MAPI Forms Library provider without Outlook
Hi,
Using the new "Microsoft CDO & MAPI" download we have sucessfully been able to create profiles and logon to send and receive from Exchange mailboxes without any Outlook installation; the purpose being to deploy a mail enabled server application. In our company "client" applications such as Office are not allowed on servers for security and maintenance purposes (hope you appreciate that - I think this is common in larger companies, have seen many posts from people who must do MAPI but cannot do Outlook).
The problem is that although we have also implemented working calls to create and send messages with Forms, it does not work on the server with Forms, just with full Outlook installed or with plain text or HTML messages.
We have isolated the problem to a missing Forms Library manager (IMapiFormMgr), which is not present, so any calls which would return the Form Manager just return 0x80004005 (MAPI_E_CALL_FAILED. The same code works fine on the same machine when Outlook is installed. When the same machine has outlook removed and the just the "CDO & MAPI" install from Microsoft, or the "Exchange Admin Tools" (the other two ways to get MAPI without Outlook) it again fails.
So we know that the Forms Library manager is only installed with Outlook. The question is, can it be installed separately. Licensing is not an issue on the server, we can buy a license of Outlook if necessary, but we just want to get the full MAPI Exchange Client with Forms support without having the ability for anyone to run Outlook should they or their trojan gain access to the server.
Ideas or solutions for any of the following would be much appreciated (we are at a dead end right now)!
1) The best solution would be if there is some redistributable for Forms support.
2) The second best solution would be some custom install of Outlook that would not include any of the user interface, just the core messaging DLLs. If we have a custom install, we need one that is maintained by Windows Update/standard patches.
3) Alternatively (avoiding the problem), I wonder if it is possible to send an MHTML message which can cause itself to be posted back with the form fields filled in. Then we could just send without Forms and could retreive the response - our Forms requirements are simply Yes/No responses mostly. This may also have the benefit of working with recipients who do not have Outlook installed, but even if it uses the Outlook object model in HTML script or something that would be fine as we currently require Outlook at the recipient if we get Forms working.
Kind Regards,
Tony Wall
MCAD, MCSD, MCSE
