Reply, with template, using properties of original mail - vba

I work at a Company that gets requests we filter in terms of
being eligibile for financing from our financing partner
requiring more information from the enquirer
There is a lot of monotonous work, in copy pasting email replies.
I looked into creating a Quick Action in Outlook, but because our mother company does not allow certain freedoms, like the Font has to be specifically Segoe Ui Light etc. I could not use this, so I thought about writing a macro.
I intended for a macro button to:
Open a new Reply email, replying to all in the original mail.
In this new email text body, use a template email that I already made and saved as a template. (This way it saved the Font, size and other formatting.)
Put in the original Sender and CC'ed mail addresses as well as the Subject from the original mail.
And then display the email, so I could make edits if I wanted to before sending.
Sub ReplyGewerbeanmeldung()
Dim origEmail As MailItem
Dim replyEmail As MailItem
Set origEmail = Application.ActiveWindow.Selection.Item(1)
Set replyEmail = Application.CreateItemFromTemplate(" "C:\Users\XYZ\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\ReplyGewerbeanmeldung.oft"\ReplyGewerbeanmeldung.oft")
replyEmail.To = origEmail.Sender
replyEmail.CC = origEmail.CC
replyEmail.Subject = origEmail.Subject
replyEmail.HTMLBody = replyEmail.HTMLBody & origEmail.Reply.HTMLBody
replyEmail.Display
End Sub

First of all, it seems you need to correct the file path to the template message. The following string is not a valid file path:
" "C:\Users\XYZ\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\ReplyGewerbeanmeldung.oft"\ReplyGewerbeanmeldung.oft"
Try to use the following string instead:
Set replyEmail = Application.CreateItemFromTemplate("C:\Users\XYZ\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\ReplyGewerbeanmeldung.oft")
You can read more about that in the How To: Create a new Outlook message based on a template article.
Anyway, creating items from a template will not preserve the original message body. Moreover, in Outlook you will not get any visual appearance that a particular items was replied. So, you need to call the ReplyAll method on the original item in Outlook to avoid this artefacts in Outlook.
You can create a new mail item, but only for copying the message body response which is required to paste into the reply. The NameSpace.OpenSharedItem method can be used to to open iCalendar appointment (.ics) files, vCard (.vcf) files, and Outlook message (.msg) files. You may consider using it instead of creating a new item based on the template to grab the message body from there.

Related

Can I use VBA to update an email signature with leave dates?

I have been using VBA in Excel for about a year now, but I have never considered using it in Outlook.
One of the email signatures that I use ends with "Advance notice of leave: [leave dates]", however I know that I will likely forget to update this after I return to the office. Is there a way to synchronise this email signature with my outlook calendar so that the signature will automatically update to show my next leave period?
If possible, please answer in simple terms because this is my first time coding with VBA in Outlook! Thanks
The Outlook object model provides properties and methods for scanning the message body including the signature. The Outlook object model supports three main ways of dealing with the message body:
The Body property returns or sets a string representing the clear-text body of the Outlook item.
The HTMLBody property of the MailItem class returns or sets a string representing the HTML body of the specified item. Setting the HTMLBody property will always update the Body property immediately. For example:
Sub CreateHTMLMail()
'Creates a new e-mail item and modifies its properties.
Dim objMail As Outlook.MailItem
'Create e-mail item
Set objMail = Application.CreateItem(olMailItem)
With objMail
'Set body format to HTML
.BodyFormat = olFormatHTML
.HTMLBody = "<HTML><BODY>Enter the message text here. </BODY></HTML>"
.Display
End With
End Sub
The Word object model can be used for dealing with message bodies. See Chapter 17: Working with Item Bodies for more information.
Note, the MailItem.BodyFormat property allows you to programmatically change the editor that is used for the body of an item.
After detecting the keyword in the message body you may create an appointment on the calendar, see How To: Create a new Outlook Appointment item for more information.

