Is it possible to find related emails and loop the results in the background? - vba

Question

I'd like to find related emails to the email I have currently selected. Then I want to loop the results.
Using the ActiveExplorer.Search takes a moment, and at the same time the code keeps running. So it doesn't return any results, because of loading still happening in the background, I guess.
So my questions are:
How do I find related emails?
How do I loop the search results (in the background)?
To find related emails, maybe something like this:
Sub FindRelatedEmails()
Dim ns As Outlook.NameSpace
Set ns = myOlApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Dim oMail As Outlook.MailItem
Set oMail = ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)
Dim strFrom As String
strFrom = oMail.SenderName
Dim strSubject As String
strSubject = oMail.ConversationTopic
Dim myOlApp As New Outlook.Application
Set myOlApp.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder = ns.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
Dim txtSearch As String
txtSearch = "[Konversation]:=""" & strSubject & """"
myOlApp.ActiveExplorer.Search txtSearch, olSearchScopeAllFolders
' Problem occurs below, since the code keeps running but the search results haven't loaded yet.
myOlApp.ActiveExplorer.SelectAllItems
Dim i As Long
For i = ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count To 1 Step -1
Dim Item As MailItem
Set Item = ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(i)
Debug.Print Item.Subject, Item.Sender, Item.Parent.FolderPath
Next
Set ns = Nothing
Set oMail = Nothing
Set myOlApp = Nothing
Set Item = Nothing
End Sub

Answer 1

Try to use Application.AdvancedSearch instead - it exposes Application.AdvancedSearchComplete event.

Answer 2

The Explorer.Search method is used to perform a Microsoft Instant Search on the current folder displayed in the Explorer using the given Query. Basically, it will use Outlook UI for searching items and the result is visible in Outlook. The functionality of Explorer.Search is analogous to the Search button in Instant Search. It behaves as if the user has typed the query string in the Instant Search user interface and then clicked Search. When calling Search, the query is run in the user interface, and there is no programmatic mechanism to obtain the search results. The Search method does not provide a callback to enable the developer to determine when the search is complete.
Instead, you may find the Find/FindNext or Restrict methods of the Items class helpful. Read more about them in the following articles:
How To: Use Find and FindNext methods to retrieve Outlook mail items from a folder (C#, VB.NET)
How To: Use Restrict method to retrieve Outlook mail items from a folder
Also you may consider using the AdvancedSearch method of the Application class helpful. The key benefits of using the AdvancedSearch method in Outlook are:
The search is performed in another thread. You don’t need to run another thread manually since the AdvancedSearch method runs it automatically in the background.
Possibility to search for any item types: mail, appointment, calendar, notes etc. in any location, i.e. beyond the scope of a certain folder. The Restrict and Find/FindNext methods can be applied to a particular Items collection (see the Items property of the Folder class in Outlook).
Full support for DASL queries (custom properties can be used for searching too). You can read more about this in the Filtering article in MSDN. To improve the search performance, Instant Search keywords can be used if Instant Search is enabled for the store (see the IsInstantSearchEnabled property of the Store class).
You can stop the search process at any moment using the Stop method of the Search class.
The Outlook Object Model provides the AdvanvedSearchComplete event of the Application class. An instance of the Search class containing the search results is passed to the event handler (see the Results property).
See Advanced search in Outlook programmatically: C#, VB.NET for more information.