Office Client Developer Content and Resources : Outlook

Preparing your Existing Solutions to Run on Outlook 2010

angelgolfer — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:21:00 GMT

This post is about issues you might want to be aware of if you plan to update your existing Microsoft Outlook solutions to run on Outlook 2010. This information is also available in the Outlook 2010 Developer Reference which you can download at Office 2010: Developer References. However, because currently, the content of the Developer Reference is not readily searchable on the Internet, I am providing a copy here for your convenience.

Collaboration Data Objects (CDO)

Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) 1.21 is not supported in Outlook 2010. Any existing version of CDO 1.21 will be removed when you upgrade from an earlier version of Office. The absence of CDO will break solutions that have a dependency on it. The suggested workaround is to rewrite your solution so that it uses the Outlook object model, which has been enhanced to provide most of the CDO functionality, or to call Messaging API (MAPI) directly.

Exchange Client Extensions (ECEs)

By default, Exchange client extensions do not load in Outlook 2010. There is no workaround unless the creator of the Exchange client extension converts the Exchange client extension to an Office COM add-in.

Customizing Inspector or Explorer Command Bars

Command bars are deprecated in the inspector and explorer in Outlook 2010. Although your add-in or VBScript code that customized command bars in an inspector or explorer might still work in Outlook 2010, those who use your solution might not easily find your custom commands because those commands appear on the Add-ins tab of the ribbon in the customized inspector or explorer. Instead of using command bars, use the IRibbonExtensibility interface in an Outlook add-in. Note that you cannot customize inspector ribbons by using VBScript code behind forms. For more information about using IRibbonExtensibility to customize the Outlook user interface programmatically, see the article Extending the User Interface in Outlook 2010 on the MSDN Web site.

Customizing Shortcut Menus Using Application Object Events

Customizations to shortcut menus using events such as ItemContextMenuDisplay on the Application object might not operate as expected. These events operate on a CommandBar object that is returned in the event. Because command bars are deprecated in Outlook 2010, use IRibbonExtensibility to customize shortcut menus programmatically. For more information about customizing shortcut menus, see the article Extending the User Interface in Outlook 2010 on the MSDN Web site.

Office 2010 Available in Both 32-bit and 64-bit Versions

64-bit processors are becoming the standard for systems ranging from servers to desktop computers. 64-bit systems can use more virtual and physical memory than 32-bit processors. Users on 64-bit systems can work with much larger data sets, and analyze and solve larger computational problems than they could previously. Microsoft Office 2010 is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The native 64-bit version of Office 2010 takes advantage of the larger capacity. The 32-bit version of Office 2010 provides the same functionality as 64-bit, and is compatible with 32-bit add-ins. By default, Office 2010 installs the 32-bit version. Office 2010 also supports 32-bit Office applications running on 64-bit Windows operating systems by using Windows-32-on-Windows-64 (WOW64). WOW64 is the x86 emulator that enables 32-bit Windows-based applications to run seamlessly on 64-bit Windows. The 32-bit version of Office 2010 gives users the ability to continue to use existing 32-bit ActiveX controls, COM add-ins, and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) solutions on 32-bit systems, and with WOW64, on 64-bit systems as well.

For more details, see my blog post Developing Outlook 2010 Solutions for 32-bit and 64-bit Systems.

ActiveX Controls and COM Add-ins

ActiveX controls and add-in (COM) DLLs that are written for 32-bit Office do not work in a 64-bit process. As a result, a 64-bit solution for Office 2010 that tries to load 32-bit ActiveX controls or DLLs in its process fails. In addition to controls that load into Office applications, there are also Web-based solutions that use ActiveX controls in Internet Explorer. The 64-bit version of Office 2010 installs Office 32-bit client-side controls to support Web solutions in a browser. The workaround to resolve these issues on a 64-bit system is to have your 64-bit solution load 64-bit-compatible controls and add-ins, or provide a 32-bit solution for Office 2010 (WOW64) to work with the 32-bit ActiveX controls and COM add-ins.

MAPI Applications

If you have developed and installed 32-bit MAPI applications, there are actions that you should take to change and rebuild 32-bit MAPI applications to run on a 64-bit platform, and 64-bit applications to run on a 32-bit platform.

Beginning with the Office 2010 release, Outlook is available as a 32-bit and a 64-bit application. The bitness of Outlook depends on the edition of the Windows operating system (32-bit or 64-bit) and the edition of Office 2010 (32-bit or 64-bit) that is installed on the computer, if Office is already installed on that computer.

Some of the factors that determine the feasibility of installing a 32-bit or a 64-bit version of Outlook include:

32-bit Office 2010 (and 32-bit Outlook 2010) can be installed on a supported 32-bit or 64-bit edition of the Windows operating system. 64-bit Office 2010 (and 64-bit Outlook 2010) can be installed only on a supported 64-bit operating system.

The default installation of Office 2010 on a 64-bit edition of the Windows operating system is 32-bit Office 2010.

The bitness of an installed version of Outlook is always the same as the bitness of Office 2010, if Office is installed on the same computer. In other words, a 32-bit version of Outlook 2010 cannot be installed on the same computer that already has 64-bit versions of other Office 2010 applications installed, such as 64-bit Microsoft Word 2010 or 64-bit Microsoft Excel 2010. Similarly, a 64-bit version of Outlook 2010 cannot be installed on the same computer that already has 32-bit versions of other Office applications installed.

MAPI applications include standalone applications such as Microsoft Communicator and MFCMAPI, and service providers such as address book, store, and transport providers. For MAPI method and function calls to work in a MAPI application (with the exception of one Simple MAPI function, MAPISendMail), the bitness of the MAPI application must be the same as the bitness of the MAPI subsystem on the computer in which the application is targeted to run. The bitness of the MAPI subsystem, in turn, is determined by and is always the same as, the bitness of the installed version of Outlook. For information about how to prepare MAPI applications for 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, see Building MAPI Applications on 32-bit and 64-bit Platforms on the MSDN Web site.

If you are upgrading from a version of Outlook that is Microsoft Outlook 2003 or earlier, consider the following issues.

Public Folders

Public folders are optional on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010servers. If you upgrade to Exchange Server 2010 and Outlook 2010 and choose not to deploy public folders on Exchange Server 2010, any solution that uses public folders will fail. In addition, because the Organizational Forms Library is dependent on public folders, you must migrate the custom forms published in the Organizational Forms Library to a Personal Forms Library.

One-off Outlook 97-2003 Forms

In earlier versions of Outlook, it was possible to distribute a custom form over the Internet as a one-off form without having to publish it and distribute it in a public folder or Organizational Forms Library. To do so, you enabled the Send form definition with item option on the Properties tab in the Forms Designer, and then Outlook sent the form as part of an underlying Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) attachment. While some Internet-based servers strip the TNEF section of the messages, most servers today support it and Outlook users can receive and use the custom form. However, since Office Outlook 2007, Outlook no longer supports one-off forms sent as TNEF attachments. When Outlook converts incoming Internet messages from MIME to MAPI format, it ignores the custom form. If you are customizing forms, consider using form regions and distributing custom forms with add-ins.

Developing Outlook 2010 Solutions for 32-bit and 64-bit Systems

angelgolfer — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:43:00 GMT

This post captures and summarizes information about developing an Outlook solution for customers who run 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Outlook 2010. Since developing Outlook solutions is a very broad subject, the article gathers information from various sources, and points to some of these locations for further details.

Bitness Compatibility Between Windows and Office 2010

Let’s first talk about the compatibility of the bitness of Windows, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Outlook. The term “bitness” refers to the distinction between 32-bit and 64-bit processor architectures and the associated compatibility of applications. In this blog, “bitness” is used to qualify the version of Windows, Office, Outlook, or an application built to suit a 32-bit or 64-bit processor architecture of a computer. Each Office 2010 application is available in a 32-bit version and 64-bit version. For Outlook 2010, the bitness of Outlook depends on the bitness of Windows and the bitness of any other Office application that is already installed on that computer. Here are the dependencies:

· On a 32-bit Windows operating system, you can only install 32-bit Office (and 32-bit Outlook).

· On a 64-bit Windows operating system, you can install either 32-bit Office (and 32-bit Outlook), or 64-bit Office (and 64-bit Outlook). The default installation of Office 2010 on 64-bit Windows is 32-bit Office (and 32-bit Outlook).

