May, 2010

THIS IS JUST FYI AND IF YOU ARE FACING THE SIMILAR ISSUE THEM PLEASE LET ME KNOW. WE ARE AWARE OF THIS ISSUE AND ALREADY WORKING ON A FIX FOR THE SAME.

When using Outlook UI if a user tries to send a meeting request without any recipient he is prompted by the following prompt

"The meeting cannot be sent because there are no recipient names in the To box. Would you like to save and close this meeting instead?" - Yes/No

..but if you try to send the meeting programmatically using Outlook 2007 SP2 , you will not get the same prompt but gets this error message

"Out of memory or system resources. Close some windows or programs and try again."

Although this works fine on all other versions like Outlook 2003, 2007 SP1, & 2010 except Outlook 2007 SP2. In all other versions the meeting is saved locally as Appointment instead.

CODE TO REPRODUCE THE BUG & WORKAROUND (SEE CODE COMMENTS)

Dim WithEvents oInspectors As Inspectors
Dim WithEvents oItem As AppointmentItem 

Sub Init()
Set oInspectors = Application.Inspectors
End Sub 

Private Sub oInspectors_NewInspector(ByVal Inspector As Inspector)
    If TypeName(Inspector.CurrentItem) = "AppointmentItem" Then
       Set oItem = Inspector.CurrentItem
    End If
End Sub 

Private Sub oItem_Write(Cancel As Boolean)
    For i = oItem.Recipients.Count To 1 Step -1
        oItem.Recipients.Remove (i)
    Next 

'If we leave the Cancel = False then we get the error message
' Workaround Code: 
' This will emulate the way Outlook does it in other versions by Saving the appointment to local calendar 

    If oItem.Recipients.Count = 0 Then
        Cancel = True 
        oItem.Close olSave
    End If 

End Sub

This is pretty exciting development which came yesterday as Microsoft announced the availability of two new open source projects to facilitate interoperability with Outlook PST files.

Now start your engines and start thinking of solutions that you can build upon it, and some of you who were reverse engineering the PST format and already doing that have a real good news.. as it went official now ;-)

The two open source projects, available on Copeplex under the Apache 2.0 license are the following:

• The PST Data Structure View Tool (http://pstviewtool.codeplex.com/) is a graphical tool allowing the developers to browse the internal data structures of a PST file. The primary goal of this tool is to assist people who are learning .pst format and help them to better understand the documentation.
• The PST File Format SDK (http://pstsdk.codeplex.com/) is a cross platform C++ library for reading .pst files that can be incorporated into solutions that run on top of the .pst file format. The capability to write data to .pst files is part of the roadmap will be added to the SDK.

Read more about it here (blog has some videos as well)

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/may10/05-24PSTToolsPR.mspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2010/05/24/two-open-source-projects-to-facilitate-interoperability-with-outlook-pst-data-files.aspx