Generating Email with Hyperlink from MS Access

I'm attempting to generate an email from MS Access when a particular procedure is run and certain conditions are met, the email will include a hyperlink. I've found the sendobject macro command does not allow for hyperlink, only static text. It seems that the solution is to code the portion of the entire process that generates and sends the email in VBA and call on that code in the appropriate segment of my if function within my macro.
I can't figure out the appropriate code to generate and send and email with a hyperlink to an individual however. It will be very simple, single recepient, unchanging title, and the body will read 'New providers require designation, please access the provider designation dashboard for provider designation' ideally the provider designation dashboard would be the hyperlink and point to a shared network space.
What commands do I need to accomplish this, I'm inexperienced in VBA and this is eating up a fair amount of time I don't have.
Thank you
There are some different approaches for sending e-mail with code. The code bellow uses an Outlook Application COM object to generate the message with a hyperlink - thus, it will only work if MS Outlook is installed in the user's machine.
Sub NewEmail(ByVal mylink As String, ByVal therecipient As String)
Dim Outlook As Object, Email As Object
Set Outlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set Email = Outlook.CreateItem(0) 'olMailItem = 0
With Email
.Subject = "My Subject" 'message subject
.HTMLBody = "Greetings, please check this link: <a href='" & mylink & "'>Click me</a>." 'message body, in html. concatenate multiple strings if you need to
.To = therecipient 'recipient
'use this if you want to generate the message and show it to the user
.Display
'use this instead if you want the mail to be sent directly
'.Send
End With
Set Email = Nothing
Set Outlook = Nothing
End Sub
Put the code in a module. Then anywhere in your code you may call the procedure with something like:
NewEmail "www.mysite.com/targetpage.html", "persontomail#domain.com"
Notice that the routine above uses late binding. To use early binding (and get intellisese, but with some drawbacks), you would have to add a reference to Microsoft Outlook XX.X Object Library and dim the "Outlook" and "Email" objects as Outlook.Application and Outlook.MailItem, respectively.

Moving an attachment from an email into an Outlook folder

I'm trying to take attachments from mails received and move them into a folder within Outlook.
I can move the entire message, and I've also worked out how to save the attachments to a drive, but neither of these things is what I'm looking for.
I was looking at something along the lines of the below, but I'm guessing there is no Attachment.Move similar to MailItem.Move.
Sub test1()
Dim olFolder As MAPIFolder
Set olFolder = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI").Folders("Mailbox - Test").Folders("Inbox")
Dim Item As Object
For Each Item In olFolder.Items
Set oMail = Item
For Each att In oMail.Attachments
att.Move Application.GetNamespace("MAPI").Folders("Enterprise Connect").Folders("Test")
Next
Next
End Sub
The attachments do not exist as standalone entities in folders - what you see if a message with a single attachment. The item's message class is IPM.Document.* - when you double click on an item like that, Outlook is smart enough to open the attachment instead of showing an inspector. Take a look at such an item with OutlookSpy (I am its author - click IMessage and Item buttons).
Outlook Object Model does not allow to create DocumentItem objects directly. But you can create a regular MailItem object, add an attachment using MailItem.Attachments.Add, then reset the MessageClass property appropriately - e.g. for a ".txt" attachment, look up HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt registry key, read the default value, append it to message class (IPM.Note.txtfile).
If using Redemption (I am also its author) is an option, it exposes the RDODocumentItem and allows to create document items directly (see the examples).
The Attachment class doesn't provide such methods. You need to save the attached file to the disk and then re-attach it anew to another Outlook item.
You may find the Getting Started with VBA in Outlook 2010 article helpful.

