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Microsoft Opening Outlook's PST Format
protosage writes to tell us that Microsoft Interoperability is working towards opening up Outlook's .pst format under their Open Specification Promise. This should "allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way." "In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties."
(1) They feel that Outlook is genuinely capable of withstanding competition from the likes of TBird and other competitors, and to be fair, the quality of Outlook has improved a lot. .pst specs.
(2) They feel that opening Outlook's specs will give them access to iPhone app-store like ingenuity from the "crowd" (throw in your favorite buzzword here). Basically, let the hackers go at it and come up with neat little means to improve Outlook usability. If more products carry a "Works with MS Outlook" sticker, that can only be good for outlook (in one line of reasoning).
(3) All the old, seasoned outlook engineers have retired or died, and they're hoping that someone can figure out the
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Count me as one who cares. I've had .pst file of old outlook mail sitting around for at least seven years waiting for this kind of news. Being able to import it directly into gmail would be very useful.
Expanding on point 2, Microsoft may want to open up the MAPI specs a little more for the benefit of iPhones and the like. At $DAYJOB, we have Exchange 2003 and a number of users with iPhones and we've seen some bizarre things happen on occasion with calendar entries (weirdness when one of a number of repeating appointments is changed or cancelled and not showing up as changed or removed on the iPhone, that kind of thing). While I'm prepared to believe that it's partially to do with Apple testing more thoroughly with and developing against Exchange 2K7, I can't help but feel that a better understanding of how Outlook communicates with Exchange and a better understanding of how Outlook represents the data internally would help other developers produce something that works better with Exchange.
And that could well be Microsoft's strategy...domination at mail-and-collaboration server end. If they open up the client specs a little more, and that makes Exchange 2010 and beyond more attractive, they've won.
I'd wager that Microsoft is willing to do this because the .pst format is becoming irrelevant. Medium and large businesses already want nothing to do with them due to issues with performance and management. That leaves small businesses and a small number of home users. With hosted exchange options becoming more common among small businesses, the need for .pst files is going away very quickly.
and to be fair, the quality of Outlook has improved a lot.
I love how Outlook uses almost 300MB of virtual memory at work. Seriously, wtf.
"MAPI" (Exchange RPC) is being put out to legacy pasture and being replaced with an XML-based API called "Exchange Web Services". That is why Exchange2K7 works better with third party clients.
People who program different migration utilities benefit from this, and of course users of such tools. Even wild ideas like Fuse filesystem that mounts it as Maildir.
So, converters, importers, exporters, indexing tools, repair/forensics, optimize/defragment/find duplicates tools, sort, grep.
Also, if its a standard than it needs to be STANDARDIZED, so no special treatment for own products.
I think the most likely explanation is that PST files are deprecated in the next version of Exchange... they are pushing for people to move to server-integrated archiving instead. That will make PSTs somewhat redundant so why not open up the spec if it gets you warm fuzzies from the industry.
A comment from an Exchange developer on the EHLO blog:
"To put it simply you need to move away from PSTs. Larger mailboxes are the answer here. In addition you can leverage, single item recovery, and our messaging records management 2.0 with a personal archive mailbox to retain needed data and manage your quotas."
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/09/25/452632.aspx
I have an .ost file on my laptop you insensitive MS clods. Does this great revelation include them?
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
There's a little known piece of middlware from IBM called DAMO. Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook. Domino is the server behind the loathsome Notes client. Basically it maps Notes fields to a PST. Then you can pull all your notes email and calendars into an Outlook .PST. You'll need to pay IBM $100 for the privilege and they're not going to support it for much longer, but if you hate (hate, hate, hate) Notes and need to hit a Domino server, this is cool. For me it's been $100 for three years of sanity for my PIM and no need to deal with Notes. Even the latest 8.5 version seems to be a bunch of badly done java emulating Outlook.
If you go this route, stay under the radar and don't hip the IT guys to what you're doing. Unless they're particularly eagle-eyed they probably won't notice what you're up to. You among thousands of users. They don't have the time. Don't ask for support from them. Figure it out on your own. Get into the VPN, figure out the IP address of your email server and keep your notes id handy for when the prompt asks. Expect it to take a little fiddling and do lots of backups.
(-5) Sharepoint is stored in a SQL server database. The structure is vaguely nightmarish because of the desire for obfuscation, but it is perfectly possible to get the files back out with a bit of work. It is less of a lock-in than a .pst file would be, even with the release of these specs.
I'll bet that Alfresco or Knowledge Tree's commercial products can come up with modules to migrate from a Sharepoint if they haven't already.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Wrong. Virtually all the tools listed either don't work at all, haven't been updated in 6-7 years, and/or partially work but not for OL 2003+ PST files.
I know of no pure open source solution that can read 2003 and 2007 PST files. The ones that can read 98 and 2000 file do so OK, but with many bugs.
So in short you are wrong - no one can do it.
This doesn't do anything for communicating with Exchange, which is really what you want.
Well it isn't what I want. I want TBird (with its calendaring extensions) to be able to read the Outlook address book and calendar from the .pst files.
Then I want TBird to be able to sync to my phone but that's another story and doesn't seem likely to happen so I may as well get an android and run TBird on it.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
one big use I can see is a PST rebuilder, MS tells you to copy anything you want to keep out after repairing a corrupt PST with scanpst but i've found out the hard way that sometimes outlook can read a mail in a PST but when it tries to copy it to another PST it will fail.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I.e., not everybody in the world has your limited use cases. I welcome the opening of the PST specs.
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
> This is incredibly brave of Microsoft, given that Outlook is so ubiquitous.
Hardly. This is the result of Microsoft having to abide by the results of a court case that they fought against tooth and nail, that they ignored for months, then finally, begrudgingly, realized they had lost. This is Microsoft doing something because they have absolutely no other choice. Everything else has failed, so Microsoft is finally, years later, complying with court orders trying to remedy Microsoft's illegal abuses of monopoly power.
This isn't brave. It's a begrudging admission that there are governmental powers that Microsoft couldn't bully; a government with something resembling a backbone.