Exchange Messaging Outlook
|
|
Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 10, No. 20,
Jan 19, 2006, of Exchange
Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange
and Microsoft Outlook.
Today's highlights:
Regular features:
Processing Incoming E-mails with MacrosBy Eric Legault, Microsoft MVP The Rules Wizard is great for a lot of things when automatically
processing incoming e-mails. However, when there's that one
certain thing that you can't do with it, you can always be the
Wizard yourself and write your own rules with VBA. However, one
of the greatest challenges for developers programming with
Outlook is learning how to effectively hook into application
events. While it is relatively easy to gain access to objects on
the fly, it is not entirely obvious where, when or how these
objects should be managed. If Outlook automation was anything
like most object models, it would be very straightforward.
Wouldn't this make things easier! Unfortunately, there is no magical NewMail collection. You have to build it, and hook into it at the proper time. What is essential is instantiating the necessary objects when Outlook starts. To begin, open the Visual Basic Editor (ALT+F11) and open the ThisOutlookSession module from the Project Explorer window. The first code that we need to add are module level variables that we'll declare in the general declarations section of the module at the top:
The most important object in this example is objNewMailItems, as we'll soon see. The "WithEvents" statement means we are declaring this object in a way that will allow us to access not only the properties of that object, but also the events that the object exposes. Now, we have to hook these variables up. The ThisOutlookSession module is special compared to the regular modules that you usually insert into a VBA project in Outlook - it has a "built-in" Application object variable already declared. This way you don't have to add a "Private WithEvents objApp As Outlook.Application" line or something similar in the general declarations section of the module. With that in mind, add this procedure:
This is essentially where it all begins. As the name of the Application_Startup event indicates, this loads when Outlook launches and is essential to ensure that we gain access to e-mails delivered to the Inbox. This is done by hooking up an event aware procedure tied to the Items collection that we retrieve from the MAPIFolder object we set from the Inbox folder. The event where all the processing on incoming e-mails occurs will be here:
And that's really all there is to it! The Item object is checked
to ensure that it is a MailItem object before we work with it
any further.
Those are just a few examples, but as long as whatever you want to do has an Object Model it can be done - you don't just have to automate Outlook or other Office applications. There are a few caveats to mention though. If a large number of
items are added to a folder at that same time, the ItemAdd event
may not fire. OL2002: ItemAdd Event Doesn't Run in Some Scenarios: However, you can get around this if you use Outlook 2003. The NewMailEx event provides a list of all the unique EntryID values for e-mails that were delivered during the last Send/Receive cycle. These values can be used to retrieve each e-mail individually as in the ItemAdd event by using the NameSpace GetItemFromID method.
Note: The Outlook 2003 VBA help file seems to indicate that NewMailEx only works with Exchange Server mailboxes. This is not true - try it and see with POP or IMAP accounts. Finally, don't expect this code to process e-mails the way server-side based rules do. Outlook of course has to be running for your code rules to work. For requirements where e-mail needs to be processed 24/7, see the Exchange SDK for information on building Event Sinks that run on the server. To take this example further, there may be situations where you
need to interact with e-mails that are opened rather than
received. This involves a different approach and is explained in
this article: Is There an Easy Way to Send Screenshots?Ken asks:
It really depends on how your users are adding the screenshots to the email message. If they paste it into an HTML message body, Outlook won't offer to resize it, but they can use the Picture toolbar to crop or compress it if they use Word as the editor. Cropping or reducing the size is recommended, if only to make the image easier for the recipient to view. Sending the same screenshot in an RTF formatted email results in a much larger message. If the users save the screenshot as a BMP, JPEG or GIF and insert the image as an attachment, both the Outlook and Word editors offer image resizing via an option in the task pane. One problem I run into often is that many users only know how to paste a Print Screen into Word and send the document. Along with often resulting in a huge attachment, many people don't like to open Word documents unless they requested them, because of virus concerns. For this reason, pasting screenshots into Word then sending as an attachment should be discouraged. If this is the only way your users know to do screen prints, they
should use Word's Office Envelope feature to send the document as an
email. Keep in mind that in order to send documents in this manner you need to use the same version of Word as Outlook. It won't work if you use Office XP and upgraded Outlook to the newest version. Also, if you use older Office suites your results may vary. Office 2003 does a pretty good job at controlling file size when sending email, even on the default settings. Older Office suites don't clean the resulting messages as well and file sizes will be larger. A second area where users often go wrong when sending screenshots is sending an image of their entire desktop instead of just the dialog or window they have a question about. They do this because they don't know that they can copy just the window that is in focus using Alt+PrintScreen. Many users also aren't aware that the text in many dialog boxes can be copied, making it easy to send the exact error message to the recipient without involving screenshots. Click anywhere in the dialog (other than on the Ok or Cancel buttons) and press Ctrl+C to copy it, then paste it into the email. When the dialog supports copying, the paste will look something like this:
Many newer applications support copying the text in dialogs so it's worth trying with all dialogs before doing a print screen. If the dialog doesn't copy, use Alt+PrintScreen to avoid typing out the exact error message. Which Version of Exchange or Outlook Do You Use?
If you haven't responded to the Slipstick polls yet, be sure to
visit http://www.slipstick.com/. We want to know the version of
Exchange server you're using as well as the version of Outlook and
what type of email account is set as your default account in
Outlook.
