Microsoft Corporation
September 1999
Applies To: Microsoft® Outlook®, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office, Microsoft BackOffice®
Summary: This article provides links to a broad array of information about developing custom solutions with Microsoft Outlook and Exchange. (9 printed pages)
This article from the Microsoft® Outlook® 2000 documentation provides links to conceptual articles and language reference topics about new features in Outlook 2000.
www.microsoft.com/Seminar/1033/19990310Outlook_2K_Develop/Portal.htm
This online seminar, presented by Microsoft product manager Thomas Rizzo, covers the new development features in Microsoft Outlook 2000. In this session, you’ll learn about Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) support, folder home pages, the Outlook ActiveX® View control, and a number of other enhancements to the development environment in Outlook 2000.
This MSDN portal site is a gathering point for online resources focusing on Exchange Server development topics.
This article from the Outlook 2000 documentation discusses the four basic approaches to creating Outlook solutions.
www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000/journ/outtodayintro.htm
The Office 2000 Resource Kit includes this white paper (which guides you through the process of customizing Outlook Today), sample Outlook.htm and Custom.htm source files, and an example of a customized page with .gif files.
www.microsoft.com/office/enterprise/prodinfo/olfeatur.htm
Outlook 2000 can be employed with a wide variety of protocols, including SMTP/POP, IMAP, and MAPI, as well services such as CompuServe. Review this article from the Office 2000 Resource Kit to find out which Outlook features work with which types of e-mail servers.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q146/6/36.asp
This Knowledge Base article provides resources, and answers some of the more commonly asked questions about creating custom solutions with Outlook forms and other Outlook programming technologies, such as VBA and Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript).
The Microsoft Outlook object model allows you to customize Outlook to your organization’s specific needs. This guide includes examples and exercises on how to develop applications by using the model, find the right tools in the model to solve a given problem, understand key programming concepts, and gain a working knowledge of the Visual Basic programming language.
This Knowledge Base article provides links to dozens of other articles about creating custom solutions with Outlook 2000.
www.microsoft.com/exchange/office2000.htm
This page on the Microsoft Exchange Server Web site is a guide to integrating Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Outlook 2000, and Microsoft Exchange Server to automate your business processes.
This backgrounder by Microsoft product manager Thomas Rizzo discusses the enhanced features included in Microsoft Outlook 2000, which has been tightly integrated with Microsoft Office 2000 to improve productivity.
www.microsoft.com/exchange/developers.htm
This page on the Microsoft Exchange Server Web site is designed to provide developers with the most recent updates and information about the Microsoft Exchange and Outlook development environments.
This article from the Outlook 2000 documentation provides technical information about creating a COM add-in to extend and enhance Microsoft Outlook.
This section of the Microsoft Office 2000/Visual Basic Programmer’s Guide provides a conceptual overview of using the Outlook 2000 object model and discusses how to manipulate Outlook objects by using VBA code from within Outlook or from another Office application by using Automation.
This article from Microsoft Office and Visual Basic for Applications Developer magazine builds on a previous article and helps you create a COM add-in in Microsoft Outlook.
This article covers performance characteristics of Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA), deployment strategies, understanding the profile of a user population, hardware sizing and performance monitoring, security, and troubleshooting. It also covers Active Server Pages (ASP) files in Outlook Web Access, and how Outlook Web Access can be customized and extended.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/news/Ngresults.asp?D=out
This page on the Microsoft Product Support Web site provides links to newsgroups where Outlook solution-development topics are discussed.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q198/3/55.ASP
This Knowledge Base article provides general information about using VBScript with Outlook.
www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000/journ/OutToolsIntro.htm
The following new administrative and development tools are now available on the Microsoft Office Update site for Outlook 2000:
www.microsoft.com/exchange/55/whpprs/VB5.htm
This white paper on the Microsoft Exchange Server Web site details three ways to use ActiveX technology with Outlook 98 and offers tips and techniques for such complex issues as the distribution of files created with Visual Basic.
This section of the Microsoft Collaboration Data Objects Programmer’s Reference documents a tool that provides a way to convert a form designed and created in Microsoft Outlook 97 or 98 into a form usable on the Web—that is, a form created from HTML and ASP code.
www.microsoft.com/exchange/55/whpprs/LotusDev.htm
This white paper on the Microsoft Exchange Server Web site analyzes the Outlook environment from the perspective of a Lotus Notes developer, and attempts to map Notes design elements to equal or similar Outlook elements, providing a good starting point for Notes developers new to the Outlook environment.
www.microsoft.com/exchange/55/whpprs/ConnectInternet.htm
This white paper on the Microsoft Exchange Server Web site shows you how to install, configure, and test your Internet connection, including a list of references for an in-depth explanation of each procedure, and information about security issues.
www.microsoft.com/Seminar/1033/TechNetCollabSol1/Portal.htm
View this online seminar to understand server-side components and the approaches that are essential to developing collaborative software applications.
www.microsoft.com/Seminar/1033/TechNetCollabSol2/Portal.htm
In this online seminar, you can see how client-side components (planning, resources, and approaches) are used to develop collaborative software applications.
www.microsoft.com/exchange/55/whpprs/automating.htm
This paper discusses how the Microsoft Outlook object library allows you to make Outlook tasks, appointments, journal items, and notes accessible to other applications, and how the execution of extensions in Outlook differs from their execution in Exchange.
This chapter from the Microsoft Office 97 Resource Kit provides a general overview of the objects exposed by the Microsoft Outlook object library, and then it focuses on programmatic techniques for handling Outlook folders and items. Finally, the chapter compares Automation and VBScript and discusses the restrictions and guidelines for using each one.
