One of my specialty areas at work is being a MAPI programmer, I dwell in the Outlook/PST/MSG state of mind most of the time. I’ve been in this state for quite some time. Working for an eDiscovery company, I’m not doing the typical “I want to send email, and only send email” programming. I need to extract existing emails (and any metadata) as evidence. So I created an OO interface to MAPI, using C# and MAPI33, that does just that without having to jack around with the often feisty Outlook. This was no easy task, but it’s done and in use.

Now I’ve been presented with a new challenge, the S/MIME format. S/MIME is a commonly used format in order to encrypt and digitally sign email. Outlook is one of many mail clients that can send and interpret these email files. Although technically they are closer to the MIME format (duh) that Outlook Express uses.

We’ll see if this is possible. hmmmmmm