· If some other Office 2010 application is already installed on a computer, then the bitness of Outlook 2010 that you will install must be consistent. For example, if a 32-bit Excel 2010 is already installed on a computer, you can only install 32-bit Outlook 2010 on that computer. Similarly, if a 64-bit Word 2010 is already installed on a computer, then you can only install 64-bit Outlook 2010.

Default Installation Locations

The following are the default installation locations when you install Office 2010:

· For a computer running 32-bit Windows, typically the location is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\.

· For a computer running 32-bit Office on 64-bit Windows, typically the location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\.

· And, for a computer running 64-bit Office, typically the location is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\.

Major Categories of Outlook Solutions

Outlook solutions fall into a few major categories:

· Add-ins written in managed languages (such as C# or Visual Basic), or standalone applications and add-ins written in unmanaged languages (such as C++ or Visual Basic 6.0). Note that Microsoft no longer supports Visual Basic 6.0.

· Macros written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

· Messaging API (MAPI) applications written in typically C++.

The following sections describe the issues that developers of each category of Outlook solutions have to be aware of when planning the availability of their solutions for Outlook 2010.

Managed Add-ins, and Unmanaged Applications and Add-ins for Outlook

Basically, the way to call the Outlook object model remains the same*, regardless of whether the add-ins are going to be run on a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Outlook 2010.

You do not need to recompile existing (32-bit) managed or unmanaged add-ins, if you expect the add-ins to continue to run only on computers with 32-bit Outlook installed.

In particular, for existing managed add-ins, make sure that you have built them using Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system 3.0, or Microsoft Office development tools in Visual Studio 2010, with the Any CPU option for target platform on the Build tab of the Project Properties dialog box. Add-ins built with such settings work for (both 32-bit and) 64-bit versions of Office 2010. If you used other settings, rebuild your managed add-ins using the specified settings so that they will run on computers with either 32-bit or 64-bit Outlook 2010 installed.

Any existing unmanaged, standalone application (in .exe) that runs outside of the Outlook process written for 32-bit Outlook does not require recompilation for 64-bit Outlook, as long as the application interacts with Outlook using the Outlook object model and not MAPI. (For MAPI applications, see the section “MAPI Applications for Outlook” below.) COM manages the marshaling from the 32-bit application to 64-bit Outlook.

However, if you expect any existing unmanaged add-in will be run on computers with 64-bit Outlook 2010, you must recompile the add-in for 64-bit Outlook 2010. To clarify, you will have one version of the add-in to run on 32-bit Outlook, and another version of the add-in to run on 64-bit Outlook. Because there is no 64-bit Visual Basic 6.0 runtime, existing unmanaged add-ins written in Visual Basic 6.0 targeting to run on 64-bit Outlook 2010 should be rewritten, for example, as a managed add-in in Visual Basic.

*Note that even though you make calls the same way if you are targeting an add-in to run on 32-bit Outlook 2010 vs 64-bit Outlook 2010, there are changes in the Outlook 2010 object model such that, if you adapt an existing add-in to use the object model of Outlook 2010, you must be aware of the following:

· Object model calls in previous versions of Outlook were based on the assumption that there was only one Exchange account per profile. This assumption is not correct in Outlook 2010, since there can be multiple Exchange accounts per profile.

· Existing add-ins that modify a command bar or use Application events for shortcut menus may not work as expected in Outlook 2010. Update these add-ins to use the Office Fluent user interface extensibility. For more information, see Extending the User Interface in Outlook 2010.

VBA Macros for Outlook

If you have existing macros written for (32-bit) Outlook, and you intend to allow users to run the macros on 64-bit Outlook 2010, you will have to recompile the macros using Visual Basic for Applications 7.0 (VBA 7), and use conditional compilation to assure backward compatibility as well as compatibility with 64-bit Outlook. You will need to update any Declare statements, as well as address pointers and window handles in user-defined types used by Declare statements. If your macros use any ActiveX controls, these ActiveX controls will have to be updated for 64-bit Outlook as well. For more details, see Compatibility Between the 32-bit and 64-bit Versions of Office 2010.

