Outlook – flaphead.com

Roadmap for Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) Documentation

October 27, 2009 by ucinfo, posted in Exchange, Flaphead, MsExchange, Outlook

Interesting .. maybe someone will write a PST interface for Outlook Web Access :-o

http://blogs.msdn.com/interoperability/archive/2009/10/26/roadmap-for-outlook-personal-folders-pst-documentation.aspx

Data portability has become an increasing need for our customers and partners as more information is stored and shared in digital formats. One scenario that has come up recently is how to further improve platform-independent access to email, calendar, contacts, and other data generated by Microsoft Outlook.

…

In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties.

Announcing the deprecation of Exchange Client Extensions

May 5, 2009 by ucinfo, posted in Flaphead, Outlook

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/05/04/announcing-the-deprecation-of-exchange-client-extensions.aspx

… Exchange Client Extensions (ECEs) represent an extensibility feature introduced with the Microsoft Exchange client in 1995. The Exchange client was a 16-bit mail application running against the earliest versions of Exchange Server. ECEs must be written in native code, typically using C++ and relying heavily on the Messaging API (MAPI). When Outlook replaced the Exchange client, ECEs were used to extend Outlook 97-98 until COM Add-ins replaced ECEs in Outlook 2000 as the primary extensibility technology for Outlook.

ECEs will continue to operate as expected in Outlook 2007 and earlier. However, ECEs will not load in Outlook 2010. Outlook 2010 has converted its own ECEs such as Delegate Access, Deleted Items Recovery, Exchange Extensions commands, and Exchange Extensions property pages to native Outlook code

OST performance slow? Defrag it

July 9, 2008 by ucinfo, posted in !Things2Remember, Exchange, Flaphead, Hints n Tips, MsExchange, Outlook

I found this up on BlankMan’s Blog and it’s damm cool.

… One of the frustrating realities about OST files is that they become progressively slower as they become older. One of the factors influencing this is fragmentation.

As the Exchange Team blog says:
“We usually recommend no more than about 2500 – 5000 messages in any of the critical path folders. The critical path folders are the Calendar, Contacts, Inbox, and Sent Item folder. Ideally, keep the Inbox, Contacts and Calendar to 1000 or less. Other folders, particularly custom folders created by the user, can handle having larger numbers of items without having a broad impact on the user experience (20,000 items in my “Cookie Recipes” folder? No problem – except when I need to find that recipe from last Christmas!).”

So the more folders, the slow thing go … so BlankMan used Contig.exe from Sysinternals to defrag is OST :-|. Contig is a single-file defragmenter that attempts to make files contiguous on disk and is perfect for quickly optimizing files that are continuously becoming fragmented, or that you want to ensure are in as few fragments as possible.

The syntax for Contig.exe: