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Outlook Symbols

  • Article

So, I've been looking into why Office, and therefore Outlook, doesn't
offer symbols to ISV developers creating Office solutions in the same
way that Windows symbols are available to those writing software on
Windows. It took way too much time and emails to get to the right
person for this, but I finally did, and here's what I learned. We (i.e.
some people in Office) are actively investigating the value of
providing symbols, given the cost to publish them.

Cleaning up the .pdb files for public consumption is costly. The first
challenge is removing language that isn't appropriate for public
consumption. Additionally, symbols in code from third party vendors
need to be excluded. ISV developers need to be able to step through
code and see Office symbols but not symbols from third party code -
this can take a lot of work.

Also, up to now there has not been a call from the Office development
community for symbols, so no percieved need exists. Even if there was a
perceived need, it would need to fit into the Office long term strategy
for it to happen. Though I personally would love to see all of Office
and Outlook specifically become a better platform for productivity
tools, I recognize that others may know better than I if that's the
right way to go.

However, the right people are looking at the problem, and I've volunteered my help if the work ever does get done.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 20, 2005
    "up to now there has not been a call from the Office development community for symbols, so no percieved need exists"

    Hmm, I have worked with Microsoft PSS (Stephen Griffin et al) and have asked him for Outlook/MAPI debug symbols. In fact I have tried to request debug symbols from anybody even remotely connected to Outlook. Also if it has taken you so much time to reach the person that can make a decision on this, how can someone from outside make their voices heard in the right place?

    I think there's a big pain out there because of lack of debug symbols. Anyone working on MAPI objects, Outlook Addins, Exchange Client Extensions will need debug symbols. Interop testing with other outlook addins is a nightmare without debug symbols.

    In general I get the impression that the team that 'evengelizes' (isn't this current nomenclature?) Outlook Platform isn't really looking outward for feedback. I regret for having to use a strong language, but it is really frustrating to debug Outlook and MAPI issues with the current level of maturity of Outlook as a dev platform and lack of much needed developer support from Microsoft.

  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 08, 2005
    I think it's a huge problem.

    I have had two crashes in hand in MAPI for the last two months and couldn't get my hand on symbols.

    MAPI is shipped by Microsoft, has a huge documentation set and is used by a lot of people. It seems reasonable to expect symbols here.

    Thx
    dB.
    (also known as ddoub at exmsft :))

  • Anonymous
    August 24, 2005
    I agree that there is a great demand for debug symbols of at least MAPI.

    Many bugs in Outlook or our own code are much easier to find this way. I've spent months to find such bugs already.

    I can see now what the reason is not to publish them. But if you only publish the symbols of MAPI that can't be such a big task.

    And in any case, this would support many developers developing applications for Outlook. As far as I know is Office the product on that Microsoft earns the most money. In that case it's even more important to have developers create good add-on products for it.

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2007
    I'm struggling with this 2 years later.  Does anyone know if symbols for OUTLLIB.DLL et al. are available? ryan.lederman AT kayako dot com

  • Anonymous
    May 29, 2009
    PingBack from http://paidsurveyshub.info/story.php?title=m-power-outlook-symbols

  • Anonymous
    October 15, 2009
    Hi, Does any one know where I can get the Outlook MAPI symbols from, is there a  third party company or MS that provides a service that can analyse the thread dumps and provide answers to why crashes and hangs are occuring? Any help will be much appreciated thanks. Maz

  • Anonymous
    December 11, 2009
    Even providing a .pdb file with just FPO information so stack traces won't be totally worthless would be way better than nothing and couldn't reveal anything that Microsoft doesn't want to share.

  • Anonymous
    October 10, 2010
    Also see here: connect.microsoft.com/.../please-provide-public-office-symbols