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Information about Microsoft Mail

Microsoft Mail (or MSMail) was an early e-mail product, originally for the Apple Macintosh, and later Microsoft Windows based machines as well. Its main competitors on the Mac were QuickMail and FirstClass, and on the PC side, from Lotus. A stripped-down version of the PC-based server, Microsoft Mail for PC Networks, was included in Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. The last version was 3.5 as it was replaced by Microsoft Exchange Server (which starts with version 4.0). The Mac version, then known as Microsoft Mail for AppleTalk Networks, had earlier been sold off to become Star Nine Mail, and has long since been discontinued.

Client

The client software was also named Microsoft Mail and was included in some older versions of Microsoft Office such as version 4.x. The original "Inbox" (Exchange client or Windows Messaging) of Windows 95 also had the capability to connect to MS Mail server. Later, they were replaced with the much more powerful Microsoft Exchange and later Outlook (Windows) and Entourage (Mac).

Technical details

Microsoft Mail was a shared-file mail system, the "postoffice" was a database of files. Clients used mapped network drives and file sharing to write mail to the postoffice. Clients were in effect Message Transfer Agents (MTAs) for their own postoffices. Mail that needed to travel between postoffices required an external MTA. This MTA was called External.exe and ran on MS-DOS or Windows NT. A multitasking MTA was added with Microsoft Mail for PC Networks 3.5. This ran in the OS/2 subsystem of Windows NT and Windows 2000.

Connections to other email systems were made possible by gateways to "foreign mail systems". There were gateways to PROFS and SNADS (Office Vision), SMTP, X.400, Novell's Message Handling System (MHS), MCI Mail and others were created by Microsoft.

Many companies running these gateways quickly replaced them with Microsoft Exchange Server connectors. In particular an early part of a migration from MSMail to Exchange included replacing the Microsoft Mail for PC Networks Gateway to SMTP to the Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Connected, later renamed to the Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service.

Limitations of Microsoft Mail for PC networks

A single postoffice was locked to a limit of 500 mailboxes. This meant a large enterprise would require many postoffices and many MTAs to connect these postoffices. Also, the Microsoft Mail Client for Windows used an MMF file to store messages, they were downloaded off the postoffice. Because of the file lock and the way they were accessed a user could only login to their mail from a single PC at a time. This made using MSMail across multiple machines problematic.

For enterprises a challenge of running an Microsoft Mail for PC Networks environment was the method of synchronizing directories (Global Address Books). Every postoffice had a separate Global Address List and these were synchronized using MSMail 3.X directory synchronization protocol and software called dispatch.exe.

  •  • [ e] Microsoft Office
Desktop products:Accounting • Access • Communicator • Document Imaging • Document Scanning • Entourage • Equation Editor • Excel • Groove • InfoPath • InterConnect • MapPoint • OneNote • Outlook • Picture Manager • PowerPoint • Project • Publisher • SharePoint Designer • Visio • Word
Server products:Communications Server • Forms Server • Groove Server • PerformancePoint Server • Project Server • Project Portfolio Server • SharePoint Server
Online services:Live Meeting • Office Live
Discontinued products:Binder • Data Analyzer • FrontPage • Mail • The Office Assistants • PhotoDraw • Photo Editor • Schedule+ • Vizact
Bold type indicates a core application
E-mail (short for electronic mail; often also abbreviated as e-mail, email or simply mail) is a store and forward method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems.
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Macintosh, commonly known as Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. Named after the McIntosh variety of apple, the original Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984.
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Microsoft Windows

Screenshot of Windows Vista Ultimate, the latest version of Microsoft Windows.
Company/developer: Microsoft Corporation
OS family: MS-DOS/9x-based, Windows CE, Windows NT
Source model: Closed source

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FirstClass is a client/server groupware, email, online conferencing, voice/fax services, and bulletin-board system for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

The product is currently owned by Open Text's FirstClass Division, has over 9 million users [1] and runs on
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Lotus Software

Public
Founded 1982
Headquarters Cambridge, Massachusetts, US

Industry Computer software
Products Lotus Connections
Lotus Domino
Lotus Expeditor
Lotus Forms
Lotus Notes
Lotus Quickr
Lotus Sametime
Lotus Symphony
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Windows 95
(Part of the Microsoft Windows family)
Screenshot

Screenshot of Windows 95
Developer
Microsoft

Release information
Release date: August 24 1995 [
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Windows NT 4.0
(Part of the Microsoft Windows family)
Screenshot

Updated user interface similar to Windows 95
Developer
Microsoft

Release information
Release date: July 29 1996 info

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Microsoft Exchange Server is a messaging and collaborative software product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is widely used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure solutions.
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Maintainer: Microsoft

OS: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X

Use: Office suite
License: Proprietary
Website: office.microsoft.com

Microsoft Office
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Microsoft Exchange Client was a multi-purpose messaging product useful for managing e-mail. It was the native and bundled client for Microsoft Exchange Server up to version 5.0, later superseded by Microsoft Outlook.
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Windows Messaging, initially called Microsoft Exchange, was an e-mail client included with Windows 95 (beginning with OSR2), 98 and Windows NT 4.0.

In Windows 98, it is not installed by default, but available as a separate program in the setup CD.
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Microsoft Exchange can refer to:
  • Microsoft Exchange Server, an email server software product from Microsoft, or
  • Microsoft Exchange Client, the former companion client software for Exchange Server that was embedded into some versions of Microsoft Windows.

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Microsoft Outlook or Outlook (full name Microsoft Office Outlook since Outlook 2003) is a personal information manager from Microsoft, and is part of the Microsoft Office suite.
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Microsoft Entourage is an e-mail client and personal information manager developed by Microsoft for Mac OS 8.5 and higher. 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
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A mail transfer agent or MTA (also called a mail transport agent, message transfer agent, mail server, SMTPD (short for SMTP daemon), or a mail exchanger
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Acronym of Systems Network Architecture Distribution Services (SNADS)

External links

  • SNADS documentation on ibm.com

See also

  • Systems Network Architecture

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Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the de facto standard for e-mail transmissions across the Internet. Formally SMTP is defined in RFC 821 (STD 10) as amended by RFC 1123 (STD 3) chapter 5. The protocol used today is also known as ESMTP and defined in RFC 2821.
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X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that define standards for Data Communication Networks for Message Handling Systems (MHS) — more commonly known as "E-mail". While X.
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Novell Inc.

Public (NASDAQ:  NOVL )
Founded Provo, Utah (1983)
Headquarters Waltham, MA, USA

Key people Ron Hovsepian, CEO and President
John Dragoon, Senior Vice President, CMO
Dana Russell, Senior Vice President, CFO
Industry Software
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Message Handling System (MHS) is an important early email protocol developed by Novell.

Originally developed by Action Technologies, Inc. (ATI) in 1986, it was first licensed in 1998 then later bought outright by Novell.
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Maintainer: Microsoft

OS: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X

Use: Office suite
License: Proprietary
Website: office.microsoft.com

Microsoft Office
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Microsoft Office Accounting (formerly Small Business Accounting) is Microsoft's accounting software targeted towards small business customers. The latest version, Microsoft Office Accounting 2007, was announced on October 29th, 2006.
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Microsoft Office Access, previously known as Microsoft Access, is a relational database management system from Microsoft which combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software development tools.
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Microsoft Office Communicator is an integrated enterprise communications client, enabling information workers to communicate in real time through the use of instant messaging (IM), voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and videoconferencing.
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Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI) is a Microsoft Office application that supports editing documents scanned by Microsoft Office Document Scanning. It was first introduced in Microsoft Office XP and is included in later Office versions including Office 2003 and Office
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Microsoft Office Document Scanning (MODS) is a scanning and OCR application included with Microsoft Office. It is suited for creating archival copies of documents.
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Microsoft Entourage is an e-mail client and personal information manager developed by Microsoft for Mac OS 8.5 and higher. 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
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Equation Editor is a legacy formula editor developed by Design Science that allows users to construct math and science equations in a WYSIWYG environment. It is included in most word processors (e.g. Microsoft Word), presentation programs (e.g.
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Microsoft Excel (full name Microsoft Office Excel) is a spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables and a macro programming language called VBA (Visual Basic for
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Microsoft Office Groove is a proprietary peer-to-peer collaborative software product aimed at teams with members who are likely to be regularly off-line or who do not share the same network security clearance.
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