MAPI Applications for Outlook

If your existing 32-bit MAPI application is going to be running on a computer with 64-bit Outlook installed, you will need to rebuild your 32-bit application as a 64-bit application. Outlook 2010 provides a set of MAPI header files that support MAPI applications to work with both 32-bit and 64-bit Outlook 2010. Make sure you download these header files from Outlook 2010: MAPI Header Files and rebuild your MAPI application using these header files.

In general, the bitness of the MAPI application must be the same as the bitness of the MAPI subsystem on the computer that the application is targeted to run on. The bitness of the MAPI subsystem, in turn, is determined by and always the same as the bitness of the installed version of Outlook. So if you plan to develop a MAPI application that will be run on computers with either a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Outlook 2010 installed, you will need to build two separate versions of the application, one to work with 32-bit Outlook and one to work with 64-bit Outlook.

For more information about MAPI support for 64-bit Outlook, see Building MAPI Applications on 32-Bit and 64-Bit Platforms.

Aside from rebuilding MAPI applications, sometimes it's necessary to check the version of Outlook to ensure that a MAPI application calls API elements that are supported by the currently running version of Outlook.

To learn how to check the version of Outlook and whether the installed version of Outlook is 64-bit Outlook 2010, see How to: Check the Version of Outlook.

Also, to learn how to decipher Outlook version information and the expected values for different parts of a version string for certain released versions of Outlook, see How to determine Outlook version information.

Accessing Outlook Developer Help During the Office 2010 Beta Period

angelgolfer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:10:00 GMT

The help model in Microsoft Office 2010 for Office client applications such as Access, Excel, Outlook, and Word has remained the same as in Office 2007: when you click F1, you can choose to access help that is installed on your computer, or help available on the Office Web site.

During the Office 2010 Beta timeframe, you can access developer help only from the computer; online developer help from the Office Web site will be set up when Office 2010 RTMs. What all of this means is that when you click F1 to view help in a client application, you should make sure that Developer Reference is selected under Content from This Computer in the drop-down menu adjacent to Search.

In Outlook 2010 Beta, you may notice very slight discrepancies between the objects and members displayed in the object browser, and the objects and members described in the developer help that is installed on your computer by Outlook 2010 Beta. This is because the installed help was a snap shot of the developer help taken after the cut-off date for the Beta version of Outlook 2010. Even though there are some discrepancies, this version of the developer help is reasonably sufficient to provide what you need to know to use the new object model members in Outlook 2010 Beta.

The Office Developer Documentation team has made available even more recent versions of the developer help for Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, Visio, and Word. You can download these developer references at Office 2010: Developer References. These versions of developer help are more recent snap shots, and similar to the developer help installed by Office 2010 Beta, you are likely to find discrepancies between the objects and members displayed in the object browser of the Beta product, and the objects and members described in the downloaded version of the help. Nonetheless, this downloadable help may still change between now and when Office 2010 RTMs. Meanwhile, if you are developing a solution to test against an Office 2010 Beta product, you can refer to the installed or downloadable help to learn about the product, and implement your solution based on the Beta product.

So how do you view the versions of help that you obtain by downloading? The help files are in the same .HxS file format that shipped with Office 2007 and Office 2010 Beta. For example, an Outlook developer help file named outlook.dev.hxs was shipped with Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 Beta. The best way to view the help file is to use the client help viewer that is part of each Office client product.

Follow these steps to use the client help viewer to view the most recent version of outlook.dev.hxs that you download:

1. Close Outlook 2010 Beta if it is open.

2. Search for the location of outlook.dev.hxs installed by Outlook 2010 Beta. For a computer running 32-bit Windows, typically the location is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\1033. For a computer running 32-bit Office on 64-bit Windows, typically the location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\1033. And, for a computer running 64-bit Office, typically the location is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\1033.

3. Rename that copy of outlook.dev.hxs installed by Outlook 2010 Beta as outlook.dev.beta.hxs.

4. Copy the version of outlook.dev.hxs that you downloaded from Office 2010: Developer References to the location you found in step 2.

5. Start Outlook 2010 Beta.

6. Make sure that Developer Reference under Content from This Computer is selected for your client help viewer. You can now view the help you downloaded using the client help viewer.

