Nektra Advanced Computing Blog

How to migrate NK2 Recipient AutoComplete cache lists “suggested contacts” from Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007 to Microsoft Outlook 2010

Note You must exit Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010 before starting the following procedure. The names will be included in AutoComplete when you restart Outlook.

1. On the computer (Office 2003 or 2007) with the saved AutoComplete names, go to “drive: \Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook”.
Note Depending on your operating system (Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000) or the folder options, the folder might be hidden. To view the files in this folder, do one of the following:
Windows 7
1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
3. Click the View tab, and then, under Advanced settings, under Hidden files and folders, click Show hidden files and folders.
4. Uncheck hide extensions for known file types.
Windows Vista
5. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
6. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
7. Click the View tab, and then, under Advanced settings, under Hidden files and folders, click Show hidden files and folders.
8. Uncheck hide extensions for known file types.
Microsoft Windows XP
9. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
10. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
11. Click the View tab, and then, under Advanced settings, under Hidden files and folders, click Show hidden files and folders.
Microsoft Windows 2000
12. Double-click My Computer on your desktop.
13. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
14. Click the View tab, and then click Show hidden files and folders.
2. Right-click profile name.nk2, and then click Copy.
Tip You can copy the file to removable media, such as a USB key (Pen drive) or a CD (DVD), and then copy the file to the correct location on the other computer. Or you can attach the file to an e-mail message and send the message to yourself. On the new computer, open the attachment, and then save it to the correct location.
Note You must exit Outlook before starting the following procedure. The names will be included in AutoComplete when you restart Outlook.
3. On the Office 2010 where you want to migrate the AutoComplete feature too, Paste the NK2 file to drive:\%user name%\%appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook
4. If prompted about replacing the existing file, click “yes”.

1. Note that the .nk2 file must have the same name as your current Outlook 2010 profile. By default, the profile name is “Outlook.” To check the profile name, follow these steps:

2. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
3. Double-click Mail.
4. In the Mail Setup dialog box, click Show Profiles.
5. Click Start, and then click Run.
6. In the Open box, type outlook.exe /importnk2, and then click OK. This will import the .nk2 file into the Outlook 2010 profile.

Nektra Advanced Computing is developing a tool that will auto create an .NK2 file from Outlook Express (using OEAPI), Windows Mail (using OEAPI), Windows Live Mail (Using WLMAPI), an the export to Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 & Outlook 2010. We also offer a solution service from any legacy environment/platform to any new environment/platform. For information about pricing or demos please call 1-(310)237-6506.

Outlook Plugin Development

We have a team of experts developing plugins for Outlook. We have a wide experience using Outlook API and we are able to go beyond Outlook API when you need something that cannot be developed using the startdard API.
Our team works in US time, that’s what makes Nektra the best decision for US companies.
Our sales team can be contacted any time in our office in Callifornia (310) 237-6506.
For more information visit Outlook plugin development

Migration and Reverse Engineer Services

Nektra has a wide experience building ad-hoc migrations for applications that doesn’t provide importing and exporting mechanism. We have researched a large number of applications looking for undocumented interfaces to use for this purpose. A prove of these skills are our products and a big amount of articles researching different technologies.
We have a team of professionals that can help so Just ask.

Top Areas:

• Reverse engineer services
• Application virtualization
• API interception

Complete list of Nektra High Tech Services

Download messagespy_demo.zip – 250 KB

Download messagespy_src.zip – 249 KB

Contents

• Introduction
• So, what’s the good news?
• Deviare Message Spy
  • Finding a Window: The Spy++ Style Window Finder
  • Hooking
  • The XML
  • The Cast
• Using Deviare Message Spy
• Requirements
• Known Issues
• Resources

Introduction

This article presents you with a different perspective of how to inspect window messages, to see how applications are communicating and managing their controls. We are not going to explain what window messages are or what they are used for in this article, so we suggest that you read these excellent articles to understand them: Handling Window Messages (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). In this article we are going to monitor the Message API from the inside by hooking the target process.

So, what’s the good news?

