Retrieve Outlook Attachment Document Properties using VBA - vba

Question

I am attempting to retrieve some built-in (even custom?) properties from Word/Excel documents in attachments without saving temp files and opening them in the respective Application. I tried attaching them in a MailItem and a DocumentItem.
The properties I am interested in would be: Author, Title, LastSaveDtm, etc. Outlook seems to be able to get them, because the Author name appears at the top of the Preview Pane of a DocumentItem.
The only way I could find to get those properties is using the following methods as described here:
varProp = MailItem.PropertyAccessor.GetProperties(SchemaName)
varProp = DocumentItem.PropertyAccessor.GetProperties(SchemaName)
varProp = MailItem.Attachments(1).PropertyAccessor.GetProperties(SchemaName)
varProp = DocumentItem.Attachments(1).PropertyAccessor.GetProperties(SchemaName)
The SchemaName's are defined in here: [MS-OXPROPS]: Exchange Server Protocols Master Property List
Some interesting definitions from the specs:
named property: A property that is identified by both a GUID and either a string name or a 32-bit identifier
Document object: A Message object that represents a single file, such as a document generated by a word-processing application. The
Message object contains the file as an Attachment object and includes
additional properties to describe the file.
The properties I am trying to retrieve do not have a MAPI tag syntax (canonical name like PidTagPropName) to be used with the proptag namespace (which works from what I have tested*) nor a MAPI id syntax (canonical name like PidLidPropName) to be used with the id namespace, but only have a MAPI string syntax (canonical name like PidNamePropName) to be used with the string namespace.
Here is what I tried for the SchemaName:
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/string/{00020386-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/Author"
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/string/{00020329-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/Title"
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Author"
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Title"
None of them works.
This document says that "named properties are defined by clients and occasionally service providers"
I have also seen nomewhere that document properties should be "automatically published in MAPI".
So what I am doing wrong?
(*) SchemaName's that work (PidTagSubject):
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x0037001E"
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/subject-utf8"

Answer 1

The Outlook object model, nor Redemption, doesn't provide any property or method for that.
You need to save attachments on the disk and then retrieve document properties from files. The Attachment.SaveAsFile method saves the attachment to the specified path.
Sub SaveAttachment()
Dim myInspector As Outlook.Inspector
Dim myItem As Outlook.MailItem
Dim myAttachments As Outlook.Attachments
Set myInspector = Application.ActiveInspector
If Not TypeName(myInspector) = "Nothing" Then
If TypeName(myInspector.CurrentItem) = "MailItem" Then
Set myItem = myInspector.CurrentItem
Set myAttachments = myItem.Attachments
'Prompt the user for confirmation
Dim strPrompt As String
strPrompt = "Are you sure you want to save the first attachment in the current item to the Documents folder? If a file with the same name already exists in the destination folder, it will be overwritten with this copy of the file."
If MsgBox(strPrompt, vbYesNo + vbQuestion) = vbYes Then
myAttachments.Item(1).SaveAsFile Environ("HOMEPATH") & "\My Documents\" & myAttachments.Item(1).DisplayName
End If
Else
MsgBox "The item is of the wrong type."
End If
End If
End Sub
Note, you can automate Office applications where you can open the saved document and read the properties programmatically. See How to use a single VBA procedure to read or write both custom and built-in Document Properties for more information.