Overview of CDO

Microsoft® Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) is a technology for building messaging or collaboration applications. The current version of CDO is 1.2.1. In versions previous to 1.1, CDO was called OLE Messaging; in version 1.1 it was called Active Messaging. It is designed to simplify the creation of applications with messaging functionality, or to add messaging functionality to existing applications. For example, CDO and Active Server Pages enable you to add script to a Web site to provide support for creating, sending, and receiving e-mail as well as participating in discussions and other public folder applications.

CDO does not represent a new messaging model, but rather an additional scripting interface to the Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) model.

CDO is made available through the two CDO libraries. They are described in detail in Introduction and Overview of CDO Rendering.

These libraries expose programmable messaging objects (including folders, messages, recipient addresses, attachments, and other messaging components), which are extensions to the programmable objects offered as part of Microsoft® Visual Basic®, such as forms and controls.