To view a more recent version of the developer help that you download for any of the other Office applications listed earlier, follow the same steps 1 to 6, by first closing that application, replacing the installed version of the help file by the version you downloaded, and restarting the application. Make sure that you have specified Developer Reference under Content from This Computer for the client help viewer in that application.

For Outlook 2010 Beta, other than the developer reference, you can also view new technical articles on MSDN:

· What's New for Developers in Outlook 2010. This article provides a comprehensive list of new features in the Outlook 2010 object model.

· Extending the User Interface in Outlook 2010. This article describes the numerous new ways you can customize the Outlook 2010 user interface in the Office Fluent ribbons, menus, context menus, and Office Backstage view. This article includes a sample add-in as a download.

· Programming the Outlook 2010 Solutions Module. This article elaborates on the much demanded new APIs in the object model to allow add-ins to customize the Navigation Pane under a new Solutions module. This article includes a sample add-in as a download.

· Shutdown Changes for Outlook 2010 Beta. This article describes important shutdown changes in Outlook 2010 Beta for add-in developers and IT administrators to ensure that Outlook shuts down quickly and consistently.

· Developing an Outlook Social Connector Provider. This article describes how to implement an Outlook Social Connector (OSC) provider that connects a third-party social or professional networking site with a user in Outlook, and allows the user to view social network data from that site without having to leave Outlook. This article includes a sample provider as a download.

The first three of these technical articles provide details and code samples in addition to related content in the Outlook 2010 Developer Reference. The last two articles currently offer the only source of documentation in their respective subject areas.

Developer Help Updates for Office 2010 Beta

dhale — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:58:00 GMT

In the intervening time between when we had to hand-off the Developer References to go into the Office 2010 Beta several weeks ago and now, the Office Developer Documentation team has been extremely busy adding new content about the new features. We have added hundreds of new topics to the references!

This post describes to Office VBA developers how to make sure they are viewing the most up to date version of the developer help for the Office 2010 client applications.

Please Pardon Our Dust!

As we gear up for the release of Office 2010, we are excited about the improvements we are making to how we deliver content updates via the Office Web site. However, as a result of that work, for the Beta we are only able to provide developer help in the “offline” mode (that is, the content is viewed locally from your hard drive). Don’t worry though, online refreshes of the developer help content will be up and running for the final release of Office 2010!

How to Update Developer Help

If you are a VBA developer and would like to have the latest Office 2010 Beta developer reference, just follow the steps below to update. These steps describe how to download the latest files (.HxS files), install them, and view them.

1. Download the reference(s) from Office 2010: Developer References and extract them to a location on your computer. The download contains help builds for the following developer help content:

Combined Office 2010 developer references (All of the below)
Access 2010 Developer Reference (MSACCESS.DEV.HXS)
Excel 2010 Developer Reference (EXCEL.DEV.HXS)
Outlook 2010 Developer Reference (OUTLOOK.DEV.HXS)
PowerPoint 2010 Developer Reference (POWERPNT.DEV.HXS)
Project 2010 Developer Reference (WINPROJ.DEV.HXS)
Publisher 2010 Developer Reference (MSPUB.DEV.HXS)
Visio 2010 Automation Reference (VISIO.DEV.HXS)
Visio 2010 ShapeSheet Reference (VISIO.SHAPSHEET.HXS)
Word 2010 Developer Reference (WINWORD.DEV.HXS)

2. Make sure to close any open Office 2010 Beta applications.

3. Copy the extracted HxS file(s) into the directory where Office 2010 Beta installed them. For a computer running 32-bit Windows, typically the location is:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\1033

For a computer running 32-bit Office on 64-bit Windows, typically the location is

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\1033

You should overwrite the existing versions of the files.

Viewing the Updated Help

Start the application for which you have updated the developer help file. Press F1 to open the client help viewer.

Make sure that you are viewing the local copy of help by ensuring that Developer Reference under Content from This Computer is selected for your client help viewer (shown below). You can now view the help you downloaded using the client help viewer.

Tip: Make sure you display the Tablet of Contents by clicking the little book icon in the toolbar of the client help viewer. It makes browsing the developer help much more intuitive.

A Final Note

In addition to the developer help, you can find dozens of articles, code samples, videos, and more showing you how to work with the awesome developer features in Office 2010 Beta on the Office Developer Center.

