KB102964 - REG: Microsoft Mail Entries, PART 3

The article contains REGISTRY entries for Microsoft Mail, Part 3. These subgroups are included:

Mac File Types Entries for Mail
MS Proofing Tools Entries for Mail
Providers Entries for Mail

This is the third of three articles on the MS Mail entries; for the other entries, see "Microsoft Mail Entries, Part 1" and "MicrosoftMail Entries, Part 2".

Registry Entries for Microsoft Mail

The parameters used by the Microsoft Mail application provided with Windows NT appear under this subkey:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Mail

This key includes the following subkeys:

Subkey             Purpose
--------------------------

Address Book       Secifies entries used by the Address Book support
                   functions for the Mail program.
Custom Commands    Specifies a custom command that can be installed into
                   one of the Mail menus at run-time.
Custom Messages    Specifies a custom message type that is installed into
                   a Mail menu at run-time.
Custom Menus       Specifies a custom menu name to be added to the Mail
                   menu bar.
Microsoft Mail     Defines the configuration of the Mail program, and the
                   Microsoft Mail transport and name service.
MMF                Affects the automatic compression of the Mail message
                   file.
Mac File Types     Defines the mapping from Macintosh file type and creator
                   tags into eight-plus-three character filename
                   extensions.
MS Proofing Tools  Defines settings for the speller.
Providers          Defines settings that service providers use Microsoft
                   Mail front-end programs.

Many of the entries in these subkeys have default values and won't be present in the Mail subkeys. To change the appearance and behavior of the Mail application, use the Mail menu commands instead of editing the Mail entries directly. Some of the options that you specify in the Mail application are stored in your mail message file (.MMF) instead of the Mail Registry entries.

These keys are created in HKEY_CURRENT_USER when you first run Mail. If your system previously contained a Windows for MS-DOS version of MSMAIL.INI, its contents are migrated to the Registry when you first run Mail under Windows NT.

MMF ENTRIES FOR MAIL

Most entries under this key affect automatic compression of the Mail message file, which by default has the filename extension of .MMF. When enabled, automatic compression uses idle time on your PC to recover disk space freed by the deleted messages and returns the disk space to the file system. You should not need to change the default values for entries in this subkey.

This is the Registry path for this subkey:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Mail\MMF

Kb_Free_Start_Compress   REG_SZ   kilobytes
-------------------------------------------
Default: 300

Background compression starts when at least this much recoverable space is detected in your message file. Both Percent_Free_Start_Compress and this entry are always active. The first entry to trigger starts the compression.

Kb_Free_Stop_Compress   REG_SZ   kilobytes
------------------------------------------
Default: 100.

Background compression stops when there is less than the indicated amount of recoverable space in your message file. This avoids the unnecessary difficulty in trying to recover the last little bit of free space. Both this entry and Percent_Free_Stop_Compress are always active. The first entry to trigger stops the compression.

No_Compress   REG_SZ   0 or 1
-----------------------------
Default: 0 (That is, background compression is enabled.)

Specifies whether background compression is to be disabled. A value of 1 disables background compression of the .MMF message store.

Percent_Free_Start_Compress   REG_SZ   percent
----------------------------------------------
Default: 10

Background compression starts when the amount of recoverable space rises above this percentage of the total file size. Both Kb_Free_Start_Compress and this entry are always active. The first one to trigger starts the compression.

Percent_Free_Stop_Compress   REG_SZ   percent
---------------------------------------------
Default: 5

Background compression stops when the amount of recoverable space falls below this percentage of the total .MMF file size. Both this entry and Kb_Free_Stop_Compress are always active. The last one to trigger stops the compression.

Secs_Till_Fast_Compress   REG_SZ   seconds
------------------------------------------
Default: 600 seconds (That is, ten minutes of system inactivity.)

The background compression algorithm has a fast mode and a slow mode. Background compression begins in the slow mode to avoid slowing system response time. After a number of seconds of system inactivity indicated by this entry, the compression switches to fast mode. Any user activity changes the setting back to slow mode.

See also the entry for AppInit_DLLs in the article"Windows Software Registration Entries".

