Programming Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange

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.

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.

Received as expected.

I bought the first two editions and were impressed with them. The depth of knowledge and the sample applications showed the author put time into digging into the intermediate to advanced topics on building on Microsoft's technologies. With the 3rd edition, I was blown away. It's huge and there is a lot of information to digest. Since I work with both Exchange/Outlook and SharePoint, I especially liked that this book covered both topics (download the SharePoint chapters from the website for the book!). If you are going to buy one book on developing on Microsoft's collaboration technologies, this is the one. I can't wait for the 4th edition.

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.

I must admint, I never understood how Exchange and Outlook would fit into my applications (I'm a SQL person). However, after reading this book, it opened my eyes to the possibilities of integrating both products into my existing solutions as well as building new collaboration solutions. The book is very in-depth, there are a lot of sample applications and it covers a breadth of topics including Exchange, Outlook, ADSI, SharePoint, Live Communications Server (which I never heard of before!) and other Microsoft technologies. It's a great resource for me and hopefully will be one for you.

I have to disagree with the reviewer who says there is not a lot of depth in this book. Sure, the author does leave out some topics but he clearly states that they can either really mess up Outlook or that they are not supported by Microsoft which can get you into trouble down the road. Otherwise, this book is the bible for Exchang and Outlook development bar none. I origianlly got it to learn how to integrate our corporate CRM system with Outlook (our sales reps live in Outlook!). The book is well written, has lots of samples and gave me the kick start I needed to get my job done.