c# VSTO Outlook email body from opened window - c#

I've a problem with my VSTO application for Outlook. I want to process the email body from a selected e-mail.
For selected e-mails out of the "default" list this code works fine:
Object selItem = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.ActiveExplorer().Selection[1];
Outlook.MailItem mailItem = (Outlook.MailItem)selItem;
return mailItem.Body;
But if a user opens an email from the list with a double click, the email is displayed in a new window. If the addin is executed in this window (over the ribbon), the email from the list is still used (which is now in the background).
Is there a way to find out if the plugin was started in a separate window and then get the email body from it?
Regards,
Florian

Coincidentally, I just dealt with something similar to this. My situation isn't identical, but since I could easily piece together what it seems like you're looking for see below. I haven't tested this, and obviously you'll have to handle passing the correct reference to your Outlook Application, but since i had this immediately available I figured it would pass it along with the hope that you'll find it helpful.
private static void ribbonButton_Click(object sender, RibbonControlEventArgs e)
{
Outlook.Application application = new Outlook.Application();
Outlook.Inspector inspector = application.ActiveInspector();
if (application.ActiveExplorer().Selection[1] is Outlook.MailItem explorerMailItem)
{
// Write code to handle message if sourced from explorer (i.e., Reading Pane)
}
else if (inspector.CurrentItem is Outlook.MailItem inspectorMailItem)
{
// Write code to hanlde message if sourced from inspector
// (i.e., openened (double-clicked) message
}
}

When you double click on email item you open an inspector window and you can access it by using Application.ActiveInspector() method. The Inspector object has CurrentItem property which represents the opened item.
Also, you should avoid using multiple dots in expressions and properly release COM objects.

Related

C# Attach to open outlook email, edit and send

I am trying get some C# to attach to an open reply-email (triggered manually by user), on the already running instance of Outlook (opened manually by user). The code should identify the open reply email, edit the subject line and body of the email and send the email.
The problem is that I get as far as identifying the running instance of Outlook and assigning it to an object using one of the Marshal methodsoutApp = Marshal.GetActiveObject("Outlook.Application") as Application, but then I cannot cast it to a MailItem type in order to manipulate its elements e.g. the subject line, body, etc...something like MailItem mailItem = (MailItem)outApp.CreateItem((OlItemType.olMailItem)); throws an invalid cast exception at runtime.
Apologies if I am wrong, but could not find a single example close to this exact sequence of events, one of the closer ones is this post c# outlook open existing instance and reply to email
but then it goes a whole different way. There are tons of posts on how to use the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook to OPEN and then use an instance of Outlook, but hardly anything (that I could find) on how to use an open instance. Any help is appreciated, thank you.
EDIT 08102019:
The code is used from an RPA platform, so there is no risk of it being picked up as malware. The "user" is just a virtual user on an account with purpose-made permissions and a controlled environment...sorry, nothing dark here :-). Anyway, here is the code I am using at the moment which creates a new instance and saves it to drafts in Outlook. It is not what I set out to do, as I explained above, this is just a temporary fix:
OutlookApp outlookApp = new OutlookApp();
MailItem mailItem = (MailItem)outlookApp.CreateItem(OlItemType.olMailItem);
mailItem.To = "test#test.com";
mailItem.Subject = "Test Email Generation";
mailItem.HTMLBody = "<html><body>This is the body of the email.</strong>.<br/> This is another line in the body of the email.</body></html>";
mailItem.Display(false);
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(3000);
mailItem.Close(OlInspectorClose.olSave);
Marshal.ReleaseComObject(outlookApp);
To get the opened mail item in the inspector window you need:
Use the ActiveInspector method to get an instance of the Inspector class.
The Inspector.CurrentItem property returns an Object representing the current item being displayed in the inspector.
Set any properties like Subject, Body, Recipients and etc.
To get the inline response in the Explorer window you need to use the Explorer.ActiveInlineResponse property which returns an item object representing the active inline response item in the explorer reading pane.

DLLImportAttribute C# - Outlook

I'm trying to develop a snippet in C # code that enables the "voting option" function of Outlook.
This code will be used by a platform called Blue Prism.
The "vote" function of Outlook is in the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook namespace, so I need to import it using C#, but I dont have enough knowledge to develop this.
I tried to do something like this but it is giving an error.
Here is the code:
public class program {
[DllImport(#"C:\Program Files\Blue Prism Limited\Blue Prism Automate\Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.dll", EntryPoint = "VotingOptions")]
public static extern string Outlook(uint type);
static void Main()
{
// Create the Outlook application.
Outlook.Application oApp = new Outlook.Application();
oApp.VotingOption = "Yes; No";
}
}
So, can someone help me?
The VotingOptions property belongs to the MailItem class , not Outlook Application. Voting options on messages are used to give message recipients a list of choices and to track their responses. To create voting options programmatically, set a string that is a semicolon-delimited list of values for the VotingOptions property of a MailItem object. The values for the VotingOptions property will appear under the Vote command in the Respond group in the ribbon of the received message.
private void OrderPizza()
{
Outlook.MailItem mail = (Outlook.MailItem)Application.CreateItem(
Outlook.OlItemType.olMailItem);
mail.VotingOptions = “Cheese; Mushroom; Sausage; Combo; Veg Combo;”
mail.Subject = “Pizza Order”;
mail.Display(false);
}
Also you may find the C# app automates Outlook (CSAutomateOutlook) sample project helpful, it shows how to automate Outlook in C#.
Com objects aren't accessed through DLLImport. They're accessed using references. From the sample Eugene linked:
Create a Console application and reference the Outlook Primary Interop Assembly (PIA). To reference the Outlook PIA, right-click the project file and click the "Add Reference..." button. In the Add Reference dialog, navigate to the .NET tab, find Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook 12.0.0.0 and click OK.
Now you'll have access to the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook object.
If you are using Blue Prism then rather than having to specify DLL references you may also chose to go the GetObject or CreateObject way, you will be able to interact with Outlook just like Blue Prism does with Excel. The drawback of this approach is that you have to use VB.NET (unless I am mistaken) and that you will not be able to use text representation of enum values (so for OlItemType you will not be able to use olMailItem but only its numeric value, which is 0).
Please note that Blue Prism has released a new version recently (6.3) and with it a new VBO for interaction with Outlook. It's nothing revolutionary, but it may provide some insight.

