I'm examining some older computers that were using Outlook 2003 and have come across a number of 'notes' stored in the Outlook notes directory, however the structure of the data of these files strongly resembles some sort of IM.
They are plain text docs with a list of the recipients at the top, then this is followed by the body which is your standard
he says - blah blah blah
she says - nag nag whine
I'm in the process of sourcing Office 2003 to have a look at that first hand, however I won't be able to replicate anything without first setting up a test environment, before I go down that path I want to gather as much information as I possibly can.
Research suggests that Outlook 2003 could be integrated with Windows messenger, but all reports suggested this launched the external application, these logs appear to exist within the folder structure of the Outlook .OST archive.
Anyone have experience with these 'notes' files containing chat logs?
Edit A little more research reveals it's likely Office Communicator that has been in use..
My first guess would have been OCS like your edited comment suggests. I can't remember how it is stored in 2003 but it makes sense.
My other thought is that it is an actual sticky note where a user cut/pasted a conversation. I only suggest this because I've definitely done that in the past in order to quickly save a conversation.
I still think it's more likely OCS but it definitely made me think of the other scenario just from past experience. I'll see if I can find some old OCS data from 2003 to confirm how it's stored.
Jamie
Thanks Jamie, I was looking at the cut and paste option for archiving but there simply to prevalent across too many users on this case.
OCS seems to be the most likely, I'm playing around with an install today to see if I can verify that it stores the messages in the 'notes' folder.
Edit Okay well I'm leaning away from OCS now as it's not installed on any of the machines in question. They do have various other IM programs though, Windows Messenger, Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.
Attempting to boot one up in VM so I can try to see if one of them is set to sync to the local .OST file for some reason.