The XMM-Newton Extended Survey of the Taurus Molecular Cloud (XEST) surveys the most populated ~5 square degrees of the Taurus Molecular Cloud, using the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory to study the thermal structure, variability, and long-term evolution of hot plasma, to investigate the magnetic dynamo, and to search for new potential members of the association. The authors present overall correlations with fundamental stellar parameters that were derived from the previous literature. The present overview paper introduces the project and provides the basic results from the X-ray analysis of all sources detected in the XEST survey. Comprehensive tables in the published paper summarize the stellar properties of all the targets surveyed. The survey goes deeper than previous X-ray surveys of Taurus by about an order of magnitude and for the first time systematically accesses very faint and strongly absorbed TMC objects. The authors find a detection rate of 85% and 98% for classical and weak-line T Tauri stars (CTTS and WTTS), respectively, and identify about half of the surveyed protostars and brown dwarfs. Overall, 136 out of 169 surveyed stellar systems were detected. The authors describe an X-ray luminosity vs. mass correlation, discuss the distribution of X-ray-to-bolometric luminosity ratios, and show evidence for lower X-ray luminosities in CTTS compared to WTTS. The complete catalog of all X-ray sources (stellar and non-stellar) detected in the 28 XEST fields is presented in this table. The catalog provides X-ray coordinates, their uncertainties, X-ray count rates and their uncertainties, and X-ray hardness ratios for 2347 detected X-ray sources. If two XEST fields overlap, the same sources may have been identified twice, with different XEST IDs assigned, notice. This table was created by the HEASARC in July 2007 based on the <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/A+A/468/353">CDS Catalog J/A+A/468/353</a> file table14.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .