How to view message headers in Exchange Server 2007 OWA

[The_Exchange_Team]

Previous versions of OWA didn't let you look at mail headers. In Exchange 2007, you can. Open a message in OWA by double-clicking on it or hitting Enter, then click on the "Message Details" icon.

The message details will come up in a nice dialog:

That should be quite popular!

- Rahul Dhar

[#2]

Fantastic - sorely missed in 2003.

BUT!!  WHY WHY WHY isn't the dialog resizable???  The headers are shown in a tiny space that I have to hunt around in using scroll-bars.  If the dialog box could be resized that would be great.

Thanks
Chris

[#3]

Click in box, CTRL+A, CTRL+C, Paste into favourite text editor. Job done.

But yeah, a resizeable dialog would be nice!

[#4]

An excellent feature!!

I actually think it looks great as displayed in the screenshot...

I don’t normally read header information top to bottom - I'm usually looking for something fairly specific and so I'll copy and paste into notepad and do a ctrl-F.

In my case - I'd rather have the message details window small and concise and still allow me to see the orig message in the preview pane.

[#5]

Multiply Chris Warwick's comments by a trillion please.  Why create a UI that is broken on purpose?  Sure I could cut and paste it into another app, but doing that just to view text indicates that the original app is BROKEN!

Everytime I have to look at headers in Outlook I want to cry.

Please, please, please, please, please, please make the window for viewing headers behave in a resonable way (this goes for OWA and Outlook).  And just for clarification, a tiny window that I can't resize is not reasonable.

[#6]

Even better, when clicking on the Message Details screen it should open straight to notepad or your favorite editor.  Cut out the middle-man :)

[#7]

Just because the new feature does not do exactly what you want it to do does not mean its broken!

Lighten up. OWA is by far the best web mail client on the planet and it keeps getting better.

I like it!

[#8]

I still feel the window should be resizable. But, anyways, it’s a good feature in OWA :-).

Thanks,
Athif
http://msmvps.com/Athif

[#9]

Keep up that stupid work! May be in OWA 2012 you will finally do as what the rest of "not the best web mail clients" are providing for decades ...

[#10]

This is a great new feature, really glad to see this. Definitely one of the small things that I think will make a great new version.

How about being able to view the headers without opening the message? Sometimes when I get a message that I'm not sure if it is spam or not I will look at the headers first to see if it has any obvious spam like entrails. I'd rather not have to open a spam message if I don't have to.

Phil

[#11]

Can someone please tell me (for the love of God cuz I can't find it) how to see message headers in OWA 2003?

[#12]

Great new feature, ive been thinking on why this hasnt been included in OWA 2003 alot, as others have said, making it resizable would bring it up another few levels in terms of usability.

Keep up the good work.

[#13]

Sam:
You can't do it in 2003, read the first entry of the Post
"Previous versions of OWA didn't let you look at mail headers."

Great feature! Keep up the good work.

[#14]

Have a look at this site http://www.asaris.de/sites/playground/default.aspx for the viewmessagesource.zip under downloads. You will have to configure it yourself to make it work but it works fine for us.

[#15]

Hello, guys.

Is there any way to look through the topics on Public Folders?
As the official FAQ points out here as the source of instruction, it would be nice to have a category or anything that help looking through the articles on Public Folder.

Just as a comment from a newcomer on this product.....

Regards,

Kenji Yamamoto

[#16]

Having about 6000 users with shiny new Macs, all I have to say is too bad it only works on Windows with IE.

[#17]

Hi folks,

I'm glad you like having access to message headers, even if it isn't always convenient.  We considered making the dialog box resizable.  There a couple of issues with it:
1. none of our other dialogs are resizable (not the best reason)
2. it would be a significant amount of work, and we felt that we would be better off investing our efforts in features that would see more usage.  Let's be honest, message headers are something that most users don't care about.  You and I like having access to them, but most users don't understand what they mean.

Going forward with OWA, we'll definitely see if there's something better we can do.  If we can't make the dialog resize, what would make it easier for you to use headers?  I can't promise that we'll add this feature to OWA Light, but it's something that we'll consider.

[#18]

Viewing message headers is one of the most important and essential things of emails. About 1 one 20-30 messges I receive are messages where I want to see the headers.

What about the user calling the help desk and they need to see the headers?

Also it is strange that (in current Exchange and Outlook 2003) I can only see the headers of mails in my inbox, not in attachements from forwarded mails: If someone attaches an EML-file to an message or forwards a complete message with thunderbird, Outlook goes in, messes everything up and is not able to show me the embedded headers.

HEADERS ARE A VITAL PART OF INTERNET MESSAGES AND MAY NEVER BE LOST!

[#19]

To Rahul Dhar:

If the box can't resize, how about just making it a bit bigger, like the screenshot here:
http://www.asaris.de/sites/playground/downloads/forms/DispForm.aspx?ID=18

It seems that very little is gained, and a lot lost, by making the headers window so small.

[#20]

Headers must be accessible in some way via webmail.  Its an invaluable troubleshooting tool.  Having a resizable dialouge box would be nice, but I can live without it since it is really only used in troubleshooting situations, and it will most likely be copy-pasted by the user into a new email to send in to IT support (me).  This is especially useful for emails that break outlook and need to be eliminated or evaluated in webmail, but also helps when trying to trace the source of an email delivery problem.  I never bother to use headers to determine whether or not an email is spam - in cases where the subject line leaves some ambiguity, I'll just open it and see for myself.

What would be really nice is an automated or intuitive way for users to show the headers to IT.  I agree with 100% with Rahul - users don't care about headers at all, but IT does.  My biggest non-spam pain would be solved if users could forward emails to me without losing all the header info.  A site configurable "Report this email to admin" button would eliminate a lot of steps admins have to go through in the troubleshooting process.

[#21]

I can see headers pretty nicely in Imail's web interface. Or even in Yahoo mail. Why not "copy" their design?

[#22]

Hold on..guys...

One query for Microsoft genius:

WHY DO THEY KEEP RELEASING "VERY BASIC" FEATURES VERY LATE?
IT'S A COMMON SENSE TO HAVE THIS FEATURE RIGHT WHEN FIRST CLIENT OF OWA ARRIVED.
I GUESS THEY JUST NEED TO HAVE A CHECKLIST B4 THEY ACTUALLY LAUNCH ANY PRODUCT; SPECIFICALLY EMAIL WEB CLIENTS, FOR WHICH THEY ALREADY HAVE THE SAME FEATURE IN MAPI CLIENT..

DOES IT MAKE SENSE GUYS? PLS REPLY..

[#23]

I couldn't agree more about the need to maintain the headers (even if undisplayed) when messages are forwarded.

This information can be absolutely vital to analysing message routing problems. You're right, users don't need to see it, but ICT depts do.

I really do like idea of the "report to admin" function, although hopefully Forefront for Exchange will stop them having anything to report in the first place ;)