
Click the Advanced tab and configured the rich-text formatting, wrapping, and autoresponse options you wish to use.
Click OK.

Discussion

Global format options are shared throughout the Exchange organization, meaning that you can easily change them as needed in the GUI and not need to worry about propagating them to all of your servers using scripts.

The first process in this recipe shows how straightforward it is to add a new MIME type/file extension association. Editing and removing them are just as simple.

Controlling message formatting settings on a domain-by-domain basis is a bit more interesting. You can control whether to use MIME or UUEncode (MIME is the default and should be unless you have a specific reason to change it), whether the MIME message body will be text or HTML (or both), and which character sets to use for MIME and non-MIME messages.

The advanced properties give you control over whether to use Exchange rich text and word wrapping. They also control a multitude of autoresponse behaviors, shown in Table 7-8.

Table 7-8. Message format autoresponse options
Option	Description
Allow out of office responses	Enables OOF responses. You might want to disable these to domains that host a lot of mailing lists.
Allow automatic replies	Enables message receipts and automatic replies to be sent to the sender.
Allow automatic forward	Enables forwarding or copying of the message to another recipient.
Allow delivery reports	Enables delivery confirmation reports.
Allow nondelivery reports	Enables NDRs. You should not turn this off for a domain unless you are positive it will never be a valid email source or destination, such as for NDR spam attacks.
Preserve sender's display name on message	While not an autoresponse behavior per se, it controls whether Exchange keeps both the sender's name and email address on outbound messages.