This chapter from the Microsoft Office 97 Resource Kit describes the structure of Microsoft Outlook 97 for Windows and Microsoft Outlook Express 4.0 for the Macintosh, describes their components, and explains how these applications handle changes that users make to those components.
This chapter from the Microsoft Office 97 Resource Kit provides administrators with the information necessary to enable, support, and troubleshoot workgroup features in Outlook 97.
This article describes how to use VBScript and VBA to automate Outlook, and how to automate other Office 97 applications from within Outlook.
This article focuses on using Access and Outlook together, particularly on obtaining and/or exchanging each other’s data.
This article tells you how to use Data Access Objects (DAO) with VBA in Access to link or import Exchange or Outlook data from message folders, public folders, address books, and other sources.
In this column, Microsoft documentation manager David Shank presents enough information to get you started working with Outlook objects in your own custom solution. He suggests that once you’ve seen how easy it is to work with Outlook programmatically, you should take some time to explore what else you can do with Outlook objects.
This article provides a detailed description of the Outlook Journaling feature of Office Compatible and the steps necessary to implement this feature in your custom application.
This section of the BackOffice Developer’s Guide describes a sample application that employs Active Server Pages and Visual Basic version 6.0 source files, SQL scripts, and Outlook and Exchange scripts.
This chapter from the Wrox Press book Professional Active Server Pages 2.0 covers messaging with Collaboration Data Objects for Windows NT® Server (CDO for NTS).
www.microsoft.com/exchange/55/whpprs/collab.htm
This white paper on the Microsoft Exchange Server Web site discusses how to create powerful collaboration solutions by using personal management tools such as Calendar, Tasks, and Contacts, and how to customize Outlook forms and Office templates by using VBScript or Microsoft SQL Server™.
This article by Microsoft product manager Thomas Rizzo shows how you can take advantage of the Exchange Event Scripting Agent to implement custom tracking and routing applications. The Exchange Event Scripting Agent makes it easy to add scripts or custom Component Object Model (COM) objects to events inside Exchange Server.
This article by Microsoft product manager Thomas Rizzo explains how you can extend the Knowledge Management features of Microsoft Site Server 3.0 with Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook to build high-powered, Web-based Knowledge Management solutions.
This article by Microsoft senior applications developer Venu Yerra explains the basic concepts of the Active Messaging system. (Active Messaging is a COM wrapper around MAPI that encapsulates the functions and provides an object model for messaging development.)
This paper by Microsoft support engineer Ed Beck presents an introduction to the considerations and technologies involved in designing a messaging application to be run from an Active Server Page (ASP).
This article by Microsoft program manager Drew DeBruyne contains a collection of strategies, how-to instructions, and tips for effectively deploying Knowledge Manager on your organization’s Web site.
This article lists resources that will help you learn more about Microsoft Exchange Server and take advantage of its integration with other Microsoft BackOffice® servers such as SQL Server, Systems Management Server, and Internet Information Server (IIS).
This paper presents a backup disaster-recovery strategy designed to protect your investment in Microsoft Exchange Server and to help meet user expectations of round-the-clock service and minimal system down time. The paper covers Exchange data, where it resides and how it is saved, and transaction logging and its application in disaster recovery.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/exchange/content/whitepapers/whitepapers.asp
This page on the Microsoft Product Support Web site provides links to white papers about Microsoft Exchange and related products, and guides to troubleshooting known issues.
www.microsoft.com/technet/download/exchange/
This page on the Microsoft TechNet Web site provides a central clearinghouse for sample custom Microsoft Exchange applications. These applications were submitted by Exchange developers and users like you, and are updated regularly, so be sure to return often to see what’s new. Also see additional samples at the archive site, www.microsoft.com/technet/download/exchange/archive.htm.
This paper explains the architecture of Outlook Web Access as a Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) server and discusses its relationship to the browser and server-side components, such as Exchange Server, Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), the Microsoft Windows NT Server built-in Web server, scripts, and the Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) library.
www.microsoft.com/exchange/55/whpprs/OutlookWebaccess.htm
This white paper discusses how to take advantage of Outlook Web Access, outlining the architecture, topology, and installation requirements. The paper then shows how to configure and install Outlook Web Access, includes common factors to consider, such as capacity planning and network security, and introduces a new tool called Outlook Forms Converter.
www.microsoft.com/exchange/55/whpprs/DepManPubFold.htm
This white paper illustrates public folder components, replication and affinity, client access, permissions, and content indexing for Exchange public folders.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/news/Ngresults.asp?D=ech&PR=CHS&T1=7d&FR=0&A=T&T=B&S=F
This page on the Microsoft Product Support Web site provides links to newsgroups where Exchange Server topics are discussed.
www.microsoft.com/exchange/55/whpprs/SysAdmin.htm
This white paper discusses smart ways to manage Exchange Server—how to reduce overhead, manage server connectivity, protect data, maintain and distribute forms, and use monitoring tools.
The BackOffice Developer’s Guide (BDG) provides information to help you develop applications by using a combination of Microsoft BackOffice Server products. It contains source code for sample applications and conceptual material that explains how those applications were designed, written, and deployed. (Don’t be put off by the green cover page—the relevant content is in normal black-on-white type.)
www.microsoft.com/backoffice/downloads.htm
From this page, you can reach the currently available BackOffice add-ons, patches, service packs, tools, and trial versions, organized by product. Some come in CD-ROM format.
Here are two non-Microsoft sites that appear to have a wealth of information for Outlook and Exchange developers: