How to automate saving attachments AND memo writing inside the messages - vba

Question

I want to automate these actions, on an open message (either received or sent):
save all the attachments in a folder through a popup letting the user to select the destination folder
This command already exist inside the Action > Other Actions submenu, but the problem is that no trace remains visible in the message about the former presence of attachments, so - as in Lotus Notes - I would like to:
edit the message to introduce some text at the beginning, something such a message like "Attachment removed on " and, even better, the path where the attachments have been saved.
I tried to start understanding Outlook VBA but I feel rather uncomfortable with it.

Answer 1

You have asked far too much in one question to hope for a complete answer. This site is for programmers to help one another develop. Your question should include some faulty code so a more experienced programmer can explain where you have gone wrong.
I understand you feeling uncomfortable with Outlook VBA. When I started, I bought a highly recommended book and found it very unhelpful. I learnt through experimentation. I still experiment when I want to understand something new. I also read through the Outlook questions and answers here. There are some extraordinarily knowledgeable people answering questions. I find that continually adding to my understanding of what can be achieved with Outlook helpful even if I do not expect to ever use some of the more exotic functionality.
You need to break your complete task into small sub-tasks. If your sub-task is small enough you can probably find something relevant if you search. My breakdown of your task is:
Allow user to identify Outlook folder from which attachments are to be saved.
Allow user to identify disc folder to which attachments are to be saved.
Read down Outlook folder looking for emails with user attachments.
For each email with user attachments:
4(a) save attachments to disc folder,
4(b) delete attachments from email
4(c) edit email body with details of deleted attachments.
I will provide some code to get you started with sub-tasks 1 and 3. You should be able to find help on sub-task 2 without too much difficulty. I will include some guidance on sub-tasks 4(a), 4(b) and 4(c).
I would have thought the easiest way for the user to identify the Outlook folder would be for the user to open that folder and then start the macro. That is the approach I have taken. Please copy this code to a module, open an appropriate Outlook folder and run the macro. I believe I have included enough comments to explain what the macro is doing but ask questions if necessary:
Option Explicit
Sub DemoSelectFolderFromEmail()
Dim Exp As Explorer
' VBA has two types of Folder: Outlook folders and disc folders.
' Since you will need access to disc folders, it is important to be clear
' which type you mean.
Dim FldrSrc As Outlook.Folder
Dim InxA As Long
Dim InxF As Long
Dim ItemCrnt As MailItem
' Get collection of emails selected by user.
Set Exp = Outlook.Application.ActiveExplorer
' Check that an email has been selected.
If Exp.Selection.Count = 0 Then
Call MsgBox("Please select an email then try again", vbOKOnly)
Exit Sub
ElseIf Exp.Selection.Item(1).Class <> olMail Then
Call MsgBox("Please select an email then try again", vbOKOnly)
Exit Sub
End If
' The parent of a selected email is the Outlook folder that contains it.
' In my view, this is the easiest way for the user to identify the source
' folder.
Set FldrSrc = Exp.Selection.Item(1).Parent
Debug.Print FldrSrc.Name
' FldrSrc.Items is a collection of the items in FldrSrc.
' Probably every itemn is a MailItem but I check to be sure.
' ReceivedTime and Subject are just two of the properties that you can access.
' If there are any attachments, I display their names.
' Note that for VBA, signatures and images count as attachments. You will need
' to add code to idetify these attachments if you do not want to save them.
For InxF = FldrSrc.Items.Count To 1 Step -1
With FldrSrc.Items(InxF)
If .Class = olMail Then
Debug.Print .ReceivedTime & " " & .Subject
If .Attachments.Count > 0 Then
For InxA = 1 To .Attachments.Count
With .Attachments(InxA)
Debug.Print " " & InxA & " " & .DisplayName
End With
Next
End If
End If
End With
Next
End Sub
SaveAsFile is the method that writes an attachment to a disc folder. Note that SaveAsFile will overwrite any existing file with the same name. If the same DisplayName is used for different attachments, you will need to have some system of making names unique.
You will need to edit the emails to delete the attachments and then save the edited emails.
An email can have a text body and or an Html body and or a RTF body. I have never seen a RTF body so you can probably ignore them. If an email has both a text and an Html body, the user sees the Html body. It is rare these days for an email not to have an Html body. You can probably get away with just adding a string at the start of the Html body but you will need to experiment to ensure the appearance is satisfactory. I would probably prefer to insert, at the beginning of the body section, a complete Html string controlling background colour, font colour, font size and font name so that I the appearance of the insert text was always the same.