Change Outlook Inbox-icons envelope icons

following this link - change outlook MailItem icon
I managed to change my inbox icons.
Here's what I did step by step.
1) Created a custom message class for new mail that arrives from the Internet
The class is IPM.Note.Internet
Outlook.NameSpace outlookNameSpace;
Outlook.MAPIFolder inbox;
Outlook.Items items;
private void ThisAddIn_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
outlookNameSpace = this.Application.GetNamespace("MAPI");
inbox = outlookNameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OlDefaultFolders.olFolderInbox);
items = inbox.Items;
items.ItemAdd += new Outlook.ItemsEvents_ItemAddEventHandler(items_ItemAdd);
}
void items_ItemAdd(object Item)
{
Outlook.MailItem mailitem = (Outlook.MailItem)Item;
String EmailHeader = mailitem.PropertyAccessor.GetProperty("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x007D001E");
if (Item != null && EmailHeader.Contains("Look for a string in the headers here that we set for incomming mail") == true)
{
if (mailitem.MessageClass == "IPM.Note")
{
mailitem.MessageClass = "IPM.Note.Internet";
mailitem.Save();
}
}
}
2) Created a replacement Outlook Form Region matching the MessageClass. In this case I used IPM.Note.Internet
3) Assign the Icons in the Properties Pane of the Form Region Designer.
4) Debugged project and the next message that arrived from the internet was stamped with my custom icons after the message class was updated.
My issue now is that I can't preview or open the messages where I changed the message class. Similar to this post that's unanswered - Change Inbox-icons in Outlook at runtime
I think the issue is that my replacement Outlook Form Region is blank so the message is not able to be previewed.
If this is true than here's my question. What is the best way to export the standard IPM.Note message class template into visual Studio. I thing I need to overwrite my IPM.Note.Internet Outlook Form Region design.
There is an option when creating an Outlook Form Region-
To import an ".OFS" file. I was attempting to figure out how to export the file from the Outlook 2010 Client (Developer Tools) but I can't find a way to save the templates to that specific format. I can save to OFT (office template) but not .OFS
Thanks in advance for any help!
Rather then adding a form region and changing the message class I just ended up adding the PR_ICON_INDEX property and setting it's value. As outlined here in option #2 by Dmitry Link
There are many icons to choose from here. I couldn't locate a list with the integer values so I just entered random numbers for the PR_ICON_INDEX property in Outlook Spy changing the value till located the icon I wanted. There are many icons to choose from. Many from the 600-700 and 1000 and up range.
Here's the line I used to set the PR_ICON_INDEX property on the message-
mailitem.PropertyAccessor.SetProperty("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x10800003", 4); // change the 4 to something like 600,601...etc to experiment

Outlook Interop ClearSelection Method

I am having difficulties with Interop in a WPF application.
What I actually want to do is drag and drop an Outlook file into my application and extract the attachments and store them. Apart from that I want to read the subject and search for a 4-digit-number which will then be the name of the folder the attachments are to be stored to.
I have been searching the web for solutions that don't use Interop, but I wasn't able to find anything that worked for me.
So I thought 'let's give it a shot' and it sounded pretty simple, because I found so many examples that followed this pattern:
if (e.Data.GetDataPresent("FileGroupDescriptor"))
{
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application app = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application();
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Selection selection = app.ActiveExplorer().Selection;
foreach (object mi in selection)
{
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.MailItem mailItem = (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.MailItem)mi;
string subject = "Untitled";
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(mailItem.Subject))
{
subject = mailItem.Subject;
MessageBox.Show(subject);
}
}
}
This works, but I have one problem: the selection keeps on growing. I tried the methods RemoveFromSelection and ClearSelection, but they don't work. Everytime I drag a new Outlook item to the surface it keeps displaying all the previous items as well.
Can anybody help me? I'm at a complete loss
Do you handle the Drag event in your application?
If so, try to call the following code in the event handler:
e.Data.GetData(“RenPrivateMessages”);
See Outlook, custom task pane and drag-drop problem for more information.

Determine if MailItem is open in Compose or Read mode

Is there some way that I can determine if a MailItem is being opened in a ReadMail view (not sure about the terminology here) or in a Compose view. That is, am I opening a mail that has been sent to me, or am I opening a mail to send to someone.
I've checked the MailItem and the Inspector objects but can't find anything of relevance. Unfortunately I don't know how to access specific Properties (I've seen some GetProperty() method somewhere) so I don't know if I could access it via that..
I was hoping that there would be something I could do like:
// where OutlookApp is my Outlok Application
Outlook.Inspector inspector = OutlookApp.ActiveInspector();
Outlook.MailItem item = inspector.CurrentItem as Outlook.MailItem;
if (item.IsOpenInComposeView)
{
// ...
}
_MailItem.Sent will be true when the message is in Read mode, and false when the message is in Compose mode.

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