Microsoft opens Outlook format, gives programs access to mail, calendar, contacts

Microsoft Monday said it will provide patent- and license-free use rights to the format behind its Outlook Personal Folders opening e-mail, calendar, contacts and other information to a host of applications such as antimalware or cloud-based services.

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Documenting and publishing the .pst format could open up entirely new feature sets for programs such as search tools for mining mailboxes for relevant corporate data, new security tools that scan .pst data for malicious software, or e-discovery tools for meeting compliance regulations, according to Microsoft officials.

The written documentation would explain how to parse the contents of the .pst file, which houses the e-mail, calendar and contact contents of Outlook Personal Folders. The documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. The effort is designed to give programs the knowledge to read Outlook data stored on user desktops.