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

Nektra has released the new WLMailApi v1.0.1, which allows developers to create custom Windows Live Mail plug-ins.

Nektra Advanced Computing is glad to announce the release of the new WLMailApi version 1.0.1 which you can request a download by clicking here. This new version of WLMailApi left the Beta stage and is now an official RTM version.

Creating addons or plugins for Windows Live Mail Desktop® demands a deep knowledge of its internal behavior. Its Application Programming Interface (API) is undocumented and there is not a SDK available. Even the public interfaces IStoreNamespace and IStoreFolder supported in both Outlook Express® and Windows Mail® are not present in this new email client.

Windows 7® will not include Outlook Express or Windows Mail; its users will be forced to move to Windows Live Mail. Your product can be one of the first that plugs in!!!

Contact us to ask any commercial question or use our forum for technical inquiries.

This is the change log from previous version:

* Exiting from the system tray icon’s context menu crashed WLMail
* A stack overflow was produced when many database notifications were triggered
* There was a memory leak when handling database events
* C# DLL Demo solution made WLMail freeze after the evaluation expiration message when it was executed in Debug mode
* First events could get lost at startup before the first folder/message selection change event
* WLMailApi::GetCurrentMessageID() always returned -1 at startup until message selection was changed
* WLMailApi::GetCurrentMessageID() and NktWLMailApi::GetFirstSelectedMessageID() responses were not updated after current/selected message was deleted
* The WLMailApiEvents::OnDatabaseChange NKT_TR_INSERT_MESSAGE case was not triggered when messages were inserted in the Deleted Items folder
* Message.Delete(0) did not work when the message was in the Deleted Items folder
* WLMailApiEvents::OnCurrentMessageChanged event was not triggered if the current message was changed by selecting another message using “Ctrl + Click”
* When an unread message was selected in WLMail and was automatically marked as read, two WLMailApiEvents::OnDatabaseChange events (first NKT_TR_UNREAD_MESSAGE and then NKT_TR_READ_MESSAGE) were triggered instead of just one (NKT_TR_READ_MESSAGE)
* ToolbarButton::SetName and SetTooltip did not work if were called after the button was created
* Message::SaveAsFile() output file was corrupt if Message::GetHeader() was previously called
* Improved and corrected C++ and C# DLL Demos
* The solutions of the package now require Visual Studio 2008

The Nektra staff wishes you all a happy new year!

Best regards,

Nektra’s WLMailApi Team

We are glad to announce our first demo version of our new product Nektra Panorama. This toolkit allows developers to build applications in WM using controls built over the native API.

Nektra Panorama expands the platform with a fast-response user-experience and a very simple programming interface.

The grid view control is versatile, it can be filled with almost any thing. Here you can find a screenshot:

For a bigger example of the possibilities you can take a look our Nektra Contact Manager

Transitions

A high point of Nektra Panorama is the powerful transition interface. Using a single OS window for the entire application let developers create smooth transitions. Here you can see a ‘move’ transition to switch between menu window and Animation window in Nektra Panorama demo

The code to write this transition:

NktTransition* actionNew = new NktMoveToTransition(final, 600);

NktTransition* actionCurrent = new NktMoveToTransition(finalCurrent, 600);

wnd->MoveTo(origNew);

wnd->BringToFront(false);

actionNew->SetTarget(wnd);

actionCurrent->SetTarget(_current);

_scheduler.Add(actionNew);

_scheduler.Add(actionCurrent);

In this transition the origNew contains a rectangle out of the screen on the right. The rectangle finalCurrent is out of the screen on the left side. This code moves the control ‘_current’ out to the left and the control ‘wnd’ to enter the screen from the right side.

You can see a complete description of your product here

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

This week Mozilla launched Firefox 3 officially. It was covered in a couple of sites like:

• It’s Firefox 3 world record download day (techcrunch)
• A Few Firefox 3 Followups (slashdot)

We have released a new version of Cookiepie firefox extension available for download, and we have a number of features and a long wish list from users that we hope can be introduced in next months. Also we are designing some T-Shirts for our Cookiepie fans! More updates will be notified in the Cookiepie mailing list

Introduction to SpyStudio:

SpyStudio is a powerful application that simplifies the code execution interception operations, also called “hooking”. Users can now easily monitor and gain control over processes in their systems, to really know what is happening in the Operating System and it’s applications.

With SpyStudio you can monitor and intercept API calls at any time, change its parameters, and resume execution.

SpyStudio uses the Deviare API technology to intercept functions’ calls, this allows the user to monitor and hook applications in real time.
Deviare is a very complex technology, that can be used through the most simple interfaces.

This useful application provides the ability to break process execution and inspect the function’s parameters at any level, and even change its values.

Here is a screenshot of the main window of SpyStudio v1.0.0b, with the new Python console:

Latest improvements on the 1.0.0b version:

• New Python tabbed console allows to handle hooks!
• Python scripts can be loaded from files.
• An initial Python script can be executed on every tab opened.
• New Deviare Database Editor allows to expand the modules and functions database!
• Breakpoint params browser: The return value and the error code are now editable
• Now SpyStudio can run with SeDebugPrivilege enabled or disabled.
• Processes monitoring options are now combinable.
• Select all (Ctrl + A) and Copy (Ctrl + C) options are now available for the output window.
• ‘Filters’ concept changed to ‘Actions’.
• Database expanded: wininet.dll added and winternl.h functions of ntdll.dll added.
• Fixed: Changing a parameter on the params browser made SpyStudio to crash.
• Fixed: Trying to hook a function that was not in the database made SpyStudio to crash when closing.
• Fixed: Changing the ‘Default hook mode’ option was not reflected on the output.

We are glad about how SpyStudio is evolving and we expect users’ reports, comments and suggestions to keep it growing!

