Office Client Developer Content and Resources : MAPI properties

Outlook 2010 MAPI Reference Refreshed on MSDN

angelgolfer — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The Microsoft Outlook 2010 MAPI Reference has been updated on MSDN! The updated documentation is also available as a download.

This release includes documentation for the binary stream structure for the PidLidPropertyDefinitionStream property. This property specifies definitions of all custom fields and data-binding settings for built-in fields of an Outlook item.

There is now a code sample in How to: Check the Version of Outlook that shows how to check version information of an installed version of Microsoft Outlook, if the installed version is Outlook 2010, Outlook 2007, or Outlook 2003. The code sample also returns a pointer to a Boolean variable that indicates whether a 64-bit version of Outlook is installed.

MAPI provider code samples for Outlook 2010 are also available at the Outlook 2010 MAPI Code Samples Web site. These code samples support 64-bit MAPI. The link in the Outlook 2010 MAPI Reference currently still points to the Outlook 2007 set of MAPI provider code samples, but will be updated the next time the documentation is refreshed on MSDN.

New features in Outlook 2010!

angelgolfer — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:38:00 GMT

On July 13, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Office 2010 reached the Technical Preview engineering milestone. Even though the Office 2010 Technical Preview bits and most of the documentation are available to only participants of the Technical Preview program, we're excited to be able to start blogging about new features and documentation.

The Outlook 2010 MAPI Reference (Technical Preview) is one of the first Office 2010 developer references made available to the general public at this milestone. This release of the Outlook MAPI Reference includes documentation for API elements updated for 64-bit MAPI, and a download for Outlook 2010 MAPI header files. If you plan to have existing 32-bit MAPI applications or new MAPI applications running on a 64-bit operating system with 64-bit Outlook, you will need to build your MAPI applications as 64-bit applications with these header files. Other new content in this release includes fast shutdown support for MAPI clients, 38 new properties, and how to link explicitly to MAPI functions. A summary of new features is in What's New in This Edition.

Apart from Outlook 2010 MAPI, Outlook 2010 offers new features in the object model in the Technical Preview release. Some of the major OM features include the following:

A new Conversation object that groups Outlook items that belong to the same "thread" across folders and stores. The Conversation object provides methods to navigate and enumerate items in a conversation hierarchy, and access items in a conversation with a new light-weight SimpleItems collection. You can also programmatically manage the assigning of categories, marking items as read or unread, and cleaning up of a conversation in ways similar to that offered in the Outlook user interface.
A new SolutionsModule object that allows Outlook applications to expose a set of one or more folders in the Navigation Pane under the new navigation module, Solutions. There is only one Solutions module that all applications share. When the Solutions module shows folders for only one application, the label can be customized, for example, changed from the default label Solutions to Marketing Project. The Solutions module shows folders from each application in its own grouping. Each application has a corresponding solution root folder in the Solutions module. Subfolders can contain items of different item types. One rule is that a solution root folder and its subfolders must reside on the same store. If the solution root folder is the root folder of a store, then all subfolders of the store root folder are displayed under the solution root folder.
A new MobileItem object that represents an SMS or MMS message and supports incorporating mobile messages into Outlook applications. Even though the MobileItem object does not have the full functionality as other Outlook items such as the MailItem object, you can programmatically create a MobileItem object, specify the recipients, subject, and message content, and send the MobileItem object using a specific Outlook Mobile Services account.
Extensions to the Account object that supports multiple Exchange accounts.
Ability to programmatically customize the Outlook user interface in the following areas:

* Explorer Ribbons
* Inspector Ribbons
* Menus
* Context menus
* Contact Card context menus
* Backstage view
You can customize these areas using Ribbon extensibility, and supply Ribbon XML to the GetCustomUI method of the IRibbonExtensibility interface. Use the Ribbon ID for the feature to determine the XML to pass as a returned value in the GetCustomUI method. Your Ribbon XML typically supplies callbacks that let you respond to a button click, or control visibility or the icon of your Ribbon controls. Use the IRibbonControl.Context object to identify the active window containing the user interface that triggers the callback procedure.

Documentation for the Solutions module and customizing Outlook user interface is currently available to participants of the Technical Preview program. Most developer documentation for Outlook 2010 new features will be available to the public before the launch of Office 2010. I will keep you all posted about further documentation availability.

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.