As a first step when developing, to inspect windows, we open the Spy++ application and start the tedious work of following messages as they are printed in their hundreds. This is helpful most of the time, as we usually want to know what our windows are seeing and receiving. Yet, what happens when we want to know exactly how an application is communicating with its controls (what calls it makes to the message API) or want to see if our messages are getting filtered by someone else? As you may know, Spy++ installs 3 global hooks to receive every Send, Post and Call to a window message handler. The information provided by these methods is not enough to know what messages are coming from our application or if any of them have been filtered by a hook installed earlier in the call chain.

Do not panic, Deviare comes to rescue. What we are going to do is intercept all the Message APIs from the process that the window belongs to and monitor its calls. From there, we can be sure of what messages are being sent from the application to its controls and if any of them are missing from the ones that Spy++ is reporting, then we will know if someone else is watching us…

What happens with the messages not known by Spy++? How are we going to see them? Look what happens with many of the messages used by the standard ListView in windows. Spy++ does not know anything about them if the window is subclassed (for example ATL:SysListView32), and cannot trace its content. Try following LVM_GETNEXTITEM in Outlook Express and you will only see unknown 0x100C messages. The same goes for custom user messages that you may know and want to follow. We need an application that can be customized to our needs!

Deviare Message Spy

To probe our theory, we have built this message spying application. We have added to it a way to lookup windows handlers, hook the process owning it, and correctly report the messages and structures.

Finding a Window: The Spy++ Style Window Finder

To pick the target window and the process we wanted an interface like the one used in Process Explorer and Spy++. Thanks to Mark Belles this was an easy task. He has a great article on how to implement a nice Window Finder, in Code Project.

Hooking

In order to install a hook, first we need to identify our target process. After obtaining a window handle from our Window Finder, we can use GetWindowThreadProcessId to identify which process owns the window. From there we use the .Net API to access it and tell Deviare which process we wish to hook.

Win32.GetWindowThreadProcessId(hWnd, out _processId);
_txtProc.Text = Process.GetProcessById(_processId).MainModule.ModuleName

For our monitoring we have divided the API in 2 sets: the Dispatch group, and the Sent and Post group. Monitoring messages that arrive to the first group will provide us with a very similar view of what Spy++ sees. This is because these messages arrived to the application and have not been filtered by any hook. With our second group, we will identify direct and asynchronous calls to the Message API.

Let’s see how we install the hook for one of these functions:

procs = _mgr.get_Processes(0);
procs = _mgr.get _Processes(0)
proc = procs.get_Item(_processId)
IPEModuleInfo mod = proc.Modules.get_ModuleByName("user32.dll");
IExportedFunction fnc = mod.Functions.get_ItemByName("PostMessageW");
_hook = _mgr.CreateHook(fnc);
_hook.Attach(proc);
_hook.OnFunctionCalled += new Deviare.DHookEvents_OnFunctionCalledEventHandler(_hookPst_OnFunctionCalled);
_hook.Properties = (int)DeviareCommonLib.NktHookFlags._call_before;
_hook.Hook();

As you see, we easily pick our target process by Id and select its Module and Function by name. The module name is not important, as it is always going to be “user32.dll”. If you have doubts, you can use Spy Studio to watch the process modules and exported functions.

Once the hook gets installed, we will receive notifications on our handler. From there we parse the function parameters transparently with the interface provided. (These parameters are actually in the target process, and Deviare copies them to our process on our demand and handles all the communication).

int returnVal = callInfo.ReturnValue;
IParams pms = callInfo.Params;
IEnumParams enm = pms.Enumerator;
IParam pm = enm.First;
IParam recvMsgHndl = pms.get_Item(0);
IParam recvMsgParam = pms.get_Item(1);
IParam recvWParam = pms.get_Item(2);
IParam recvLParam = pms.get_Item(3);

After reading all the data we require from the call, we will use our generated Xml to identify the message and properly cast it to its structure and show it properly.

The XML

The XML document in this application was created specifically to link together the message names, values and parameters. As messages like WM_LBUTTONDOWN are predefined as 0×201 we can place this in a XML file containing information on the parameters WPARAM and LPARAM.

