About This Document

Overview discusses:

• MAPI terms used in this guide;
• comparison between the CDO Library and the other MAPI programming interfaces;
• Automation and the operation of CDO within this technology;
• the design of the CDO Library, including the objects and collection objects that are available to you.

Programming Tasks offers sample Microsoft® Visual Basic® code for many common programming tasks, such as creating and sending a message, posting a message to a public folder, navigating through folders, searching through address books, and handling errors.

Microsoft Outlook HTML Form Converter discusses forms and their relationship to other e-mail messages. It then explains how to create forms using Microsoft Outlook and convert them to Web-based forms using the Microsoft Outlook HTML Form Converter.

Objects, Properties, and Methods provides a summary of every object and collection object in the CDO library, listing all the properties and methods each one exposes. This is followed by a model of all the objects presented in their containment hierarchy.

Properties Common to All CDO Library Objects describes the properties that are exposed by every object in the CDO library and which have the same meaning for every object.

This is followed by an alphabetical series of topics covering every object and collection in the CDO Library and providing comprehensive reference information for their properties and methods.

The appendixes offer additional background information about various aspects of CDO programming:

• Error Codes describes and lists the warning and error codes that can be returned from various properties and methods.
• MAPI Property Tags lists the property tags and type library constants for predefined MAPI properties.
• Microsoft Exchange Property Tags lists the property tags for predefined Microsoft® Exchange properties.
• Web Page Support describes how the CDO Library provides support for HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) script on a Web page.
• How Programmable Objects Work provides a detailed explanation of COM objects, Automation, and the relationship between CDO and MAPI.
• Java Programming Considerations discusses procedures and provides examples for accessing CDO Library objects from Java.
• Common Mistakes discusses design and coding errors that can be made when programming with the CDO Library.

The document concludes with a Glossary, which defines terms that are important to understanding CDO, MAPI, Automation, COM, and other related technologies.

The best way to learn about the CDO Library is to alternate your reading with hands-on programming. You can use the sample code that is provided with the CDO Library. For information about the sample code, see the Release Notes.