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Email File Formats

The Email file format category includes file formats that can be processed by mailing applications like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail and others. Let us have a look at some of these file formats.

What is a MSG file?

MSG is a file format used by Microsoft Outlook and Exchange to store email messages, contacts, appointments, or other tasks. Such messages may contain one or more email fields, with the sender, recipient, subject, date, and message body, or contact information, appointment particulars, and one or more task specifications. The properties that constitute the Message object, are also a part of the MSG file.  MSG file has headers, main message body, and hyperlinks as plain ASCII text. MSG files are also suitable with the programs that need Microsoft’s Messaging Applications Programming Interface (MAPI).

What is a PST file?

Files with PST extension represent Outlook Personal Storage Files (also called Personal Storage Table) that store a variety of user information. User information is stored in folders of different types which include emails, calendar items, notes, contacts, and several other file formats. PST files are used for archiving emailing data offline that can be later loaded and viewed in various applications.

What is an ICS file?

The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is an internet standard(RFC 2445) for exchanging and deploying the calendaring events and scheduling.  The iCalendar format is interoperable, thereby ensuring the exchange of calendar information among the users having different email applications. iCalendar formats the input data as a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) and facilitates the object exchanged via different transport protocols. These transport protocols can be SMTP, HTTP, point-to-point asynchronous communication, and physical media based-network transport.

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