<message value="0x201">
<name>WM_LBUTTONDOWN</name>
<return value="">
<returninfo></returninfo>
<returnmisc></returnmisc>
</return>
<wparam value="">
<wname>wParam</wname>
<wmisc>wParam Indicates whether various virtual keys are down. This parameter can be one or more of the following values.
MK_CONTROL
The CTRL key is down.
MK_LBUTTON
The left mouse button is down.
MK_MBUTTON
The middle mouse button is down.
MK_RBUTTON
The right mouse button is down.
MK_SHIFT
The SHIFT key is down.
MK_XBUTTON1
Windows 2000/XP: The first X button is down.
MK_XBUTTON2
Windows 2000/XP: The second X button is down.</wmisc>
</wparam>
<lparam value="">
<lname>lParam</lname>
<lmisc>lParam
The low-order word specifies the x-coordinate of the cursor. The coordinate is relative to the upper-left corner of the client area.
The high-order word specifies the y-coordinate of the cursor. The coordinate is relative to the upper-left corner of the client area.&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/lmisc&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
</lparam>
<misc></misc>

We could not find any database with this information, so we generated an XML document with the messages that we were interested in knowing about. As you can see, it is easy to simply add any message you want. In the process of building this XML, we used a very nice tool called ApiViewer from ActiveVB.de. Just search for the message names you want and you can evaluate the message values from the names.

The Cast

Now that we can identify the structures used on messages, we need to tell Deviare. Basically we are telling it to interpret our parameter, not as a simple LPARARM or WPARAM type, but as the complex structure we know is there. This is the case for messages like WM_DRAWITEM. So, to read it’s structure contained within the LPARAM we need to cast it as follows:

IParam pm = pms.get_Item(2); //LPARAM
pm = pm.CastTo(“LPDRAWITEMSTRUCT”); //Now our IParam is read as a pointer to DRAWITEMSTRUCT
pm = pm.Evaluated; //Resolve the pointer indirection
//Ready to use IParam as the structure sent by the OS.

It is possible to do this with all of the structures you can find defined in the windows headers. So, you should be able to cast and read any of them that are used in within these messages.

Using Deviare Message Spy

Above we have our Deviare Message Spy in action. We selected the contacts list window from Outlook Express (at the bottom left) to spy on. You can see all the message values that were sent via Post and Send Message APIs. LVM_HITTEST has been expanded to show the full values received. As LPARAM is a pointer to the LVHITTESTINFO structure we can find all relevant information contained within.

Hope you enjoyed this article, and found it useful. Let us know what you think!

Requirements

• Deviare API Hooking

Known Issues

Many messages have the same Hex Address, such as TB_GETITEMRECT and TTM_UPDATE. Both of these messages have the value of 0x41d but are very different messages.

The TTM_UPDATE Message Forces the current tool to be redrawn. It does not use the wParam and lParam where as TB_GETITEMRECT Message Retrieves the bounding rectangle of a button in a toolbar.

TB is a Toolbar message and TTM is a Tooltip message. As our Spy++ style window finder already finds the window class, such as SysListView32 and ToolbarWindow32, It would be easy to use the class name to tell the program with Xml message is the correct one.

Resources

• Deviare API Hooking
• Message Lookup: ApiViewer
• Spy++ from the Microsoft Windows SDK

Everyone likes something for free, but open source is free as in freedom not as in beer.

Lots of companies use open source software and many put a lot back into the open source world but just how much do they put back?

It is impossible to find a definitive answer to this so we are just pointing out some ethical issues, when a “leecher” takes the work of others without giving back its detrimental to the open source movement.

In 1993 Apple’s Operating System was seriously in need of an upgrade. Their internal development of a new OS was not going well, so they looked externally for an OS.  BeOS and NeXTSTEP were the main candidates,  BeOS was a completely new OS developed from scratch and NextSTEP was an OS built on top of BSD.  They went with NextStep and acquired the company behind it NeXT for $429 million.  BeOS was later bought by Palm, inc after which they discontinued BeOS.  BeOS users without a viable upgrade path and BeOS developers with programs stranded on an unsupported platform then decided to develop Haiku, an Open Sourced operating system.

NeXTSTEP then went on to become MacOS X.  Apple released the Open Sourced Darwin, The core components of MacOS X, in 2000 under the Apple Public Source License.  This release spawned OpenDarwin, a project designed to create a stand alone Darwin operating system.  This failed with the developers stating OpenDarwin had “become a mere hosting facility for Mac OS X related projects.  Availability of sources, interaction with Apple representatives, difficulty building and tracking sources, and a lack of interest from the community have all contributed to this.” There is a new project called PureDarwin which is currently trying to complete a release based on Darwin 9.

