Rule that prompts user once but applies results to multiple messages? - vba

Question

I want to apply an ad-hoc category to a selection of Outlook emails.
I have a VBA script that asks the user for a string and then sets this as the email's category. I run this by moving all emails to be updated to a temp folder, and then run the Outlook rule on all messages in that folder.
Public Sub PromptForCat(Email As Outlook.MailItem)
Category = InputBox("Please enter category to add :")
Email.Categories = Email.Categories & "," & Category
Email.Save
End Sub
However, this will prompt me for every message in the folder - is there any way to only prompt me once, yet apply the result to all messages in the folder?

Answer 1

If you need to run the code once for a selected folder you need to iterate over all items in the folder. The Items property of the Folder class returns an Items collection object as a collection of Outlook items in the specified folder:
Sub ContactDateCheck()
Dim myNamespace As Outlook.NameSpace
Dim myContacts As Outlook.Items
Dim myItem As Object
Set myNamespace = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set myContacts = myNamespace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts).Items
For Each myItem In myContacts
If (myItem.Class = olContact) Then
MsgBox myItem.FullName &; ": " &; myItem.LastModificationTime
End If
Next
End Sub
To get the selected items in Outlook you need to use the Selection property of the Explorer class:
Sub GetSelectedItems()
Dim myOlExp As Outlook.Explorer
Dim myOlSel As Outlook.Selection
Dim MsgTxt As String
Dim x As Integer
MsgTxt = "You have selected items from: "
Set myOlExp = Application.ActiveExplorer
Set myOlSel = myOlExp.Selection
For x = 1 To myOlSel.Count
MsgTxt = MsgTxt & myOlSel.Item(x).SenderName & ";"
Next x
MsgBox MsgTxt
End Sub