Create a mail object and track it down in sent folder

I need to create a mail via VBA, send it, and then export a .msg file of the sent mail to be archived (I know, it's weird, but that's what the boss asked for).
Creating the mail is straightforward:
Set OLK = Outlook.Session
Set ML = OLK.Createitem olMailItem
With ML
.Recipients.add "somebody#somedomain.com"
.Subject = "Great mail you have there"
.Body = "It would be a shame if somebody couldn't archive it"
End with
ML.Send
Problem is, after sending the mail is moved in the sent folder and the ML object points to nothing.
I could use the .saveas method before sending, but then the saved file is the unsent version, which can be edited and sent again.
How can I trace the mail in the sent folder?
The "brute force" way I found out implies saving the ConversationIndex before sending
IDX= ML.ConversationIndex
and then scan all the items in the sent folder for it:
For each ML in OLK.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderSentMail).Items
If ML.ConversationIndex = IDX Then ML.SaveAs HomeDir & "\" & OutFileName: Exit For
Next
but it isn't exactly a smooth work.... (and may fail if some smartass replies to the automatic mail, even if nobody should)
Max,
You can handle the ItemAdd event of the Items class which belongs to the Sent Items folder. It is fired when one or more items are added to the specified collection.
In the ItemAdd event handler you can check out whether a particular item should be saved or not. For example, you can add a user property before calling the Send method. See the UserProperties class for more information.
Set myProp = myItem.UserProperties.Add("MyPropName", olText)
Be aware, the MailItem class provides the SaveSentMessageFolder property which allows to set a Folder object that represents the folder in which a copy of the e-mail message will be saved after being sent. So, you can assign a custom folder to save them.
You can add a user property (MailItem.UserProperties.Add), but that would cause the message to be sent in the TNEF format unless the UseTnef property (DASL name http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062008-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/8582000B) is explicitly set to false.
You can set a named MAPI property using PropertyAccessor.SetProperty - just pick your custom GUID and property name. E.g.
ML.PropertyAccessor.SetProperty("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/string/{3ADE3813-37A9-49C9-AD84-D49C8FF5D660}/MyOwnProp", "SomeValue")

Outlook ReportItem.Body returning messed up encoding

If certain users automate the Outlook Client to view bounce backs/ReportItems in a shared inbox, rather than returning the clear text of the message as indicated by the documentation there is a unicode string that has been parsed as a UTF-8 string - so it looks like Chinese.
I can get past that with some code, but the additional issue is that this change occurs in Outlook as well for all users with access to that inbox. The message itself as viewed in Outlook appears as Chinese characters - the original unicode html parsed as UTF-8.
We are using the normal methods to access the report item:
For Counter as Integer = Inbox.Items.Count To 1 Step -1
Dim Report As Outlook.ReportItem = Inbox.Items(Counter)
Dim Body As String = Report.Body
The last line is where we get the garbled text In VBA it attempts to parse it as ASCII and returns a large block of "?". In .Net it returns the value parsed as UTF-8 and we get the characters that appear Chinese. In either case the report item in the inbox begins displaying as Chinese characters and continues to do so for all users of that inbox.
I just had this happen to my VBA function in Outlook that processes email bounce backs for orders and marks those orders as requiring attention. The original email in outlook looks fine but when I attempt to process it, the characters change to Chinese and Report.Body just shows question marks.
I found using StrConv to convert to Unicode could get me the correct body contents for processing.
Dim strBody as String
strBody = StrConv(Report.Body, vbUnicode)
Are you sure that the Inbox.Items(Counter) call returns an instance of the ReportItem class? Did you have a chance to check out the MessageClass property?
Most probably you try to cast an instance of the MailItem class to the ReportItem class. Is that the case?
Also I'd suggest using any low-level property viewer such as MFCMAPI or OutlookSpy for observing properties at runtime. Do you see "chinese" charactere there?
I came across this issue and I've written a function that solves the issue for me. I thought I'd share it here in case it's of use to anyone else.
Private Sub Example()
Dim Item As Object
Set Item = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1)
Debug.Print ItemBody(Item)
End Sub
Public Function ItemBody(Item As Variant) As String
On Error Resume Next
If TypeName(Item) = "ReportItem" Then
With Item.GetInspector
ItemBody = .WordEditor.Content
.Close 1
End With
Else
ItemBody = Item.Body
End If
End Function
Yes, there is a problem with ReportItem.Body property in the Outlook Object Model (present in Outlook 2013 and 2016) - you can see it in OutlookSpy (I am its author): select an NDR message, click Item button, select the Body property - it will be garbled. Worse than that, once the report item is touched with OOM, Outlook will display the same junk in the preview pane.
The report text is stored in various MAPI recipient properties (click IMessage button in OutlookSpy and go to the GetRecipientTable tab). The problem is the ReportItem object does not expose the Recipients collection. The workaround is to either use Extended MAPI (C++ or Delphi) or Redemption (any language - I am also its author) - its ReportItem.ReportText property does not have this problem:
set oItem = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1)
set oSession = CreateObject("Redemption.RDOSession")
oSession.MAPIOBJECT = Application.Session.MAPIOBJECT
set rItem = oSession.GetRDOObjectFromOutlookObject(oItem)
MsgBox rItem.ReportText