Office Binary File Formats

Announcements

• Microsoft Office MSDN Release Notes - January 2009

  Chris MullaneyMSFTWednesday, February 04, 2009 9:04 PM
  This release includes document changes made since the previous release. A major change for this release is the addition of a new protocol document for Office 2007, [MS-OFBA]: Office Forms Based Authentication Protocol Specification. This release also contains a new Standard document, [MS-CUSTOMUI]: Custom UI XML Markup.
  
  Issues specific to the January release include:
  
  

  1. Revisions to the Product Behavior section of all Office File Format documents have been updated to remove the specific Service Pack indicators. All documents will apply to all releases of the applicable product version.
  2. A correction was made to the version history table and version number of MS-UCDX.

  The following known issues exist in the January Release:

  1. Underscore characters are not always visible in code in the PDF files depending on the magnification selected by the user. Those characters are present in printed versions.
  2. Information in a table row may split across two pages.
  3. Table borders are not always visible depending upon the magnification selected by the user. Borders are present in printed versions of the PDF.
  4. Cross-protocol links are only functional when the PDF files for the protocols are in the same folder.

  Note: Links in the PDFs don’t resolve in Adobe Reader 9 because Adobe has changed the default setting for view mode in Adobe Reader 9. To access links, perform the following procedure:
  
  1. In Adobe Reader 9, go to the Edit menu and click Preferences.
  2. In the Categories list, click Documents.
  3. Under PDF/A View Mode, change the selection from Only for PDF/A documents to Never, and click OK.
  
  Additional details on changing the setting can be located via the Adobe help site: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Acrobat/9.0/Standard/WS3E0E8467-B787-4020-A1D3-6BC762A42DF2.w.html

• Outlook PST File Format Documentation Announcement

  Chris MullaneyMSFTWednesday, November 04, 2009 7:40 PM
  A number of people have inquired about the .pst file format on this forum in the past, and at that time we stated we would provide an update if the .pst file format specification becomes available. This week we announced our documentation plan for the .pst file format specification on the Interoperability @ Microsoft blog,. If you are interested in actively participating in the review of preliminary drafts of the .pst file format specification, send an email message to pstinfo@microsoft.com and then we will contact you when a preliminary draft of the specification is ready for broader review. If you only are seeking the final version, we anticipate releasing the .pst file format specification in the first half of 2010 under our Open Specification Promise.