| Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Display name | The view's display name identifies the view in the Microsoft Exchange client. The display name is used on the View menu to identify the named views that are available and it is used in the View dialog box to identify the view being modified. |
| Version | The version of the view descriptor format shipped with Windows 95 is currently 0x00000008 and is likely to change in future releases of Microsoft Exchange. This is the version documented in this guide. Your application should not read or write view descriptors with version numbers greater than eight unless you know the format. If the view descriptor format is changed, the version number will be incremented so that your application will not attempt to read these views. |
| Message class | The message class is used to find views among messages in a folder. All views must have the message class IPM.Microsoft.FolderDesign.NamedView to be recognized by Microsoft Exchange. |
| Columns | Views consist of a collection of columns where each column represents a MAPI property such as the display name and the column width. |
| Categorization | Messages in a view can be categorized, or grouped, so that messages with the same property values appear together in the viewer. The view descriptor maintains a count of the number of categorized columns and the sort order of those groupings. The categorized columns are always the leftmost columns in the viewer. |
| Conversation threading | Conversation threading is used to indent the responses to items posted into a folder. Each response is indented to the right of the item that it is responding to. This is important for discussion public folder applications. Conversation threading is displayed when the PR_CONVERSATION_INDEX property is added to the view descriptor and sorted on. |
| Sorting | View descriptors specify a particular column to sort on and also whether the sort direction is ascending or descending. The sort column must be a column that is displayed in the view. |
| Filtering | View descriptors support filters, in the form of MAPI row restrictions, so that the right pane of the Microsoft Exchange viewer can show a subset of all the messages in a folder. |
| State | Microsoft Exchange supports views with groupings so that messages with properties of the same value are grouped together in the viewer. This is important for categorizing information. Groups can be expanded or collapsed to show the messages within the group. The expand or collapse state is saved in a view descriptor so that the state can be returned when the view is used again. For new views, the collapse state will be NULL. |