Common views are global in usage, available no matter what folder the user is looking in. Common views are located in the top bin of the Views.Personal Views cascade menu. Common views, although stored in a private message store, are common to all users as they are installed during setup of the client and cannot be modified. Common views are stored in the default message store.
To locate common view messages using MAPI
Determine the default store.
Read the PR_VALID_FOLDER_MASK property on the store object. This property indicates the validity of the entry identifiers of special folders in the store. If the FOLDER_COMMON_VIEWS_VALID flag is set, the common views are located in this store.
Read the PR_COMMON_VIEWS_ENTRYID property on the store object to get the entry identifier of the hidden common views folder.
Read the messages from the folder specified above. All views have the message class IPM.Microsoft.FolderDesign.NamedView.