Possible MAPI obsoletion with Windows 7 and Outlook 2016 EOL (October 14th 2025)

[Avasam]

I'm opening this issue as a reminder and for documentation/archival purposes.
This concerns https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32/tree/main/com/win32comext/mapi
#2218 removed considerations for Windows CE, but it' still referenced in

pywin32/com/win32comext/mapi/src/mapi_headers/EdkMdb.h

Line 2175 in a83b36c

#define SZ_HPC_V2 "Software\\Microsoft\\Windows CE Services"

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I went looking for possibly updated headers, but the link to MAPI headers download in https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32/tree/main/com/win32comext/mapi/src/mapi_headers is dead.
The same link has been removed from Microsoft's documentation Jun 27, 2022 in https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/office-developer-client-docs/pull/596/files#diff-a5a255563c0b615259f57792bb3e277c8e9827bfa24c7766f3c425cd0e12c146
The following are now all dead links:

• https://support.microsoft.com/kb/228457
• https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=12905
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=12905
• https://mapistublibrary.codeplex.com/documentation

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https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/client-developer/outlook/mapi/outlook-mapi-reference and its subpages mention that MAPI only applies to Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016.

From https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/client-developer/outlook/mapi/installing-the-mapi-subsystem:

The supported versions of Windows are as follows:

• Windows 7.
• Windows Vista.
• Windows Server 2008.
• Windows Server 2003.
• Windows XP.

According to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/outlook-2016, Outlook 2016's support Mainstream End Date was Oct 13, 2020, and the support Extended End Date is Oct 14, 2025.

According to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-7, Windows 7's support Mainstream End Date was Jan 13, 2015, the support Extended End Date is Jan 14, 2020, the support Extended Security Update Year 3 ended Jan 10, 2023 and it doesn't look like there was a 4th year.

The last Python version to support Windows 7 was Python 3.8 (https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/) and 3.8's end of life is around October 2024 (https://peps.python.org/pep-0569/)

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It doesn't even seem possible to download Outlook 2016 anymore, everything seems to redirect to newer Office 365:

• https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/download-and-install-or-reinstall-office-2019-office-2016-or-office-2013-7c695b06-6d1a-4917-809c-98ce43f86479#OfficeVersion=Office_2019_or_2016_for_PC
• https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/choose-between-the-64-bit-or-32-bit-version-of-office-2dee7807-8f95-4d0c-b5fe-6c6f49b8d261?wt.mc_id=scl_installoffice_home&ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us#32or64Bit=Office_2016

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Sidenote: I found that mingw-w64 is hosting MAPI headers, but I have no idea where/how they got it from: https://github.com/mingw-w64/mingw-w64/blob/master/mingw-w64-headers/include/mapi.h & https://sourceforge.net/p/mingw-w64/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/mingw-w64-headers/include/mapi.h

Sidenote 2: Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I found a 2020 archive of https://mapistublibrary.codeplex.com/documentation which redirects to https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=mapistublibrary which is archived with a message that leads to https://github.com/stephenegriffin/MAPIStubLibrary, which finally redirects to https://github.com/microsoft/MAPIStubLibrary
I opened a PR to fix Microsoft's own doc concerning MAPI source: MicrosoftDocs/office-developer-client-docs#777