What can you do with Microsoft Outlook plugins

Question

I have no experience in plugin development for MS Office. Can anyone tell me what is possible to do with the MS Outlook plugin API. The specific thing I am interested in is to change the way that Outlook displays emails. For example:

Can I make a plugin that will show an email conversation thread and color each alternate RE: message in a different color?

Can I change the rendering engine used to display the emails?

Can I parse the emails upon fetching, change them and save the changed version on the server, and on the local machine?

Answer 1

You can make a form region and hide the default reading pane - something like what is explained here: [1]

You can make custom windows controls and embed them into your form region, coloring them as you wish using normal C# or VB.

You can parse the e-mails and the e-mail properties and save them with the right permissions settings using the outlook object model.