Microsoft announced on Monday two open-source projects that let developers view data from Outlook without the need for the e-mail and calendar program itself.

One is a software development kit for reading the .pst files that Outlook uses to save personal files; the other is a graphical tool for viewing the internal data structure of the .pst files.

"Combined, the documentation and tools advance interoperability with data stored in .pst files, reflecting customer requests for greater access to data stored and shared in digital formats generated by Microsoft Outlook and for enhanced data portability," Microsoft said on its interoperability Web site.

Full story: c|net