While most of us were too engrossed in the somewhat ephemeral news around Google’s new attempts at becoming social, something much more profound transpired – something that can have an impact on millions upon millions of people today. Microsoft today announced that it was opening up its Outlook format and giving external programs access to mail, calendar and contacts. I don’t know the reasons why Microsoft is taking this arguably high-stake gamble.

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 hi