14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is introducing the June 2009 Monthly Service Update to the Microsoft Online Services and it has managed to bump the maximum limit for Exchange Online email attachments. The Redmond company indicated that it started rolling up the refresh on June 17th, and that customers would be able to take advantage of the new capabilities gradually. The software giant is looking to wrap up the delivery of the update by the end of this month, June 30. Customers using Microsoft Online Services should continue doing so without any problems as the update will be offered. Microsoft did not plan for any downtime for this release deployment.
“Prior to the June 2009 release, the maximum allowed attachment size for email sent via Exchange Online was 20 MB. The June 2009 release increases maximum attachment size to 30 MB. However, the maximum attachment size depends on the attachment,” revealed Paul Englis, a technical product manager for Microsoft Online Services. “Users should remember that transport encoding (the information that allows messages to be safely sent and read) is automatically added included in the calculation of attachment size. Thus, allowable file size of attachments may be less than 30 MB to accommodate the required transport encoding.”
In addition to kicking the Exchange Online email attachment limit up to 30 MB, the June 2009 Update also brought to the table support for Office Outlook 2003 for Microsoft Online Services. Following the refresh, companies that are leveraging the software giant's online services will no longer be limited to using only the latest version of Outlook. “Organizations can now use Outlook 2003 to work with Exchange Online. Prior to this update, customers could use Office Outlook 2007 or Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access (OWA),” Englis added.
However, while Exchange Online and Outlook 2003 play nice together, fact is that there are a few glitches. Microsoft informed that Outlook 2003 might be prompting for credentials, and users needed to check the “do not prompt for credentials in the future” box in order to prevent the client from repeatedly doing so. At the same time, the Free/Busy and Offline Address Book which is inaccessible in Outlook 2003, could continue being inaccessible even after upgrading to Office 2007. Englis enumerated a few others: “External Out of Office does not work in Outlook 2003; upload/download time for large attachments might be long; Office Communicator shows Outlook integration error; large mailbox size causes slow response.”