Download for the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference is now available!

angelgolfer — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:50:00 GMT

You can now download the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference from the Microsoft Download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4b1b8b22-3c74-4479-bd0d-7b0ee29e8d59&displaylang=en!

Since my last blog post in January, it seems like the major search engines have made some progress on their crawling. When you search for some commonly used MAPI names today, like PidTagBody and IABContainer::IMAPIContainer, the more popular search engines return them on the first page of their search results. While the search engines are still working their way through the approximately 1500 APIs in the Outlook 2007 MAPI reference, you now have a choice to download this reference, install it on your computer in Compiled HTML (CHM) format, view it at your convenience, and search in this CHM file when you are not connected to the Internet.

The Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference documents about 950 properties in a considerable level of detail. The MAPI reference points you to corresponding Microsoft Exchange Server protocol documents if you need further information on most of these properties. If you often work offline, as in a controlled corporate environment, consider downloading the Exchange protocol documents and have them readily available on your computer as well. You can choose to download individual protocol documents or all of the Exchange protocol documents; currently there are 90+ documents available.

Where is the MAPI documentation?

angelgolfer — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Some internal partners and external customers have asked where to find the Messaging API (MAPI) documentation. Coincidentally, there were some updating issues on the MSDN server for a couple of days around the middle of the month, which caused corruption in the MSDN table of contents, looking for the MAPI documentation became a more frustrating experience.

The MAPI Programmer's Reference that the Microsoft Exchange Server group has supported for years on MSDN has been updated and republished as the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Messaging API (MAPI) Reference (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc765775.aspx). About two years ago, the Exchange Server group decided that they will not continue to support the MAPI documentation. Microsoft Office Outlook, being a major MAPI client itself and having many of its customers developing MAPI solutions to work with Outlook, took over the MAPI documentation and updated it last year. The resultant documentation is the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference, which focuses on developing MAPI solutions for Outlook 2007. There are now more current code samples and numerous additional MAPI properties. Content that is no longer relevant to Outlook 2007 has been removed. For what is new and what has changed, see What's New in This Edition.

For the next few months, if you click old bookmarks set up on a browser marking Web pages of the MAPI Programmer's Reference, you will see a short passage pointing you to the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference and other alternative Exchange references. In the longer term, the redirection from the Exchange content to the corresponding Outlook content will be automatic. For the time being, set up and navigate using new bookmarks to the Outlook content. Some URLs have been specified in this blog for your convenience; in Internet Explorer, just right-click the link and click Add to Favorites.

As some of us are aware, new content on the Internet requires anywhere from weeks to months for search engines to crawl and index, before these search engines return this new content in customer searches. The Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference was published on December 3, 2008; if you search now, in January 2009, for specific MAPI interfaces, such as the following:

Or any of the other 30 documented MAPI interfaces or 885 MAPI properties, you probably won't see results from the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference ranked high on the list of returned results yet. Meanwhile, the way to look for documentation for specific MAPIs is to browse the table of contents on the left navigation pane of the MSDN Library. For example, if you are looking for a reference topic on a MAPI, and you don't yet have the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference bookmarked, expand the following nodes in the navigation pane:

MSDN Library
Office Development
2007 Microsoft Office System
Outlook 2007
Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference
Reference

Should the unfortunate event of last week's MSDN server update incident happen again, causing the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference to temporarily disappear from the table of contents, feel free to send an e-mail to o12devdx@microsoft.com. Keeping our fingers crossed, with increased use of this documentation over the next few months, finding documentation on the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference will become more efficient.

Office Client Developer Content and Resources : MAPI interfaces

Download for the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference is now available!

Where is the MAPI documentation?