Outlook Express Application Programming Interface is a Software Development Kit (SDK) used in Fortune 100 companies to build plugins for Outlook Express® and Windows Mail®. Nektra’s services includes Windows Live Mail using our Windows Live Mail® API technology.
Used by the Top Security Vendors
We are pleased to have customers that are the Leaders in the Quadrant of Gartner’s Endpoint Protection Platforms.
You can read the full report on the Symantec Endpoint Security’s page.
Most of our enterprise customers have a special branch of the OEAPI that specially fits to their needs. This warranties them better performance and dedicated support.
OEAPI enables your software to reach over 400 million users worlwide with Outlook Express® and Windows Mail® already installed.
Applications
Our customers have been using OEAPI for a wide range of applications:
All the functionality is implemented in a COM object.
A demo application written in Visual Basic is included in the package.
A demo application written in Visual C++ is included in the package.
A demo application written in C# is included in the package.
A small demo application written in Dephi is included in the package.
Plugin support as a dll that runs in OE/WM’s same space. You will be able to run inside OE/WM.
Basic Identity support.
User Interface
Add buttons and sub-buttons to OE/WM’s default main window’s toolbar.
Add your own toolbars, buttons and sub-buttons to OE/WM’s main window.
Add tooltips to your buttons.
Multi toolbars support. Create more than one toolbar from your plugin.
Your toolbars can be created with small or large buttons.
Add toolbar separators.
Multi-buttons support (Like the OE/WM’s ‘Create Mail’ button).
Enable / Disable / Show / Hide your toolbar’s buttons.
Add your own menus and sub-menus to OE/WM’s main and message windows.
Enable / Disable your menu items.
Handle the click events of your buttons, sub-buttons and menu items.
Folders
Browse all the folders of Outlook Express and Windows Mail.
Rename / Move / Delete / Create a folder.
Handle the OnNewMessage and OnMessageDeleted events in a folder.
Handle the global event OnNewMessage when a message arrives.
Handle general events: OnFolderCreated, OnFolderDeleted, OnFolderRenamed, OnFolderMoved, OnFolderUnreadChanged and OnFolderSelectionChanged.
Messages
Browse messages in a folder.
Get Header / Body / Source.
Get Message State / Priority / Display From / Subject.
Basic MIME Support: Browse, modify, insert and remove bodies.
Attachment API: Add / List / Save to disk (Temove is provided in the Bodies API).
Change any message properties. (Some visible properties changes, like ‘Subject’, ‘To’ and ‘From’, are reflected correctly in the preview panel and in the detail window, but they cannot be reflected in OE/WM’s messages listview directly. To have them reflected correctly you need to clone the message first.)
Get / Set custom properties / headers.
Message Clone: Make an exact copy of a message. Changes to cloned message’s visible properties are reflected correctly on OE/WM’s messages list view.
Delete / Create message.
Mark as Read / Unread.
Copy / Move messages.
Send message.
Messages / Folder Selection
Get / Set Selected Message/s.
Get / Set Selected Folder.
Events
OnDatabaseChange, the fastest notification available for Database Transactions: New message, message deleted, message changed to read or unread, new folder and folder deleted.
OnMessageSelectionChanged.
OnFolderSelectionChanged.
OnMessageDownloadStarted and OnMessageDownloadFinished, triggered when OE/WM synchronizes messages with server/s.
Outbox Filter
Modify the messages before they are sent.
Modify the text of the control where is displayed the current message.
Message Window
(Compose, Reply, Reply All, Forward and Open Message windows)
Add buttons and subbuttons to OE/WM’s default toolbar.
Multi toolbars support. Create more than one toolbar from your plugin.
Toolbars can have small or large buttons.
Multi-buttons support (Like the ‘Create Mail’ button in OE/WM).
Enable / Disable / Show / Hide toolbar buttons.
Get / Set Subject.
Get / Set Body.
Get / Set Cc.
Get / Set To.
Press the ‘Send’ button.
Send any key as a user input.
Handle the button’s click events.
Handle the ‘Send’ button click event.
Cancel the ‘Send’ process started by the user.
OEAPI License
OEAPI Standard edition is released under a freeware license.
Given certain internal limitations of Outlook Express and Windows Mail, the best way to work is to have the fewest possible amount of references to OEAPI objects.
On each scope, every time an OEFolder and an OEMessage is not used anymore, call Marshal.ReleaseComObject() method from the System.Runtime.InteropServices namespace to release it.
Otherwise objects are not released instantly by the .NET framework, the internal limit for the amount of possible handled objects is reached and different problems occur.
It is better to use just one OEFolderManager.
It is better to use just one OEAPIObj for using the objects’ IDs (i.e. toolbars IDs, buttons IDs, menu items IDs, etc.).
As soon as OEAPIObj objects (OEToolbar, OEButton, etc.) are no longer used, assign null/nothing to them.
