Outlook mail headers

[Jonas Hei]

Is is possible to change or remove the X-Mailer and X-MimeOLE headers from
the mails that are sent (via SMTP) from Outlook 2002/2003?

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Nope.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Author, Google and Other Search Engines (Visual QuickStart Guide)



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[Ted]

Yep, but you need a Hex editor.... and know what you are doing...

 

[Jonas Hei]

I can give it a go. Do I just need to (hex)edit the Program
Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\Outlook.EXE and search for the values of
X-Mailer header and replace it with something else (say blank spaces)?

Anybody has tried that before?

 

[Jonas Hei]

Has anyone tried (external to outlook) tools like x-ray
(http://www.xrayapp.com/xray/xray.shtml)?
Hope it is not a tool for spammers...

Any comments?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Has anyone tried (external to outlook) tools like x-ray
(http://www.xrayapp.com/xray/xray.shtml)?
Hope it is not a tool for spammers...

Since it's designed primarily to wirk with The Bat! mail client, my guess is
that it is a tool for SPAMmers. Other evidence is that it switches SMTP
servers quickly, cycling through a list of predefined servers and their
associated accounts.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I can give it a go. Do I just need to (hex)edit the Program
Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\Outlook.EXE and search for the values
of X-Mailer header and replace it with something else (say blank
spaces)?

I'd say that would fail, because then Outlook would insert an ill-defined
header that would look exactly like the X-Mailer header but without the
"X-Mailer" keyword. Receiving routers would probably choke on that.
Besides, I also would guess that the header formation is done in a DLL and
not in the main Outlook.exe image.

 

[Jeff Stephenson [MSFT]]

I suspect that Brian's on the mark. Just out of curiosity, why do you want
to hide the mailer that's being used?

 

[Jeff Harris]

Jeff,

I'm not sure why Brian is trying to strip out the "X-???" mail headers, but
I would like to do it to solve a problem with decoding password encryped PDF
files sent from an Outlook Express client to a GroupWise client.

It appears that some versions of Outlook Express place the "X-???" mail
headers between the "MIME-Version" field and the "Content-Type" field. This
causes problems for some mail clients which are intolerant to out of order
headers. Here are two examples:

Good mail header: ***************
Subject: Document Express eDocument
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary="--=_NextPart_ST_16_01_37_Thursday_October_28_2004_1358"
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1409
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409

Bad mail header: ***************
Subject: Document Express eDocument
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1409
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary="--=_NextPart_ST_16_34_55_Friday_November_12_2004_24757"


Groupwise can decode and process the encryped PDF attached to the message
with the "good" header, but since the "Content-Type" is not immediatly after
the "MIME-Version" field, then some mail clients will interperte the
"Content-Type" to be plain/text (default according to RFC2045).

Are there any options for controlling which mail headers and in what order
Outlook creates them? Any suggestions on why the order would have changed
after two years of consitent operations? It's the same version of Outlook
Express and Microsoft MimeOLE.

I'm looking at reconfiguring the sendmail process on our MX host to strip
out the "X-???" fields, but I'm worried about unforseen consquences.

Any suggestions?

Jeff Harris

I suspect that Brian's on the mark. Just out of curiosity, why do you want
to hide the mailer that's being used?

 

[Brian Tillman]

I'm not sure why Brian is trying to strip out the "X-???" mail
headers,

Brian is not.

It appears that some versions of Outlook Express place the "X-???"
mail headers between the "MIME-Version" field and the "Content-Type"
field.

I think your clients are broken. I know of no constraint on other headers
appearing between the MIME-Version and the Content-Type headers.

This causes problems for some mail clients which are
intolerant to out of order headers.

Then the clients should be fixed or replaced.

I'm looking at reconfiguring the sendmail process on our MX host to
strip out the "X-???" fields, but I'm worried about unforseen
consquences.

X headers are informational only and their removal should never affect the
recepton of the message.

 

[Jeff Stephenson [MSFT]]

Brian's right about header field ordering. According to RFC 2822 (the
Internet Message format document),

It is important to note that the header fields are not guaranteed to
be in a particular order. They may appear in any order, and they
have been known to be reordered occasionally when transported over
the Internet.

There is no way to control the order of header generation in Outlook.
Whether stripping X- fields in sendmail will cause problems really depends
on the clients involved. While many X- fields are simply informative,
others are used as proprietary, actionable information by certain clients.
It's worth a try, though.