Apple used to distributed a binary release of Darwin themselves but stopped in 2005.  Currently they only release the source code of Darwin, Although within this they include proprietary drivers of their AirPort wireless cards.  They also exclude Carbon, Cocoa, Quartz Compositor and the Aqua user interface.  This prevents users from running MacOS X software.  There were good reasons for Apple to go via the closed source route for these but when taking so much from the Open Sourced Community surely it would be nice to give more back? Although some people say Apple have saved BSD.

Microsoft is a company well known for their closed source software.  Originally network protocols were an add on to their operating systems and it wasn’t until windows 95 that the TCP/IP Stack became part of the operating system.

Originally they tried their own protocol Netbeui and then reverse engineered Novell’s IPX protocol but finally they adopted the BSD’d TCP/IP (you can see the BSD license within their source here.) There is nothing ilegal in Microsoft using the BSD code for their implementation of TCP/IP but because the code was under the BSD license any changes they made were not released for the benefit of the rest of us.  If the code had been under the GPL license would they have used it?  Who knows but it would have forced them to release any updates they made.  Maybe they would have developed an alternative protocol and the internet would not be as it is today!

Flock is an interesting case of a company using open source for the basis of their product.  Flock itself is an open sourced project where

“Yes, Flock will be open source.  We may incorporate some proprietary technologies into our browser and releases some features under a commercial license, but all of our initial code, and the vast majority of our code going forward, will be open source.”

We know the Flock developers want to keep Flock compatible with Firefox and it may be based on Firefox, but they are two separate projects.  Code will increasingly change and although extensions currently work on both browsers as the code develops we’ll see extensions working with either Firefox or Flock.  What will happen if Firefox decide to implement some of Flock’s ideas differently?  Will Flock go to their source and follow the way Firefox have implemented the idea?

Would it have been possible for the Flock developers to have just released an extension that just adds the tools that Flock adds?  With the creation of a new browser they have potentially forked the developers of extensions for Firefox.  Flock has investors to keep happy,  is it possible for them to do that whilst keeping extension compatible with Firefox?

What about Google’s File system? This is a customized file system that writes LARGE chunks of data and sits above a standard Linux file system.  What changes have Google made to the “standard” Linux file system? Are they going to give the open source community their code? As the software is running on a server and not being distributed they don’t need to share the code but should they?

We all know Google also uses a stripped down optimized version of the Linux Kernel for high performance without which they couldn’t possibly exist.  What changes have they made that they’re not sharing with the rest of us? The hiring of Andrew Morton does help though.

For example there are a number of companies that use dmoz.org data the most well known being Google Directories which combines the dmoz data with its own pagerank. Does this make dmoz irrelevant? How are they contributing to the dmoz project?

When money becomes involved it isn’t uncommon for a project to move from open source to closed source.  Activecollab was one such project,  originally released under an open source license, it has since moved to a closed source commercial project.
“When it was first released, activeCollab came with an open source license and that was what attracted me to the project. I thought it held promise of being a very powerful and useful project management application if developed by an active community of users.
But the developer has decided to stop open source development on the project. Development will now be closed source, at least on the core features. The next release, version 1.0 due out next week, will also not have a free version. Your only options for activeCollab 1.0 are SmallBiz ($199) and Corporate ($399).”

Although a fork has been started the move to closed source will have alienated a lot of developers and users.

It is interesting to watch Mozilla to see how their creation of a “for profit” corporation which supports the popular Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird E-mail client as well as developing custom software based on open sourced products.  This happened in 2005 now 3 years later has much changed?

“the Mozilla Corporation is not a typical commercial entity and will only pursue revenue-generating activities that are consistent with offering end-users with the best experience possible.”

Mozilla did ask the public for money in a 2 page advert on December the 16th 2004.  This was before the creation of their commercial wing but with reports of as much as $72 million being poured into Mozilla Corporate from Google for carrying Google advertisements why are they still asking for donations?

Should the people who donated before the corporate side was formed be considered shareholders of Mozilla corporate? What about new donators?  Why should you donate to an organization that has a very wealthy corporate company behind it?

Will all the contributors to Firefox and Thunderbird be given shares or money for their work that the Mozilla corporation are profiting off?

