DLLImportAttribute C# - Outlook - c#

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.

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.

c# VSTO Outlook email body from opened window

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.

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.

Cannot add icon in shell extension with C#

I've found a very nice tutorial and i am trying to understand something that is not in this tutorial (because the tut itself works fine)
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/9163/File-Rating-a-practical-example-of-shell-extension
When you look at applications like WinRar, TortoiseSVN, Antivirus-apps and many more, there is an icon next to the Shell Extension Item.
I would like to know how this is done. (Programmatically with C#)
Adding a separator works, adding a submenu works and click+action also works, but i'm struggling with the icon. This cannot be so hard. Can somebody help me?
And please don't say that Microsoft doesn't longer support this in .NET 4.0, because it is not guaranteed and therefore they don't supply samplecode. If all those other apps can do it, then it is possible.
Please supply me some sample code, some tutorials or maybe even a working piece of code.
Please have a look at the following article, it uses .NET 4.0 it to create Windows Shell Extensions using the SharpShell nuget package.
NET Shell Extensions - Shell Context Menus
Using this library, you can set the image directly while creating the contextmenustrip as shown below
protected override ContextMenuStrip CreateMenu()
{
// Create the menu strip.
var menu = new ContextMenuStrip();
// Create a 'count lines' item.
var itemCountLines = new ToolStripMenuItem
{
Text = "Count Lines...",
Image = Properties.Resources.CountLines
};
// When we click, we'll count the lines.
itemCountLines.Click += (sender, args) => CountLines();
// Add the item to the context menu.
menu.Items.Add(itemCountLines);
// Return the menu.
return menu;
}
You only have to add to the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
and here is the code:
string TimeStamp = DateTime.Now.ToString("dd-MM-yyyy");
string key = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Classes\\*\\shellex\\ContextMenuHandlers\\Winrar";
string valueName = "MyWinrar";
Microsoft.Win32.Registry.SetValue(key, valueName, HERE WHAT YOU WANT TO START, Microsoft.Win32.RegistryValueKind.String);
i hope it works for you!
All the apps you listed use COM and unmanaged code to create overlay icon handlers. There is even a special project TortoiseOverlays that provides a common library for drawing icons for TortoiceCSV, TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGIT. You can take a look at it's source code to find out how it is done. If you want to draw similar icons, you should probably just reuse it.
Using .Net for this type of extensions is not recommended, because when multiple extensions, built against different .Net versions would attempt to load in explorer process, they will crash the explorer.

Use an Outlook message file (msg) as a template

I wonder if it's possible with the .net framework or Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook to load an email message (*.msg), do a search and replace and send it from C#.
It's all happening on the server so Outlook cannot be installed.
What I've tried
the Redemption library but somehow it loses the images inlined in the template and can't figure out to remedy this
Using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook
Application objOutlook = new Application();
objOutlook.CreateItemFromTemplate("c:\temp\..",)
But it expects as it second parameter an outlook folder, I can't give it a file path where it will save to
I'm thinking to switch to regular txt files instead of C# but maybe someone did this already
Update 1
This is the redemption code I tried. The problem is that the formatting and image (of a signature is not preserved)
using Interop.Redemption;
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Replace(#"mailnonunicode.msg");
Replace(#"mailunicode.msg");
Replace(#"mailtemplate.oft");
}
static void Replace(string cTestharnessKmailMsg)
{
RDOSession rdoSession = new RDOSession();
RDOMail messageFromMsgFile = rdoSession.GetMessageFromMsgFile(cTestharnessKmailMsg);
messageFromMsgFile.Body = messageFromMsgFile.Body.Replace("abc",
"xyz");
messageFromMsgFile.Save();
}
}
}
Update 2 / Solution
If you want to preserve the formatting, you need to work with HTMLBody or RTFBody properties, not with the plain text Body.
What is your existing Redemption code?
If the message needs to be sent, it must be created in one of the Outlook folders - a standalone MSG file cannot be sent.

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