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<h1 id="about-the-structure-of-ole-files">About the structure of OLE files</h1>
<p>This page is part of the documentation for <a href="https://bitbucket.org/decalage/olefileio_pl/wiki">olefile</a>. It provides a brief overview of the structure of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_File_Binary_Format">Microsoft OLE2 files (also called Structured Storage, Compound File Binary Format or Compound Document File Format)</a>, such as Microsoft Office 97-2003 documents, Image Composer and FlashPix files, Outlook messages, StickyNotes, several Microscopy file formats, McAfee antivirus quarantine files, etc.</p>
<p>An OLE file can be seen as a mini file system or a Zip archive: It contains <strong>streams</strong> of data that look like files embedded within the OLE file. Each stream has a name. For example, the main stream of a MS Word document containing its text is named "WordDocument".</p>
<p>An OLE file can also contain <strong>storages</strong>. A storage is a folder that contains streams or other storages. For example, a MS Word document with VBA macros has a storage called "Macros".</p>
<p>Special streams can contain <strong>properties</strong>. A property is a specific value that can be used to store information such as the metadata of a document (title, author, creation date, etc). Property stream names usually start with the character '05'.</p>
<p>For example, a typical MS Word document may look like this:</p>
<div class="figure">
<img src="OLE_VBA_sample.png" /><p class="caption"></p>
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<p>Go to the <a href="API.html">API</a> page to see how to use all olefile features to parse OLE files.</p>
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<h2 id="olefile-documentation">olefile documentation</h2>
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