Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is a discontinued family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketing term for an office suite, the first version of Office contained Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Over the years, Office applications have grown substantially closer with shared features such as a common spell checker, Object Linking and Embedding data integration and Visual Basic for Applications scripting language. Microsoft also positions Office as a development platform for line-of-business software under the Office Business Applications brand.
Webmail is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Examples of webmail providers are AOL Mail, Proton Mail, Gmail, GMX Mail, Mailfence, Outlook.com/Hotmail.com, and Yahoo! Mail. Additionally, many internet service providers (ISP) provide webmail as part of their internet service package. Similarly, some web hosting providers also provide webmail as a part of their hosting package.
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the 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, web browsing, and RSS news aggregation.
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 In Windows Vista, Outlook Express was superseded by Windows Mail.
Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) is an API for Microsoft Windows which allows programs to become email-aware. While MAPI is designed to be independent of the protocol, it is usually used to communicate with Microsoft Exchange Server.
Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems.
Pegasus Mail is a proprietary email client for Microsoft Windows. It was originally released in 1990 on NetWare networks with MS-DOS and later Apple Macintosh clients, before being ported to Windows which is now the only platform actively supported. Since its inception it has been developed by David Harris and is donationware after having previously been freeware.
Microsoft Entourage is a discontinued e-mail client and personal information manager that was developed by Microsoft for Mac OS 8.5 and later. Microsoft first released Entourage in October 2000 as part of the Microsoft Office 2001 office suite; Office 98, the previous version of Microsoft Office for the classic Mac OS included Outlook Express 5. The last version was Entourage: Mac 2008, part of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, released on January 15, 2008. Entourage was replaced by Outlook for Macintosh in Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, released on October 26, 2010.
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 Mail was the name given to several early Microsoft e-mail products for local area networks, primarily two architectures: one for Macintosh networks, and one for PC architecture-based LANs. All were eventually replaced by the Exchange and Outlook product lines.
Outlook on the web is a personal information manager web app from Microsoft. It is a web-based version of Microsoft Outlook, and is included in Exchange Server and Exchange Online
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 on September 22, 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".
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 Live Mail is a discontinued freeware email client from Microsoft. It was 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. In addition to email, Windows Live Mail also features a calendar, an RSS feed reader, and a Usenet newsreader.
Ipswitch IMail Server is an email server application with groupware functionality that runs on Microsoft Windows OS. It was developed in 1994 by Ipswitch, Inc., a software company based in Lexington, Massachusetts.
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.
MailSite is a commercial mail server, calendar software, contact manager and collaborative software that was developed by Rockliffe Systems. It was one of the first mail servers to run on Windows NT using Internet standards when version 1.2 was released in 1996. Additionally, MailSite has been in continual development since 1996 with version 10 released in 2013, and runs on a single Windows Server as well as on a cluster of Windows Server computers. MailSite works natively with Microsoft Outlook versions 2007 to 2013 for mail, calendar and contacts without requiring any Outlook plug-ins, as well as including an Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) server for synchronizing mail, calendar and contacts with mobile devices. MailSite also works with Internet Standards-based mail clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird.
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. It is set to be replaced by Outlook for Windows.
