Manish Sharma : Outlook Programming

Reference articles for Outlook 2003 Programming

manish_mgsi — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:11:00 GMT

Nice reference articles for Outlook 2003 programming

What's New in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 for Developers?

An Introduction to Programming Outlook 2003 Using C#

Programming samples that can reference items and folders in Outlook by using Visual C# .NET

How to retrieve specific messages by using the Find method and the Restrict method in Visual C#

How to automate Outlook and Word by using Visual C# .NET to create a pre-populated e-mail message that can be edited

How to build an Office COM add-in by using Visual C# .NET

MenuItem for Outlook ContextMenu

manish_mgsi — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:17:00 GMT

Last project I was working on had lot of customisation for Outlook 2003 and its integration with MOSS (Sharepoint 2007). Its altogether a unique experience working with Outlook object model and creating a custom outlook plugin.

Following is a small snippet for adding or manipulating context menu within outlook explorer.

//get outlook explorer object

private Outlook.Explorer actExplorer = this.ApplicationObject.Application.ActiveExplorer();

//get instance of all command bars

private CommandBars cmdBars = actExplorer.CommandBars;

cmdBars.OnUpdate += new _CommandBarsEvents_OnUpdateEventHandler(CommandBars_OnUpdate);

/// <summary>

/// Implements the OnUpdate event for outlook command bars.

/// </summary>

private void CommandBars_OnUpdate()

{

foreach (CommandBar cmdBar in actExplorer.CommandBars)

{

if (cmdBar.Name == "Context Menu")

{

//remove protection

MsoBarProtection oldProtection = cmdBar.Protection;

cmdBar.Protection = 0;

//create custom menu item

CommandBarButton checkInMenuItem = (CommandBarButton)cmdBar.FindControl(MsoControlType.msoControlButton, Type.Missing, "Custom Menu", Type.Missing, Type.Missing);

if(checkInMenuItem == null)

{

checkInMenuItem = (CommandBarButton)cmdBar.Controls.Add(MsoControlType.msoControlButton, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, true);

checkInMenuItem.Caption = "Custom Menu";

checkInMenuItem.Click += new _CommandBarButtonEvents_ClickEventHandler(checkInMenuItem_Click);

}

//set protection level

cmdBar.Protection = oldProtection;

}

Handling office CommandBar controls

manish_mgsi — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:16:00 GMT

While working on office applications, there are scenarios when we need to control the functionality of Command Bar controls. With Command Bar I means, menu bars, toolbars, shortcut menus, context menus and submenus on menus. Best way to get the control’s object is to use the FindControl function and get the control using its unique command ID. Command ID list can be obtained from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/213552

Outlook.Explorers actExplorer = Application.ActiveExplorer();

CommandBars cmdBars = actExplorer.CommandBars;

foreach(CommandBar bar in cmdBars)

{

if(bar.Name == "Menu Bar")

{

//Copy

control = bar.FindControl(MsoControlType.msoControlButton,2499,null,false,recursive);

if(control!=null)

{

//act on the control, like enable/disable/fire the click event of the control

}