Communicating with Outlook in a .NET program
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Hi everyone! I thought I'd share with you a quick tip that demonstrates how your .NET programs can interact with Microsoft Office programs. In this example, I'll use Outlook. Start up Visual Studio and create a new Windows Application. Here I'm using VB.NET, although you can use C# too, of course. In Solution Explorer, right-click on your project, and choose Add Reference... In the Add Reference dialog, click the COM tab, as shown here. Scroll down and find Microsoft Outlook Object Library. (There will also be a version number present.) Now go to your form in Design view. Drag a button and a text box onto it. Set the text box's Multiline property to True. Your form will look something like this:
Double-click the button to add a click handler. When the Form1.vb code opens, scroll to the top of the file and add the following Imports statement, which will make it easier to access the Outlook type names: Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop Then add the following code inside the handler, shown in bold:
Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop
Public Class Form1
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Dim OLapp As New Outlook.Application()
Dim OLNS As Outlook.NameSpace = _
OLapp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Dim OLFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim OLMailItem As Outlook.MailItem
For Each OLFolder In OLNS.Folders
TextBox1.Text &= OLFolder.Name & vbCrLf
Dim i As Int32
Dim max As Int32
max = 10
If OLFolder.Items.Count < 10 Then
max = OLFolder.Items.Count
End If
For i = 1 To max
OLMailItem = OLFolder.Items.Item(i)
TextBox1.Text &= " " & OLMailItem.Subject _
& vbCrLf
Next
Next
OLapp.Quit()
End Sub
End Class
The first line inside the handler opens a new instance of Outlook, and saves a reference to the application in the variable called OLapp. The next line grabs a namespace for your outlook objects. The next line declares a folder variable. Then the for loop loops through all the folders. The inner loop loops through the first 10 messages in the folder, displaying the subject lines. Each item is written to the text box. Note that if you're curious about what members are available, you can use the Intellisense in Visual Studio. For example, this image shows me checking what members are available to the mail item:
You can also use Intellisense to see what data types are available, like so:
If you find this interesting or useful, I suggest playing around and trying out the various types and objects and see what you can do. Be careful, though! You're working with the live data, and if you make changes you could lose all your email. (I recommend backing up your Outlook data first.) Have fun! |
