SMTP Addresses

Applies to: Outlook 2013 | Outlook 2016

The format of SMTP email addresses is defined in RFC 822. MAPI components should handle any address that complies with that standard. However, there is a particular form of RFC 822 address that best encodes MAPI addresses:

display-name < email-address >

The angle brackets are included as literals. Blanks are common in display names; they need not be quoted. A typical address might look like this one, which belongs to one of the coauthors of RFC 1521:

Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@bellcore.com>

If the display name contains characters that have special meaning in SMTP addresses, such as < or @, the entire display name should be enclosed in double quotes. On outbound mail, if the total length of the email address plus display name exceeds 255 characters, the display name should be dropped.

The parts of an SMTP address map into MAPI properties as follows:

SMTP address component	MAPI property
display-name for all recipients	PR_DISPLAY_NAME (PidTagDisplayName)
display-name for From field	PR_SENDER_NAME (PidTagSenderName)
display-name for Sender field	PR_SENT_REPRESENTING_NAME (PidTagSentRepresentingName)
email-address	PR_EMAIL_ADDRESS (PidTagEmailAddress)
implicit, always "SMTP"	PR_ADDRTYPE (PidTagAddressType)

If there is no display name for an address on inbound mail, the entire email address should be used instead. The address type is always SMTP.

Recipient properties are taken from the MAPI message's recipient table; sender properties are taken from the message itself.