Technorati Tags: Office Development,VBA,Developer Documentation,Office 2010 Beta

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.

New code samples in the Outlook 2007 Developer Reference!

angelgolfer — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:45:00 GMT

MVP Helmut Obertanner contributed two new code samples recently in May:

How to: Import Appointment XML Data into Outlook Appointment Objects
How to: Obtain and Log On to an Instance of Outlook

These code samples are presented in managed code (C# and Visual Basic). They are particularly interesting because they demonstrate the use of the .NET Framework Class Library together with the Outlook Primary Interop Assembly. "How to: Import Appointment XML Data into Outlook Appointment Objects" shows how to use the Microsoft COM implementation of the XML Document Object Model (DOM) to load and process appointment data in XML and return the data in Outlook AppointmentItem objects. "How to: Obtain and Log On to an Instance of Outlook" shows how to use Microsoft Language Integrated Query (LINQ) to verify if there is an Outlook process running on a computer.

You can view these code samples on the Office Online version of the Outook 2007 Developer Reference:

In Outlook, click F1.
Click the down arrow next to Search.
Under Content from Office Online, select Developer Reference if it is not already selected.
In the text box adjacent to Search, type a related search string such as "XML", "appointment", or "import" to find the topic "How to: Import Appointment XML Data into Outlook Appointment Objects".
Similarly, type a search string such as "log on" or "Outlook instance" to find "How to: Obtain and Log On to an Instance of Outlook".

Starting from this update, you can select from the TOC or search for the topic "Latest Additions to the Outlook Developer Reference" to see updates to the Outlook 2007 Developer Reference in the most recent quarter. Code samples from Helmut in the last couple of months are listed there.

As usual, you can also select from the TOC or search for the topic "How Do I ... in Outlook" which lists all the how-to topics in the Outlook developer help.

MVP Helmut Obertanner contributes code samples to the Outlook Developer Reference!

angelgolfer — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:01:00 GMT

I am happy to announce that MVP Helmut Obertanner became the first MVP who contributed code samples to the Outlook 2007 Developer Reference on Office Online!

The two code samples that Helmut contributed are about the Account object, published in a new topic "How to: Send an E-mail Given the SMTP Address of an Account" and in the Account Object topic. These code samples are in managed code (C# and Visual Basic), which will directly benefit Outlook developers who have switched to using managed code over the last few years.

If you would like to see these code samples, they are available in the Office Online version of the Outlook 2007 Developer Reference. To view these code samples:

In Outlook, click F1.
Click the down arrow next to Search.
Under Content from Office Online, select Developer Reference if it is not already selected. This selection allows you to view the most current content in the Outlook 2007 Developer Reference on Office Online. This content is more up-to-date than the Outlook 2007 Developer Reference on MSDN.
Type account in the text box adjacent to Search.
Select the topics, “Account Object”, and “How to: Send an E-mail Given the SMTP Address of an Account” returned in the search results.

Typing other search keywords such as Helmut or MVP also returns these topics. Other than searching, developers can get to the new "How to: Send an E-mail Given the SMTP Address of an Account" topic via the following topics

"How Do I... in Outlook" - lists this how-to topic in the list of how-to's in the developer reference

The following reference topics also list this how-to topic in the See Also section:

Account object topic
Account.SmtpAddress property topic
Accounts object topic
MailItem object topic
MailItem.Body property topic
MailItem.Recipients property topic
MailItem.Subject property topic
MailItem.Send method topic
MailItem.SendUsingAccount property topic

I really appreciate Helmut's contribution, and anticipate to receive more code samples from him in the future. Go to Helmut's site at http://www.outlooksharp.de/ to find out more about his work!

BTW, at the moment, there is a small glitch on our publishing site that the URL of Helmut's site, http://www.outlooksharp.de/, is displayed not exactly as such but as the internal hyperlink we use to redirect viewers to Internet sites. Nonetheless, the hyperlink is clickable and brings viewers to Helmut's site, and our content engineering team is looking into fixing this glitch. Also, Helmut's code samples will be carried forward to the Developer Reference and Primary Interop Assembly Reference for Microsoft Outlook 2010.

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.