On OnShutDownOEAPI() release every OEAPI object except OEAPIInit, and, at the end, call for the Garbage Collector twice:
Fixed: Using Clone and Commit for messages with certain non-english headers and attachment names corrupted messages’ body (Unicode issue).
Fixed: The IOEToolbar.SetShown(0) method did not work in the IOEAPIInit.InitOEAPI event handler.
Fixed: SetImageNormal/SetImageMouseOver/SetPicture/SetPictureMouseOver did not work correctly.
Fixed: C# Demo couldn’t display folder content when having a large amount of messages (~1000 or more).
Fixed: GetSelectedFolderID returned an incorrect folder ID for IMAP folders. This folders are not supported.
Fixed: Documentation updated.
Changes from version 3.2.0 to 3.2.1
Released on September of 2007
New! OnDatabaseChange event now supports two new transactions:”Rename Folder” and “Move Folder”.
NOTE: To support “Move Folder” transaction, OnDatabaseChange has four parameters now (newParentId contains the destination folder’s id on Move Folder events, and is -1 in the other transactions).
Fixed: SendAndReceiveMessages didn’t work in Windows Mail.
Fixed: Outlook Express didn’t start if there were many folders (over 80).
Fixed: Windows Mail didn’t display messages if there were many folders.
Fixed: Windows Mail displayed an error message if, after closing the application, the ‘Sending pending mails’ process was canceled.
Fixed: Windows Mail didn’t check how ‘Send messages immediately’ was configured.
Fixed: A ‘Folder in use’ warning appeared when trying to compact folders on Windows Mail.
Fixed: Main window’s toolbars disappeared if application was closed and reopened if a message window remained open.
Fixed: Couldn’t permanently delete a message on Windows Mail (this is fixed for dll plugins).
Fixed: Some operations corrupted messages’ source code under Outlook Express (this is fixed for dll plugins).
Fixed: Delphi failed to correctly import OEAPI dlls (parameter ‘result’ had to be renamed).
Fixed: OnDatabaseChange and OnNewMessageInInbox were triggered in different threads.
NOTE: This version is not binary compatible with version 3.2.0 or previous versions because we had to change CLSID of OECOM objects in order to support the new events for IOEAPIObj::OnDatabaseChange.
To use this version in projects using v3.2.0 or previous versions of OEAPI, you must remove references to old oecom.dll, and then add references to the new oecom.dll.
Changes from version 3.1.2 to 3.2.0
Released on June of 2007
New! OEToolbar: GetMaskColor and SetMaskColor get and set bitmap’s transparent color.
New! OEToolbar: GetPictureSize and SetPictureSize can get the size of the bitmap and set it to suit your needs. NOTE: SetPictureSize must be called before adding buttons, and does not work for OE/WM’s default toolbar.
New! OEButton: SetPicture and SetMouseOverPicture can set button’s bitmap with IPictureDisp.
New! OEButton: GetName, IsEnabled, IsVisible and GetTooltip.
New! OEButton: CreateSubSeparator can create separators between subbuttons.
New! OEMenu: CreateItemAt and CreateSeparatorAt can create menu items in specific positions (Experimental feature).
New! OEMenuItem: IsVisible, IsEnabled, GetText and SetText.
New! OEMsgWnd: GetIHTMLDocument2 gets the IHTMLDocument2 of the message (Experimental feature). IMPORTANT: We do not offer support about IHTMLDocument2. It’s supported on Microsoft’s Newsgroups.
New! OnDatabaseChange now supports message’s read/unread state change events (Experimental on Windows Mail).
New! SubButtons now support checked style and enable/disable.
Fixed: OEAPIObj’s SendMessage didn’t work on Windows Mail. NOTE: Now only messages that are in Outbox can be set to be sent with SendMessage on Windows Mail.
Fixed: OEFolder’s OnNewMessage event gave a pointer to msgId instead of the msgId on Windows Mail..
Fixed: OEMsgWnd’s GetTo and GetCC just returned “;” on Windows Mail..
Fixed: OEButton with drop down arrow kept pushed down after one click on OE/WM’s default toolbar (Main and message windows).
Fixed: OEToolbar did not resize correctly when a drop down OEButton was added.
Fixed: OnMessageDownloadFinished was triggered multiple times for one event.
Fixed: OEButtons adjusted their width to the longer button’s text on Windows Mail.
Fixed: OEMessage’s Clone and Commit didn’t work in DLL plugins on Windows Mail.
Changes from version 3.1.1 to 3.1.2
Released on April of 2007
Fixed: OE’s default toolbar buttons disappeared in message windows when OEAPI toolbars were added.
Fixed: In Windows Mail, OEAPI toolbars were created in the same row of the default toolbar.
Fixed: ‘Send All’, ‘Receive All’ and ‘Send & Receive All’ were not working in Windows Mail while launcher.exe was running.
