Outlook Tips--Welcome-Message Customization

Can we add information about our email policy to the welcome message that Outlook shows new users?

—Kim Tweed and Michael Paquin

When a new user starts Outlook, a message automatically appears as a message in the Inbox to provide some introductory tips and support resources. This message comes from a file named welcome.msg, which resides in the program filesmicrosoft officeoffice folder. You can edit the file to contain any information that you'd like the new Outlook user to see. If you're deploying Outlook from an administrative install share point, rename the copy of welcome.msg that you find there, then double-click the file to open it in Outlook for editing. After you make changes, choose File, Save As to save it as the new welcome.msg file. Otherwise, you can copy a new welcome.msg file to the user's machine as part of the logon script.

My fellow editor Paul Robichaux suggests another method that would work even if the new user accesses the account with Outlook Web Access (OWA) or another non-Outlook client. You could write a small tool that would use Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) to create the new user's account, then send that account a message. More sophisticated versions of this basic idea are coming into widespread use with Exchange 2000 Server.