MAPI Properties and the New Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference

angelgolfer — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:30:00 GMT

The Outlook 2007 Messaging API (MAPI) Reference is now officially published on MSDN! If you are interested in using MAPI to develop solutions that work with Outlook, take a look!

Microsoft MAPI specialist Stephen Griffin already talked about a few new features in his blog, so I’ll cut that short here. Being the project manager, I see the following as the few areas we spent most effort on and hopefully, by commenting in the Community Content at the bottom of a topic, you can let us know if the effort is worth it.

· 885 MAPI properties are now documented, including 452 tagged properties, some of which were previously documented in the Exchange MAPI Programmer’s Reference, as well as 433 named properties.

· Overhaul of legacy content to remove outdated references of technologies and to fix bugs in the previous Exchange version.

· New code samples showing how to create various Outlook items in C++ using MAPI and cross-referencing from concept, interface, and method topics into MFCMAPI to illustrate the use of specific APIs.

Looking for Properties?

The Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference documents the majority of the properties that you would want to use in your Outlook solution.

Search keywords have been set up for each property topic to facilitate your search on MSDN, Windows Live Search, and other major search engines to retrieve the appropriate property topic in the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference. However, depending on the crawls performed by specific search engines, during the interim period which can last anywhere from 24 hours to longer, your search for a property, like PR_BODY, may not yet return any result from the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference. Mind you, the more you reference the Outlook 2007 MAPI Reference online, like blogging or discussing about it in your online community, the sooner your search engine will bubble up the appropriate results. Nonetheless, meanwhile, to reduce frustration, you can go to this topic to map your search to the appropriate MAPI property topic: Mapping MAPI Names to Canonical Property Names.

By the way, there is a small set of properties that we no longer support, and you can find the list here: Properties Deprecated in This Edition.

You probably have noticed that we now reference properties by their new canonical property names. For example, PR_ASSISTANT is now documented in the PidTagAssistant canonical property topic, dispidCategories in PidLidCategories, and EditTime in PidNameEditTime. Canonical property names provide a consistent way to identify and group completely identical or similar properties using one canonical property name. Over the course of MAPI history, properties with the same property tag, and properties with the same property identifier, but different types, have been defined for various reasons. For example, PR_BUSINESS2_TELEPHONE_NUMBER and PR_OFFICE2_TELEPHONE_NUMBER have exactly the same property tag (that is, their property identifier and property type are the same), and PR_SENDER_NAME, PR_SENDER_NAME_A, PR_SENDER_NAME_W have the same property identifier and different types. Now these two sets of properties can be identified by the canonical properties PidTagBusiness2TelephoneNumber and PidTagSenderName respectively. Note that canonical properties are not defined as constants in officially distributed MAPI header files, and you can continue to use real property names such as PR_BUSINESS2_TELEPHONE_NUMBER and PR_SENDER_NAME in your code. For more information on canonical properties, see MAPI Canonical Properties.

Remember, use the MSDN Community Content feature to provide your feedback!

Outlook 2007 Developer Reference updated on MSDN!

angelgolfer — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 05:08:00 GMT

The Outlook 2007 Developer Reference has been updated on MSDN on November 13, 2007! This Reference contains conceptual, reference, and programming task topics, guiding developers to program Outlook using the Outlook Object Model. This is the first update to the Reference on MSDN in ten months since January. Over the last ten months, more than fifty improvements and fixes involving hundreds of topics have been applied to this set of documentation. The following are some of the areas of improvement:

- Search and Filter – Clarified certain concepts about DASL and Jet queries, added new code snippets and programming task topics, including Filtering Items Using a String Comparison, How to: Search the Calendar for Appointments Within a Date Range that Contain a Specific Word in the Subject, and How to: Search the Calendar for Appointments that Occur Partially or Entirely in a Given Time Period,

- Enumerating, Searching, and Filtering Items in a Folder - Clarified how to obtain a writeable object from a row in a Table that supports read-write operations.

- AdvancedSearch method of the Application object – Clarified the limit of simultaneous searches.

- Address Book – Added a new programming task topic How to: Map a Display Name to an E-mail Address.

- Items, Folders, and Stores – Added a new programming task topic How to: Delete All Items and Subfolders in the Deleted Items Folder.