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.

We have released the first version of Deviare. A free trial is available for download.Deviare is a component for ‘easy hooking’ of Windows DLLs. Now you don’t need to be an expert to incercept operating system functions because you use a COM object abstracting many of the complexities.To show the power look at the following code snippet in CSharp (.NET):

DeviareTools.IProcesses procs = _mgr.get_Processes(0);
DeviareTools.IProcess proc = procs.get_Item("msnmsgr.exe");
DeviareTools.IPEModuleInfo mod = proc.Modules.get_ModuleByName("ws2_32.dll");
DeviareTools.IExportedFunction fnc = mod.Functions.get_ItemByName("send");
hook = mgr.CreateHook(fnc);
hook.Attach(proc);
hook.OnFunctionCalled += new Deviare.DHookEvents_OnFunctionCalledEventHandler(hook_OnFunctionCalled);
hook.Properties = (int)DeviareCommonLib.HookFlags._call_before;
hook.Hook();
void hook_OnFunctionCalled(DeviareTools.Process proc,DeviareParams.ICallInfo callInfo, Deviare.IRemoteCall rCall)
{
DeviareParams.IParams pms = callInfo.Params;
DeviareParams.IEnumParams enm = pms.Enumerator;
DeviareParams.IParam pm = enm.First;
pm = enm.Next;
object[] args = new object[1];
string msg = "Transmition -> ";
msg += pm.Value;
msg += "\r\n";
args[0] = msg;
txtOutput.Invoke(new AppendHandler(Append), args);
}

With this simple code you hook the send function in the WinSock dll for the Messenger process and our own function hook_OnFunctionCalled is called before the ‘real send’The code can be written in any COM friendly programming language like: C++, C#, VB, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby and many others. API Hook examples in C++, C#, VB.Many applications can now be built on Deviare Technology like Spy Studio a tool to monitor Windows API and available for free.

Sebastian Wain from Nektra has submitted CookiePie extension to Firefox Extend Contest with great expectations to be one of the finalists, since it is an innovative piece of software and push beyond the standard capabilities of Firefox. Although it doesn’t came finalist he waited for the announcements to release it publicly without publishing it on Internet until now.Mauro Asprea from Nektra has been contributing on improving user experience.

• What is CookiePie?
  • CookiePie is a firefox extension enabling you to maintain different cookies storage in different tabs and windows.

• How I can obtain and use it?
  • Download it from: CookiePie Extension
  • Use the tab context menu to enable CookiePie
  • For example: Toogle CookiePie in three tabs, and login to different GMail account in both.

• Where the idea came from?
  • We need to use it internally at Nektra, and finally decide to publish it for the community.

• What does CookiePie means for the end user?
  • It means that you can for example open multiple GMail/Yahoo Mail/Hotmail accounts in different tabs and windows simulteanously.

• What does CookiePie means for web developers?
  • Developers working on Web Software supporting multiple users or profiles can use CookiePie to simultaneusly test their software with each user without needing to open a different browser.

• How CookiePie was made?
  • A first look at the FireFox extensions capabilities let us think this extension was almost impossible to do. One of the limitations was the unconnected parts between http transactions and UI being difficult to correlate an UI to a specific http request/response, more when AJAX/XmlHttpRequest (i.e: GMail) is involved.
  • The work involved mainly short term research and trying to push to the extreme FireFox capabilities without knowing nothing of Mozilla Extensions at the start of development.

• What are the current known limitations:
  • Gecko 1.8.1 has some implementation errors: FireFox store cookies although our http observer changes the response header. This means the common cookies are changed in the FireFox extensions for every transaction on each tab. More information at: Mozilla Bugzilla
  • The reordering of tabs is breaking GMail account opened tabs.
  • GMail has added after we finish this extension, an alert we hope to repair it so GMail doesn’t know about another connection on another tab or window.
  • User may experience problems with another Firefox extensions (for example Tab Mix Plus)

• What are the features we would like to have in the future?
  • Listen to users feedback.
  • Complete Cookie commitment to standards/security
  • Compatibility to another extensions.
  • Add configuration options
  • Enable CookiePie by default
  • Cookies inheritance checkbox: If a user opens a new tab/window from a CookiePie tab, the new opened tab can inherit the cookie container.
  • Cookie pipeline handling: Have a configuration like the Firefox option to choose what cookies needs to be individualized and what cookies needs to be used from the firefox container.
  • Persist/Save/Load Tab Cookies
  • Code: better & cleaner.
  • Testing: Test & Fix in complex scenarios.

• What we suggest for future versions of Firefox?
  • We suggest to have this capability embedded natively on Firefox and not as a third party addin. We know this will involve changing relations between objects in Firefox but it’s an obvious step to do in the browser war.

• What platforms are supported?
  • Currently it ran fine on Windows and Linux. We need to check why Mac is not supported because this software is standard JS code, not platform dependent.

• Finally:
  • Webpage at: Cookiepie
  • You can subscribe directly to our mailing list at Nektra-CookiePie

New release of Outlook Express API

We are proud to announce our new release of Nektra’s Outlook Express API.

OEAPI is the first and unique Outlook Express API with all the functionality for adding your own toolbars, buttons, completely manage message storage, message selection and receive events. While a few other companies are giving a solution for adding toolbars and a few set of operations on messages, we give a full API for professional software development.

OEAPI goes beyond IStoreFolder and IStoreNamespace standard interfaces and enables you to develop addins for Outlook Express like: antispam, antiphishing, antivirus, integration of your company software with an email software built in Windows.

Resources for the developer:

• OEAPI trials here
• Detailed description of interfaces provided are in the OEAPI documentation
• Community OEAPI Group
• IStoreFolder and IStoreNamespace sample with source code in this zipped file.