Developer(s) | Microsoft |
---|---|
Initial release | 13 August 1996 |
Stable release | |
Operating system | Windows 3.x—Windows XP/Windows Server 2003 Mac System 7—Mac OS 9 |
Platform | Microsoft Windows, classic Mac OS |
Type | Email client, newsreader |
License | Proprietary |
Website | support |
Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 through 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows 98 to Windows Server 2003, and was available for Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 95, Mac System 7, Mac OS 8, and Mac OS 9. In Windows Vista, Outlook Express was superseded by Windows Mail.
Outlook Express is a different application from Microsoft Outlook. The two programs do not share a common codebase, but they do share a common architectural philosophy. [1] The similar names lead many people to conclude incorrectly that Outlook Express is a stripped-down version of Microsoft Outlook. Outlook Express uses the Windows Address Book to store contact information and integrates tightly with it. Windows XP also integrates with Windows Messenger.
Version 1.0 was released as Microsoft Internet Mail and News in 1996 following the Internet Explorer 3 release. [2] This add-on precedes the Internet Mail profile for Microsoft Exchange 4.0 bundled in Windows 95. Version 2.0 was released at the end of 1996. Internet Mail and News handled only plain text and rich text (RTF) email, lacking HTML email.
In 1997 the program was changed and renamed to Outlook Express and bundled with Internet Explorer 4. The Windows executable file for Outlook Express, msimn.exe, is a holdover from the Internet Mail and News era. Like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express 4 can run on Mac System 7, OS 8, and OS 9.
At one point, in a later beta version of Outlook Express 5, Outlook Express contained a sophisticated and adaptive spam filtering system; however this feature was removed shortly before launch. It was speculated on various websites and newsgroups at that time, that the feature was not stable enough for the mass market. Nearly two years later, a similar system, using a similar method of adaptive filtering, appeared as a feature of Microsoft Outlook.
Internet Explorer 5 required Outlook Express 5 to save Web Archive files (see MHTML). [3]
Outlook Express 6 is the last version of the software with Outlook branding. It has a similar layout to Outlook Express 5. It was included with Windows XP.
Builds of "Outlook Express 7" appeared in early builds of Windows Vista when in development as "Longhorn". [5] It relied on WinFS for the management and storage of contacts and other data. [6]
The final version of Vista included a successor to Outlook Express known as Windows Mail (Vista). [7]
Beginning with the text-based Unix Mail command, email traditionally used the inline or bottom posting styles when replying to messages. Outlook Express, as well as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook, top-post (show replies newest to oldest) by default.
Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange use a proprietary email attachment format called Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) to handle formatting and other features specific to Outlook such as meeting requests. Outlook Express and other email clients are unable to read this format. [8] This can be confusing to Outlook Express users (as well as those who use other email clients) who receive attachments sent from Outlook.
Outlook Express has been prone to a number of problems which can corrupt its files database, especially when the database increases in size due to an increasing number of stored emails and during database compaction. This has led to a thriving market for software that can back up, restore and recover corrupted files. [9] An open-source project called UnDBX was also created, which seems to be successful in recovering corrupt databases. [10] Microsoft has also released documentation which may be able to correct some non-severe problems and restore access to email messages, without resorting to third-party solutions. [11]
However, with the latest updates applied, Outlook Express now makes backup copies of DBX
files prior to compaction. They are stored in the Recycle Bin. If an error occurs during compaction and messages are lost, the DBX
files can be copied from the recycle bin.
Outlook Express was one of the earlier email clients to support HTML email and scripts. As a result, emails were commonly infected with viruses. [12] [13] Previously, another security flaw was that a script could automatically be opened as an attachment. Another bug was in Outlook Express's attachment handling that allowed an executable to appear to be a harmless attachment such as a graphics file. Opening or previewing the email could cause code to run without the user's knowledge or consent. Outlook Express uses Internet Explorer to render HTML email. Internet Explorer has been subjected to many security vulnerabilities and concerns.
With Outlook Express SP2 (part of Windows XP SP2), Microsoft has tried to correct the security holes. Outlook Express now blocks images inside emails by default. [14] [15] It uses only the restricted security zone for HTML email, which disables scripts and imposes restrictions on what web content can be rendered. It also warns when opening potentially malicious attachments. [16]
Outlook Express does not correctly handle MIME, [17] and will not display the body of signed messages inline. Users get a filled email and one attachment (one of the message text and one of the signature) and therefore need to open an attachment to see the email. If the email has been forwarded several times, users need to open attached email messages one inside the other multiple times to reach the parent email message. This bug has still not been rectified. The proper behavior is described in RFC 1847. When replying or forwarding a message to a user who has a digital signature, Outlook Express gives an error and does not allow the user to continue if there is no digital signature installed for the sender. [18]
Outlook Express does not have a documented object model like Microsoft Outlook. Programmatic access to, or control of Outlook Express for custom messaging applications or plugins is not officially documented or supported by Microsoft. [19] IStoreNamespace
and IStoreFolder
interfaces [20] were documented in 2003, but they are only related to the storage.
