Office Protocols
This documentation contains detailed technical specifications for Microsoft protocols that are implemented and used by Office to interoperate or communicate with other Microsoft products. It also contains technical specifications for extensions to industry-standard and other published protocols that are used by Office. In addition, the documentation includes a set of companion overview and reference documents that supplement the technical specifications with conceptual background, overviews of inter-protocol relationships and interactions, and technical reference information.
Although the Open Specifications technical documents are freely available, many of them include patented inventions. Some of these patents are available at no charge under the Open Specifications Promise or the Microsoft Community Promise. The remaining patents are available through various licensing programs. For more information, please visit the Microsoft Open Specifications Dev Center website or send an email message to the IP Licensing Team.
Explore Office Protocols Documentation
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Office Protocols Overview Documents Provides information about the protocols and other technologies that are included in the Office Protocols documentation set and the relationships among those technologies. |
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Office Protocols Technical Documents Provides detailed technical specifications for Microsoft proprietary protocols (including extensions to industry-standard or other published protocols) and other technologies that are used by Office to communicate with other Microsoft products. |
Q&A and Blogs
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Office Open Specifications, Standards Support, and File Formats - Microsoft Q&A Home to technical questions and answers about Office Open Specifications, Standards Support, and File Format documents. |
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These blogs, authored by the engineers who support the Open Specifications documents, provide a different venue for further discussion of those documents. |
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Downloads |
Sites |
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Office Protocols PDF .zip file (59+ MB) Office File Formats PDF .zip file (70+ MB) SharePoint Products and Technologies Protocols PDF .zip file (154+ MB) Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Standards Support PDF .zip file (38+ MB) Exchange Server Protocols PDF .zip file (82+ MB) Exchange Server and Outlook Standards Support PDF .zip file(3+ MB) |