It's not surprising to me that Exchange 2003 holds a wide margin over Exchange 2000 and Exchange 5.5, but Outlook's results did catch me by surprise. I knew from the questions I see about Outlook 2000 usages that it was still used by many sites and home users. While it's far behind Outlook 2003 in our polls, it holds a slight lead over Outlook 2002. Exchange accounts lead POP3 by a respectable margin, but comparing the 55% Exchange use to 45% non-Exchange, our results very much in line with the SQM data Microsoft collects on Outlook usage. You can respond to the polls and check out the results at http://www.slipstick.com/. If you're in the mood to answer additional questions, see the complete list of survey questions at http://www.slipstick.com/poll/survey.htm. "Outlook 2002 Holiday Update" UpdateIf you tried to download the holiday update I mentioned in the last
issue of EMO, you discovered that the download was not available.
This is because Microsoft temporarily removed the Outlook 2002
holiday update while they correct the errors in it. Along with the
Thailand date mix-ups, Christmas is missing from the US holidays and
a few other holidays are either wrong or missing from the file. Once
its updated and rechecked it will be available again. Hopefully
error-free this time. | |
 | |
New Utilities |
ADDRESSGRABBER BASIC EXCHANGE REPORTER EXCHANGEMATIC EXTREME EMAILS FEOX GNUGP PLUGIN FOR OUTLOOK HEXAMAIL GUARD HEXAMAIL ROUTER NK2CSV PERFECTDISK FOR EXCHANGE PERFECTDISK FOR EXCHANGE POP3 DOWNLOADER RSS2EXCHANGE YPOPS! |
|
| |
Updated Utilities |
AUTO-MATE FOR OUTLOOK http://www.pergenex.com/auto-mate/index.shtml Now available in two versions, Standard and Pro, Auto-Mate is an add-in for Outlook that allows you use define rules to move mail from your Inbox (or other folders) based on several criteria, including the age of the message. The program offers a default set of rules and folders that work in conjunction with Outlook features to organize your mail into folders based on date and To-Do status. Features found in Pro include the ability to assign categories or mark messages with colored flags (Outlook 2003), forward messages to any email addresses or reply to email messages with predefined templates or modify the subject of messages. Additionally, you can export messages to your hard disk in the following formats: Text, MSG, RTF, or HTML or remove attachments and save them to your hard disk or delete them from the message. Inbox Snooze feature allows you to remove messages for a predetermined time, then return them to your Inbox. Supports Outlook 2000, 2002, and 2003. MAPILAB GROUPWARE SERVER FOR MICROSOFT OUTLOOK PROMODAG REPORTS FOR MICROSOFT EXCHANGE REMINDER MANAGER |
|
| |
New Exchange Knowledge Base Articles |
An Exchange Server 2003 virus-scanning program does not obtain sender
information from an e-mail message that the program receives from an Exchange
Server 5.5 user http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=910188 The Exchange System Attendant
service starts to quickly increase its memory usage in Exchange 2000 Server IMAIL content conversion failures in Exchange Server 2003 may be difficult to
isolate Vulnerability in TNEF decoding in Microsoft Exchange could allow remote code
execution MS06-003: Vulnerability in TNEF decoding in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft
Exchange could allow remote code execution MS06-003: Vulnerability in TNEF decoding in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft
Exchange could allow remote code execution Error message when a DAV client tries to authenticate with an Exchange Server
2003 SP1 front-end server: "HTTP 500 - Internal server error" Vulnerability in TNEF decoding in Microsoft Exchange could allow remote code
execution MS06-003: Vulnerability in TNEF decoding in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft
Exchange could allow remote code execution The same date appears two times in the weekly and monthly views of the
calendar in Outlook Web Access The expected e-mail messages are not found when you use Message Tracking
Center in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 The offline address book regeneration operation fails, and event ID 9328 may
be logged in Exchange Server 2003 Exchange Server 2003 does not include the "In-reply-to" header field when you
use Outlook or Outlook Web Access to reply to an e-mail message that originated
from outside the organization You experience poor server performance and difficulty isolating VSAPI-related
issues on the Exchange store in Exchange Server 2003 How to remove the additional domain * in Internet Message Formats in Exchange
System Manager How to increase the Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 18-gigabyte database
size limit When you configure the diagnostics logging level to Maximum on the NSPI Proxy
service in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1, event ID 9040 is logged in the
Application log Error message when an application tries to send a message as another user by
using Exchange Server 2003: "Access denied" |
|
| |
New Outlook Knowledge Base Articles |
Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package (Emsmdb32.dll): December 19, 2005 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=912008 Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package for the
French version of Outlook 2003: December 21, 2005 Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package for the
Italian version of Outlook 2003: December 21, 2005 How to use named properties to relate Contact Address Book entries to e-mail
messages, e-mail addresses, and picture attachments in Outlook 2003 How to use MAPI to manage messages in a .pst file when you are using Outlook
2003 to download messages from an IMAP server Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package for the
German version of Outlook 2003: December 16, 2005 Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: December
15, 2005 Error message in an NDR when you send an e-mail message in Outlook: "Error: '
553 sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed RPC hosts.'" An Office 2003 program unexpectedly quits with an unrecoverable error when
the program is started by another program that is running under a
non-interactive account Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package for the
German version of Outlook 2003: November 17, 2005 Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package for the
German version of Outlook 2003: December 16, 2005 Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package for the
German version of Outlook 2003: December 21, 2005 Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: Description of the Outlook 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package Description of the security update for Outlook 2003: January 10, 2006 Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: How to use the dispidHeaderItem MAPI property to identify the state of a
message that you receive in Outlook 2003 Description of the Dutch Multilingual User Interface Pack for Office
2003 post-Service Pack 2 hotfix package: December 15, 2005 How to migrate your Lotus Notes contacts to Outlook 2003 Error message when you try to print another user's shared calendar in Outlook
2003: "The messaging interface has returned an unknown error" |
|
|
|
More Information |
ISSN 1523-7990 |