The message class specifies the type of the message. It determines the set of properties defined for the message, the kind of information the message conveys, and how to handle the message.

The PR_MESSAGE_CLASSproperty contains ASCII strings concatenated with periods. Each string represents a level of subclassing. For example, IPM.Note is a subclass of IPM and a superclass of IPM.Note.Private.

PR_MESSAGE_CLASSmust consist of the ASCII characters 32 through 127 and must not end with a period (ASCII 46). Sort and compare operations must treat it as a case-insensitive string. The maximum possible length is 255 characters, but in order to allow MAPI room to append qualifiers it is recommended that the original length be kept under 128 characters. Note that these lengths are given in characters; on platforms such as Unicode the actual byte count could be higher.

Every message is required to furnish the PR_MESSAGE_CLASSproperty. Normally the client application creating a new message sets PR_MESSAGE_CLASSas soon as IMAPIFolder::CreateMessagereturns successfully.

The PR_MESSAGE_CLASSvalues defined by MAPI are:

	Copy Code
IPM.Note for a standard interpersonal message REPORT.<subject message class>.DR for a delivery report REPORT.<subject message class>.NDR for a nondelivery report REPORT.<subject message class>.IPNRN for a read report REPORT.<subject message class>.IPNNRN for a nonread report

IPM and IPC are intended to be superclasses only, and a message should have at least one subclass qualifier appended before being stored or submitted.

A custom message class can define properties in a reserved range for use with that message class only.

Message classes control, which receive folder an incoming message, is stored in.