Some companies have managed to create their plugins hacking the interface using Windows hooks. A significant one was the PGP plugin because it was the only example of a working plugin whose source code was available (licensed under GPL). By 2003, some companies provided commercial solutions to develop add-ins. [21]
Outlook Express does not have a dedicated spell checker. It can use the spell checkers from Microsoft Office if Office is also installed. However, the Office 2007 spell checkers, except for the French spell checker, are incompatible with Outlook Express. Microsoft has acknowledged this problem, [22] but does not provide any sort of remedy. A solution is to install any pre-Office 2007 proofing tools or use a third party spell-checking app for Outlook Express. Windows Live Mail, which is based on Windows Mail's source code, contains built-in spell checking support (now for US English and numerous other languages) and is freely downloadable for Windows XP.
Cancelling sending an email while it is being sent does not effectively prevent it from being sent. [23] Similarly, when importing .PST
files, cancelling the import while it is in progress merely cancels the import of the current folder and the import resumes with the next folder.[ citation needed ] Furthermore, Outlook Express only supports .dbx files that are smaller than 2 GB, and may have performance problems when dealing with files approaching that limit. [24]
GNOME Evolution is the official personal information manager for GNOME. It has been an official part of GNOME since Evolution 2.0 was included with the GNOME 2.8 release in September 2004. It combines e-mail, address book, calendar, task list and note-taking features. Its user interface and functionality is similar to Microsoft Outlook. Evolution is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily being popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as calendaring, task managing, contact managing, note-taking, journal logging and web browsing.
The Bat! is an email client for the Microsoft Windows operating system, developed by Ritlabs, SRL, a company based in Chişinău, Moldova. There are two versions: a Home version and a Professional version. The Professional version includes a portable module, The Bat Voyager.
Pegasus Mail is a proprietary email client developed by David Harris. It was originally released in 1990 for internal and external mail on NetWare networks with MS-DOS and later Apple Macintosh clients. It was subsequently ported to Microsoft Windows, which is now the only platform actively supported. Previously freeware, Pegasus Mail is now donationware.
Juno Online Services, also called simply Juno, is an Internet service provider based in the United States. It originated as a free email service and later expanded its offerings. Juno is a subsidiary of United Online, which in turn is a subsidiary of investment bank B. Riley Financial. United Online is also the parent of NetZero and BlueLight Internet Services.
Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format or TNEF is a proprietary email attachment format used by Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server. An attached file with TNEF encoding is most often named winmail.dat or win.dat, and has a MIME type of Application/MS-TNEF. The official (IANA) media type, however, is application/vnd.ms-tnef.
In computing, a Personal Storage Table (.pst) is an open proprietary file format used to store copies of messages, calendar events, and other items within Microsoft software such as Microsoft Exchange Client, Windows Messaging, and Microsoft Outlook. The open format is controlled by Microsoft who provide free specifications and free irrevocable technology licensing.
The following tables compare general and technical features of notable email client programs.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) is the fourth, and by now, discontinued, version of the Internet Explorer graphical web browser that Microsoft unveiled in Spring of 1997, and released in September 1997, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for the classic Mac OS, Solaris, and HP-UX and marketed as "The Web the Way You Want It".
An IFilter is a plugin that allows Microsoft's search engines to index various file formats so that they become searchable. Without an appropriate IFilter, contents of a file cannot be parsed and indexed by the search engine.
Windows Address Book was a component of Microsoft Windows that lets users keep a single list of contacts that can be shared by multiple programs. It is most commonly used by Outlook Express. It was introduced with Internet Explorer 3 in 1996 and improved in subsequent versions. The Windows Address Book API can query LDAP servers or read/write data to a local .wab file. In Windows Vista, Windows Address Book was replaced with Windows Contacts.
Quick View is a file viewer in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems. The viewer can be used to view practically any file.
Windows Messaging, initially called Microsoft Exchange Client, is an email client that was included with Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0.
Windows Fax and Scan is an integrated faxing and scanning application introduced in Windows Vista and included in the Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate Windows Vista editions as the replacement for the Fax Console of Windows XP; it is available in all versions of Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 (x86/x64) and Windows 11 (x64), but not on ARM64 versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Windows Live Mail was a freeware email client from Microsoft. It is the successor to Windows Mail in Windows Vista, which was the successor to Outlook Express in Windows XP and Windows 98. Windows Live Mail is designed to run on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but is also compatible with Windows 8 and Windows 10, even though Microsoft bundles a new email client, named Windows Mail, with the latter.
Outlook.com, formerly named Hotmail, is a free webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services.
Exchange ActiveSync is a proprietary protocol designed for the synchronization of email, contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes from a messaging server to a smartphone or other mobile devices. The protocol also provides mobile device management and policy controls. The protocol is based on XML. The mobile device communicates over HTTP or HTTPS.
An Internet Explorer shell is any computer program that uses the Internet Explorer browser engine, known as MSHTML and previously Trident. This engine is closed-source, but Microsoft has exposed an application programming interface (API) that permits the developers to instantiate either MSHTML or a full-fledged chromeless Internet Explorer within the graphical user interface of their software.
MSN Dial-up is an Internet service provider operated by Microsoft in the United States and formerly also in several other countries. Originally named The Microsoft Network, it debuted as a proprietary online service on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of Windows 95. In 1996 and 1997, a revised web-based version of the ISP was an early experiment at interactive multimedia content on the Internet.
Mail is an email client developed by Microsoft and included in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows. It is available as the successor to Outlook Express, which was either included with, or released for Internet Explorer 3.0 and later versions of Internet Explorer.