January, 2013

The January 2013 Release (build 15.0.0.1037) is live: http://mfcmapi.codeplex.com.

We’ve been working a few issues lately related to the size of a OST versus the size of a mailbox. I’ve added some features to MrMAPI to aid in these sorts of issues. First is the –Size switch, which calculates the size of all the items in a folder and it’s subfolders. You can combine it with the –Folder switch to get the size of any folder. For instance, using the @2 notation to refer to the Contacts folder, I can get the size in my own mailbox as follows:

C:\>mrmapi -size -f "@2"
Folder size (including subfolders)
Bytes: 388867
KB: 379
MB: 0

The second feature uses the documentation of the PST file format to read the header of a PST/OST file and report free space. Note that this does require that the file not be loaded in Outlook when you run it. Simply closing Outlook is sufficient. Here’s an example run against an OST here:

C:\>mrmapi -pst -i c:\Users\sgriffin\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\outlook.ost
Analyzing c:\Users\sgriffin\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\outlook.ost
Unicode PST
File Size           = 2.71 GB (2911577088 bytes)
Free Space          = 1.05 GB (1132028480 bytes)
Percent free        = 38.88%

Here's a change list - see the Issue Tracker on Codeplex for more details, or look at the code:

• MrMAPI: Added –PST for PST whitespace calculations
• MrMAPI: Added –Size for folder size calculations
• MrMAPI: Corrected handling of –Store parameter
• QuickStart: Using QuickStart now populates the main window UI when appropriate
• Property Editor: If you paste a property name in with extra whitespace or commas, these are now ignored
• SmartView: Added a few more properties

Enjoy.

Some of you may have already noticed this by now, but the logic used to load MAPI providers has changed in Outlook 2013. Previously, we would use LoadLibrary to load a MAPI provider. This API has logic in it to search the user’s PATH for the provider, which is great if you placed the provider somewhere on the user’s PATH. In Outlook 2013, though, we call LoadLibraryEx, passing the LOAD_LIBRARY_SEARCH_DEFAULT_DIRS flag. The effect of this flag is that Outlook no longer searches the path.

Fortunately, you can still put your provider wherever you want by putting the full path in MAPISVC.INF. You may need to rethink how you load your own dependencies, but now that you know what’s going on that problem shouldn’t be insurmountable. BTW – Process Monitor is invaluable in investigating this sort of issue.