Messaging Application Programming Interface

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MAPI was originally designed by Microsoft. The company founded its MS Mail team in 1987, but it was not until it acquired Consumers Software in 1991 to obtain Network Courier that it had a messaging product. Reworked, it was sold as MS PC Mail (or Microsoft Mail for PC Networking). The basic API to MS PC Mail was known as MAPI version 0 (or MAPI0). MAPI uses functions loosely based on the X.400 XAPIA standard.

MAPI includes facilities to access message transports, message stores, and directories.

Service provider interface[edit]




MAPI/RPC protocol details[edit]




Open source MAPI implementations[edit]

Up until recently open source implementations of MAPI have been scarce. But there are at least three open source projects working on implementing the MAPI protocol in free open source software (FOSS) libraries for use in other open source applications. This list includes the OpenMapi project,[3] the Zarafa's MAPI4Linux (also part of OpenMapi) and the libmapi[4] subproject of the OpenChange[5] project which is utilized in another OpenChange subproject called Evolution-MAPI.[6] Evolution-MAPI is a connector provider that can be installed within the popular open source Evolution groupware client.


  3. ^ OpenMapi
  4. ^ MAPI Library
  5. ^ OpenChange
  6. ^ Gnome Evolution Plugin

External links[edit]