Exchange Server Searches Do Not Return Links for Opening Outlook

ID: Q201189

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Site Server version 3.0

SUMMARY

When you issue a search against a catalog that returns links to Exchange Server public folder documents, on some client computers, you may receive a link to open the article in Outlook Web Access and in Microsoft Outlook; however, on other client computers, you may only receive a link to open the article using Outlook Web Access.

MORE INFORMATION

The search samples with Site Server all have code within the page that checks the user agent string of the browser to see if it is capable of loading ActiveX controls. If the user agent string contains MSIE 3 or MSIE 4 and Windows 95 or Windows NT, then a link is generated for both Outlook Web Access and Outlook to access the document. If the user agent string does not contain those values, it is assumed the client cannot handle ActiveX and a link is returned for Outlook Web Access.

If you are using a browser that can support ActiveX controls, you can modify the search page to look for the values returned in the user agent string of your browser, so that you receive both links. The code section should look as follows in our sample documents:

if ((Instr(UserAgent,"MSIE 3") > 0) or (Instr(UserAgent,"MSIE 4") > 0)) and ((Instr(UserAgent,"Windows 95") > 0) or (Instr(UserAgent,"Windows NT") > 0)) then
OutlookBrowser=true
end if

Adding other conditionals on the if statement to match user agent settings on your client should allow the search page to return links for both types of document access.

Please note that simply changing the search page to return both links does not guarantee that your browser can use the ActiveX control properly.

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbInternet
Version : winnt:3.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbhowto