Mail (Windows)

Mail (formerly Windows Mail) is an email client developed by Microsoft and included in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows. It is available as the successor to Outlook Express, which was either included with, or released for Internet Explorer 3.0 and later versions of Internet Explorer. Windows Mail can be traced to a pre-release version of Outlook Express 7 included in early builds of Windows Vista (then known by its codename, "Longhorn"). Outlook Express 7 introduced various changes to the user interface and relied on WinFS for the management and storage of contacts, email, and other data. It supported Post Office Protocol (POP) and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) email protocols, but no longer supported Microsoft's proprietary mail-over-HTTP scheme, an omission inherited by Windows Mail. IPv6 is fully supported. Windows Mail was formally announced on September 16, 2005 at Channel 9 and positioned as the successor to Outlook Express. Windows Mail is a fundamentally new application with significant feature additions (many which were previously exclusive to Internet Explorer or Microsoft Outlook) and fundamental revisions to the storage architecture and security mechanisms. Identities in Outlook Express are replaced with . The storage of items is managed by a Extensible Storage Engine database — the same engine used by Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange — with messages and newsgroups stored as separate and nws files instead of in a single dbx file; the database is transactional and periodically creates backups of items to protect against data loss, which eliminates the single point of failure design of Outlook Express. Account configuration information is also no longer stored in the Windows Registry or in a single dbx file—instead, Windows Mail relies on XML files stored within a user profile alongside email, making it possible to simply copy an entire email store to another machine. Windows Mail supports the Windows Search platform, allowing communications to be searched directly from within the Windows Shell.