Programming Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange (Microsoft Programming) [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Thomas Rizzo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999 | Series: Microsoft Programming

Written by an accomplished solutions developer who is currently a product manager in the Microsoft Exchange group, this is the definitive guide to development for Microsoft's powerful messaging and collaboration tools. The CD-ROM contains an evaluation copy of Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5, sample applications, ADSI software, and sample Outlook forms.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Programming Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange is a thorough guide for building collaborative applications such as threaded discussions and electronic business documents. Early on, the book describes four types of collaborative applications: messaging, tracking, workflow, and real-time applications. Author Thomas Rizzo shows the strengths of Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server for collaboration, including the many built-in security and administration features.

Rizzo also covers Outlook 98 development, explaining how to customize folders, fields, and views (including rules and filtered replication of messages). He then shows how to create Outlook forms, with instruction on how to use components and add VBScript event handlers. An account tracking application demonstrates all the basics on this topic.

The second half of the book is strong on building Web-based collaborative applications and covers Web tools such as Outlook Today and the Outlook HTML Form Converter. Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) objects are fully explained, showing how they can be built with ASPs and viewed in a browser. Rizzo provides excellent samples for a help desk, a calendar of events, and an intranet news application, and carefully lists the exact versions of various Microsoft tools required to run each example successfully.

The book closes with material on the Event Scripting Agent and Exchange Server Routing Objects, which provide fault-tolerant message delivery. --Richard Dragan

Product Details

• Paperback: 684 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735605092
• ISBN-13: 978-0735605091
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,687,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing, October 7, 2005

By 

Arnel J. Domingo "cliqueyou.com" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Programming Microsoft® Outlook® and Microsoft Exchange 2003, Third Edition (Pro-Developer) (Hardcover)

This is a good example of a book written by an author who just wanted to "write" and finish a book. I doubt if the author really knows the subject.

For example, in page 745,the section titled "What About Tasks?", the code example does not include task assignement, and he writes "You can attempt to code task recurrence and assignement, but this is much harder and can easily break Outlook if done incorrectly. For this reason, these functions are not shown in the following code because they are complex and prone to breaking Outlook". Funny. The author should attempt to explain how to do it correctly.

Outlook object properties, methods and events. The author enumerates all of them, no explanation. For example, page 170, about UserProperties and UserProperty, I saw a lot of these properties in his sample codes, but there are never any explanation what are these!

When he explained things, most are self-explanatory. For example in page 82 about "Setting the Actions for a Rule", he wrote"
Return to Sender - This action sends an item e-mailed to a folder back to a sender....
Delete - This action deletes an item...
Reply - With This action sends an automatic reply...
Forward - This action forwards all messages...

He shows how to create custom field (it's easy) but never explained how to access them programmatically.

It will take a whole book as big as this one to comment how disappointing this book is. It is much better to search msdn than read this book.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected, January 9, 2005

By 

Scott Stewart (Tampa, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Programming Microsoft® Outlook® and Microsoft Exchange 2003, Third Edition (Pro-Developer) (Hardcover)

After purchasing this book and skimming through all of it while reading the sections I was interested in more thoroughly (VBScript and Custom Forms), and then going through everything a 2nd time, I was extremely disappointed.

I found the Author was not thorough at all when going over the Outlook Library objects, methods, and properties. I was constantly going to the MSDN site to fill in the gaps. The sample code was also quite limited I thought.

In my entire life, this book is the only book I have ever taken back to the store for a refund. I instead purchased the QUE book written by Patricia Cardoza, which I have found to be far more to my liking.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The book title should not mention Outlook, November 12, 2006

By 

Olivier Langlois "www.OlivierLanglois.net" (Montreal, Quebec Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Programming Microsoft® Outlook® and Microsoft Exchange 2003, Third Edition (Pro-Developer) (Hardcover)

I have been disappointed by this book. I wanted it mostly to learn how to program Outlook. When I started reading it, I have realized that only a small portion of it was dedicated to Outlook. Perhaps that I am harsh against the book value because I am not part of the intended readers but I guess that even readers interested to programming Exchange would not find much value of this book. I am saying so because the book is huge close to a thousand pages but it sounds like a cut and paste of the Exchange programmer user manual. When I purchase a book like this one, I expect it to be a complement to the product documentation, to give a better insight of how and why a given software works like it does. This book does not deliver up to these expectations. The best Outlook programming book that I have found is: Microsoft Outlook Programming, Jumpstart for Administrators, Developers, and Power Users. Skip this one.