We can see that Firefox and Thunderbird are both still available for free from the Mozilla website, Both currently supported by Google’s Ad money and donations, but for how long?  With Firefox being the cashcow for Mozilla Corporate will Thunderbird fall by the wayside?  There are rumors that it will find itself under a different company with Mozilla Corporate becoming Firefox Corporate.

One companies solution is the advent of dual licenses.  They release their software as both open source under the GPL and as a commercial product.  This allows them to employ staff full time to work on the product, It also allows companies that wish to use the software and modify it but not share their code with others that opportunity.

In the Games Market id Software also license their older game engines under the GPL as well as offering the opportunity to use their engines under a commercial license. Other companies such as 3d Realms and Parallax Software have released the source code for some of their games but without a commercial option for their engines.  The dual license here obviously benefits companies wishing to add to the source code to the detriment of being forced to release possible upgrades to the original open source engines.

Another place where Open Source software has taken off is in Web services. Many companies are taking advantage of Open Source software on the Web but they’re not obligated to publish their code if they make any changes because they are not redistributing the software in a package as either a download or a physical medium.  The web is a new distribution medium for them.

A License has been developed to apply to the software that is in this loophole, The Affero GPL.  This licenses software that is ran on a server.  One such project is in the UK where petitions to the Prime Minister is ran on Open Sourced AGPL v3 software.

What is the fair value of return to the open source if you earn a lot of money?

“IBM says to a customer, ‘Do you want proprietary or open software?’ Then if they want open source they say ‘OK, you want IBM open source.’  It is always IBM or Sun or HP open source,”

“Companies are using the potential of communities as subcontractors — the open source community today is a subcontractor of American multinational” said Jesús Villasante, head of software technologies at the European Commission

in reply James Baty, a vice-president at Sun, said that companies such as his have a responsibility to contribute to the open source community.  Sun itself contributes to a number of open source projects, including the open source productivity application OpenOffice.org.

“There are companies that are takers from the open source community, other companies are taking the attitude that they have to contribute, Open source should be seen as an opportunity, not as something to capture and abuse.”

We know major corporations have made valuable contributions to open source software, as well as persuading businesses and IT professionals that it is a credible alternative to proprietary options, but do they take more than they provide?

We here at Nektra Believe Open Source will always have an important place in the world and provide CookiePie under GPL, NKT WAB under LGPL and Trappola under LGPL, but it is essential that the Open Source community is not taken advantage off and valuable contributions are put back into the community.

We have published an extensive article about Live Messenger applied research in the field of plugin development, entitled “Windows Live Messenger Plugin Development Bible” at the CodeProject website.

The article carefully explains several reversing and  hooking techniques to extend the application functionality:

• Proxy DLL implementation
• API hooking through our Trappola library
• Applied window subclassing to add ‘skinned’ window classes
• Runtime resource addition and modification (i.e. toolbar buttons and bitmaps)
• Contact information through Live Messenger COM Interface
• Contact selection interception with Active Accessibility COM objects

Although focused at Windows Live Messenger, the article is useful for anyone interested on the topic of  reversing for extending applications, querying internals or implementation of interoperability solutions on the Windows platform.

The code is available in both in binary and source format and is released under the GNU General Public License.

Download binary DLLs – 123.47 Kb

Download source code (VS 2005 Solution) – 241.36 Kb

Enjoy it and tell us what you think about it.

We offer development services to build Windows Live Mail Plugins

Cookiepie is one of the favorite Firefox extensions for web developers and users of webmail services like Google Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail.Web developers use cookiepie to test their sites.In the past, if a site (e.g. home banking, community site) required extensive testing simulating many different users, the developer needed to open different browsers. Currently all browsers, including Firefox, have just one place to store cookies.Some users of webmail services have more than one web account to log into. People are using each web account for different purposes but they can’t login to the same site at the same time in the same browser.The Cookiepie Firefox Extension is a solution to this problem, as it allows users to log into different webmail accounts on separate tabs. Try it with two or more of your Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail accounts.This new release fixes problems experienced in Gmail 2.0, and supports many complex sites like the new Yahoo mail. Even webmail embedded chat is working now!We have made a short video so you can see it in action:

Cookiepie is Free Open Source Software under the GPLv2 license. You can install it now from Nektra Cookiepie site.Please, if you have comments leave them in our group here. We would particularly like to hear about your experience with other sites, such as Facebook. We are making a list of supported websites.