MAC FILETYPES ENTRIES FOR MAIL

Entries in this subkey map the Macintosh file type and creator tags to MS- DOS eight-plus-three filenames. This is the Registry path for this subkey:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Mail\Mac FileTypes

Mail uses these entry values to determine what application to launch on a file attachment that has been sent from a Macintosh mail client. There are two alternate forms for the entries:

creator:type=extension or :type=extension

Both the creator and type are sequences of four characters (possibly including blanks). For example,

:TEXT=DOC

launches the application associated with the extension .DOC (Word for Windows, for example) on any Macintosh file of type TEXT.

MS PROOFING TOOLS ENTRIES FOR MAIL

The MS Proofing Tools subkey defines spelling values for Mail. This is the Registry path for this subkey:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Mail\MS Proofing Tools

CustomDict   REG_SZ   entry name
--------------------------------
Default: (no default)

Specifies the name of an entry in the [MS Proofing Tools] section of the WIN.INI file. That entry in turn gives the fully qualified path to a file containing your custom dictionary. The custom dictionary contains spellings not found in the standard dictionary but that were added using the Add button in the Spelling dialog box. This entry lets Mail take advantage of a custom dictionary you may have already created with another Microsoft application, such as Microsoft Word for Windows.

Spelling   REG_SZ   keyname
----------------------------
Default: MSPELL32.DLL,MSP32_XX.LEX (In these values, XX is usually the two
letters identifying the language version of Windows NT defined in the
DosKeybCodes subkey, as described in the article "CurrentControlSet\Control
Subkeys Entries".

Specifies the name of an entry in the MS Proofing Tools subkey that defines filenames for the spelling checker DLL and dictionary. The entries for Spelling are in this format:

Spelling NNNN,M

There is no space after the comma. In this format, NNNN is the four-digit language identifier of the current Windows NT version as defined in the Control\NLS\Language subkey, and M is the spelling dictionary type.

The Registry path for the key that this entry refers to is the following, by default:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Mail\MS Proofing Tools

This subkey contains an entry in the following form:

   Spelling NNNN,0   REG_SZ   DLLfilename, Dictionary filename

Specifies the fully qualified path to the spelling checker DLL and dictionary. This entry lets Mail use the same dictionary you may already be using with another Microsoft application, such as Microsoft Word for Windows. Windows NT does supply a dictionary.

PROVIDERS ENTRIES FOR MAIL

Entries in the Providers subkey for Mail define settings that service providers use with Microsoft Mail front-end programs. For this release, there are service providers for Microsoft Mail for PC LANs. Service providers for other mail systems may be available later. This is the Registry path for this subkey:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Mail\Providers

Logon   REG_SZ   DLL name
-------------------------
Default: MSSFS32

Identifies a single DLL that contains the logon and session management code for your mail system. This value is often, but not necessarily, the same as the Transport and Name entries. This value is the base name of the DLL, without the .DLL filename extension, but include a path if the DLL is not in a directory on the user's path or in the direcotry containing the Mail executable file.

Name   REG_SZ   DLL name
------------------------
Default: MSSFS32  PABNSP32

Identifies one or more DLLs that contain functions required to browse system and personal user lists. One of the values is often, but not necesarily, the same as the Logon and Transport entries. Enter the base name of the DLL, without the .DLL filename extension, but include a path if the DLL is not in a directory on the user's path or in the directory containing the Mail executable file.

The order of providers in this entry is significant. When Mail is attempting to resolve ambiguous names typed in a message and finds an exact match in the first provider in the list, it will not go on to query the rest. Placing the personal address book provider first can save time in that process.

SharedFolders   REG_SZ   DLL name
----------------------------------
Default: MSSFS32 (It is unlikely that any DLL other than MSSFS will have
this functionality.)

Identifies a single DLL that contains functions required to read and write messages in Microsoft PC Mail shared folders.

Transport   REG_SZ   DLL name
-----------------------------
Default: MSSFS32

Identifies a single DLL that contains the functions necessary to send and receive mail on your mail system. It is often, but not necessarily, the same as the Logon and Name entries. Enter the base name of the DLL, without the .DLL filename extension, but include a path if the DLL is not in a directory on the user's path or in the directory containing the Mail executable file.