- NewMailEx event of the Application object – Added precautions to take when obtaining the Entry ID of the new item.

- OlUserPropertyType enumeration – Supplemented the constants in the OlUserPropertyType enumeration with corresponding MAPI type values. For example, the constant olDateTime maps to the MAPI type PT_SYSTIME.

- Automating Outlook from a Visual Basic Application – Clarified the security reason for a VBA application to use the trusted Application object intrinsic to the environment, except when the application intends to automate a separate instance of Outlook. All code samples in the Reference have been scrubbed to reinforce this concept.

I would like to thank Outlook MVP, Sue Mosher, who over the last year helped us improve our documentation by going through a large volume of the topics in the Outlook 2007 Developer Reference and giving us valuable feedback.

In case you are wondering, ten months seem to be a long time to wait for an update, the client applications of 2007 Microsoft Office system are capable of continuously refreshing developer reference content through Help in the product when you select to search and obtain content on Office Online! Through this mechanism, all the improvements and fixes included in this update on MSDN were actually already pushed on Office Online within a day after the corresponding topics had been modified. If this sounds novel to you, stay tuned, I will talk more about this next time.

Another meeting update: do I have to respond?

angelgolfer — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:35:00 GMT

My name is Angela and I am a programmability writer for Outlook. Outlook 2007 was the first version of Outlook I worked on. The part I like about my work is to describe to people how a feature in an application works. I think, I am probably not the last person to learn about the feature, and if I can channel my passion to document the feature and help someone else interested to learn about it, that’s makes my day more meaningful!

I’d like to talk about a feature that I recently documented in the Outlook 2007 Auxiliary Reference: meeting requests as informational updates and full updates. Even though this feature already exists in the user interface, I was able to learn about the complete picture from our own Outlook Product Team.

In Outlook 20007, meeting organizers can send updates to prior meeting requests. Recipients receive these updates in the form of full updates or informational updates. The significance is that a full update requires the recipient to explicitly respond to it, because Outlook ignores any previous responses, whereas an informational update does not require the recipient to respond to it.

So when does a recipient receive an update as a full update? Outlook uses the reason for the update to decide what type it should be: any changes related to time information, such as the date, time, time zones, or recurrence will generate a full update. But if a recipient has not responded to an initial meeting request, and if the organizer sends a subsequent update for any reason, such as changing the location of the meeting, on that recipient’s computer, Outlook will consider the initial meeting request as out-of-date, and the update is a full update, regardless of the cause of the update.

A recipient receives an update as an informational update in each of the following scenarios. This assumes that the recipient has already responded to the initial meeting request.

The organizer changes the location of a prior meeting request.
The organizer adds a new attendee to the meeting request and chooses to send an update to the existing attendees.
The organizer removes an attendee from the meeting request and chooses to send an update to the remaining attendees.
The organizer changes the subject or body to the meeting request and chooses to send an update to the attendees.

Programmatically, how does one identify the update status of a meeting request item in Outlook? There is a named property, dispidMeetingType, that is exposed on meeting request items. When Outlook receives a meeting request item, Outlook creates and sets that property for the item. Possible values for the property are:

Value	Description
mtgNone	Outlook has not set this property for the message.
mtgRequest	Message is a new meeting request.
mtgFullUpdate	Message is a full update of a prior meeting request.
mtgInfoUpdate	Message is an informational update of a prior meeting request.
mtgOutofDate	Message is out-of-date and a more recent update has been sent to the recipient.
mtgDelegated	Message is a copy of a meeting request, or a copy of an update of a prior meeting request received by the principal recipient. The original meeting request or the update has been sent to a delegate of the principal.

You might have a question about the delegated status of a meeting request item. To drive you to discover more about the Outlook 2007 Auxiliary Reference, I am suggesting you to continue reading here: About Meeting Requests as Informational Updates and Full Updates and the dispidMeetingType property.

Outlook Auxiliary Reference available

dhale — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:35:00 GMT

The Outlook 2007 Auxiliary Reference is now live on MSDN Library. Accompanying the documentation in the Library, there are also two download pages:

The reference contains conceptual, reference, and code sample topics to guide you in developing solutions using MAPI and Outlook APIs that are exposed outside of the Outlook Object Model.