Outlook Developer News

Transition at OutlookCode.com

A word from Sue Mosher: I am delighted to announce that, effective immediately, OutlookCode.com is under new management. My fellow Outlook MVP Eric Legault brings to the site a wealth of experience and enthusiasm not just for Outlook development but also for SharePoint. In the future, you can expect to see more content related to how these two platforms can work together.

Outlook has been at the center of my life for more than a decade, and I have greatly enjoyed helping people -- beginners to experts -- explore Outlook as a development platform. However, it is time for me to move on to do other things. You can follow my evolving interests by visiting my Turtleflock web site. Also, I will still be around here to respond to comments on my code samples and follow up on my existing discussion threads.

I wish you all the best of luck in your Outlook endeavors and hope you will give Eric the same support that I've enjoyed over the years.

Convert a business form to an Outlook custom form

Have you ever wanted to convert a business form to electronic transmission using Outlook? In a detailed step-by-step walkthrough, Jimmy shows you how, with plenty of screen shots for every procedure, including tricky techniques like tab order and validation. 

The walkthrough is for a message form, so it assumes that the organization has an Exchange server where the forms can be published, but the basic form design methods are applicable to any type of form.

Another round of sample VSTO add-ins for Outlook

Here are more sample add-ins using Visual Studio 2008 and Outlook 2007:

• Simple Outlook Add-in with VSTO 3.0 - Walkthrough with screen shots by Janne Mattila showing how a delegate can send a reply on behalf of another user automatically
• Out Loud for Outlook - applies speech recognition and speech synthesis to the task of communicating with Outlook
• Combining Information Rights Management with Watermarking via an Outlook 2007 add-in - Ronan Geraghty sends personalized messages with Outlook and IRM
• VSTO - Importing addresses from Database to Outlook - add-in from Naresh Bojja showing how to import from and synchronize with a database
• Error saving command bar position: Outlook 2007, VS 2008 add-in - shows how to save the user's preference for a custom command bar's position on an Explorer window
• Using Visual Studio 2008 / VSTO / Outlook to Pull Out RFC 822 Header Data - use a form region to display a message's Internet headers

Outlook and VS2008 on video

Microsoft has a new Office Developer Show series that offers tips on creating applications for Outlook and other Office programs. Some highlights:

• Episode 2 - how to create a class in an Outlook project to avoid the object model security prompts
• Episode 4 - a tip about saving and restoring the position of custom toolbars in Outlook 2007
• Episode 5 - an Outlook add-in that uses the Application.ItemSend event to help users remember to send an attachments

Using the Outlook object model with .NET

Matt Staehle, who works on Microsoft's Messaging Developer Support Team, has been running a series of articles on working with the Outlook object model in .NET languages. Read all the installments to pick up best practices and avoid common mistakes. Code examples are in C#:

• OOM.NET Part 1 - Introduction and Why Events Stop Firing
• Part 2 - Outlook Item Leaks
• Part 3 - Back to the Basics, MSDN Must Reads
• Part 4 - Don't Thread On Me
• Part 5 - Event Planning

From the Forums

Basic Outlook Techniques

How to create multiple folder into pst file...

Hi I want to create multiple subdirectories into a pst file. It's easy one by one, but I have to create more than 100 sub dir !!! Is it possible to script this creation Thanks

Check for PST format: ANSI or UNICODE

I read on MS that you can access the PR_STORE_SUPPORT_MASK property, but I don't know how to do this? Do I create a CDO session and check it there?

Outlook Form Design

Force Form to run in Foreground, Outlook...

I have a form that gives the users a choice to add various bits of text to the subject line, when the user clicks on the send button, The Form runs bun in the background!! how do i make the form run in the foreground?? any clues please. Many thanks....

show column in custom view as dropdownlist...

hello I've custom message form with a combobox.Userproperty of type text is associted with this combobox.I'm displaying this userproperty in custom view on Inbox.I'm able to edit its value by enabling in cell editing.But I need to display this column...

Outlook Expert Techniques

I get a 'Cannot create ActiveX component'...

It seems to be related to Outlook Redemtion and in particular the CreateObject line: Dim sItem As Object sItem = CreateObject("Redemption.SafeAppointmentItem") Has anyone else seen this and know how to fix it? Thanks!

Modify the item context menu

Does anyone have any idea how to modify the item context menu - that is I want to display a new context menu every time users right click on a field I added. I want that users will be able to change the value of field just like they are able to change...

Outlook and .NET

Error in trying to save inline images

Hi, I am trying to save the attachments in the emails by calling the SaveAsFile method, and it works fine for those "ordinary" attachments. However, when the plug-in tries to save an inline attachment, for e.g. an image, the following error is returned: "Cannot...

create a new pst file and add a list of msg...

I need to create a new pst file and add a list of msg file to it and save the pst file in a network folder. How to do this?

Code Essentials

Email activity tracking

Hi, I know this is a bit vague and I apologise for my lack of knowledge. I have a question regarding a shared mailbox within outlook 2000. I need to know if there is any code that can track who moved an email and when from the inbox of one shared mailbox...

Add category to Appointment Item via VBA...

Hi All, I have some code that will create the appointment in Outlook but I wish to also categorize the appointment as well. Currently have - With objAppt .Start = cerDate + cerStartTime .End = cerDate + cerEndTime .Subject...