Getting Started - Reading attachment

[Diane]

Group,

As our company sends emails, we get a volume of returns with errors such as

mailbox full, no such user, no mailbox by that name, etc...... Some of these

messages includes an attachment "details.txt" which specifically list a

STATUS and Final-Recipient. I am looking for a getting started guide that

will help me read the attachment and pull out the status and the

"Final-Recipient. From this, I can update our email database. Any "getting

started" guides would be appreciated.

Diane

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Outlook version?

How would you intend to code this, as an Outlook macro in VBA code, or what?

Are you an Outlook code beginner or a code beginner?

A wealth of information is at www.outlookcode.com. There's a code sample

that strips all attachments from selected emails after saving them to a temp

folder on my Web site at

http://www.slovaktech.com/code_samples.htm#StripAttachments. If you use that

code in an Outlook macro you'd just substitute the use of Application for

getting the Outlook.Application object. Outside of Outlook you'd use the

code as is.

To get the information from a text attachment you need to save it to the

file system and open it. A text file can just be opened and parsed as

strings. You can split the contents of a text file into a string array on

newlines and inspect each line to see if has any tag value you want to

parse.

"Diane" <Diane> wrote in message

news:A26E63D9-415F-4B4B-9E03-0A7F463CC2C8@microsoft.com...
> Group,
> As our company sends emails, we get a volume of returns with errors such
> as
> mailbox full, no such user, no mailbox by that name, etc...... Some of
> these
> messages includes an attachment "details.txt" which specifically list a
> STATUS and Final-Recipient. I am looking for a getting started guide that
> will help me read the attachment and pull out the status and the
> "Final-Recipient. From this, I can update our email database. Any
> "getting
> started" guides would be appreciated.
> Diane

 

[Diane]

Ken,

I'm very familiar with VBA, this is the route that I intend to take.

I've done many VBA projects in Word and some in Excel, but none with

Outlook.

I have subfolders that mail filters into within my inbox, from these

subfolders, I would like to create a program that can

1) read the header, (or the attached "details.txt" file), find the error

status,

and

2) for any invalid emails, mailbox fulls, etc....., run an sql delete

statement that will remove invalid emails from a database.

I'm good with doing step 2, it's just getting me started on step #1. I have

noticed for any "Mail Delivery" failures, that is where I find the attached

"details.txt" file. This file has the status code and the Final-Recipient

info that I would like to work with in step 1 of my VBA code.

Anyway, I believe VBA is the way that I want to go with this, if you have

other advice for this situation, I'm interested.

Thanks,

Diane
wrote:


> Outlook version?

> How would you intend to code this, as an Outlook macro in VBA code, or what?

> Are you an Outlook code beginner or a code beginner?

> A wealth of information is at www.outlookcode.com. There's a code sample
> that strips all attachments from selected emails after saving them to a temp
> folder on my Web site at
> http://www.slovaktech.com/code_samples.htm#StripAttachments. If you use that
> code in an Outlook macro you'd just substitute the use of Application for
> getting the Outlook.Application object. Outside of Outlook you'd use the
> code as is.

> To get the information from a text attachment you need to save it to the
> file system and open it. A text file can just be opened and parsed as
> strings. You can split the contents of a text file into a string array on
> newlines and inspect each line to see if has any tag value you want to
> parse.

> >

>

> "Diane" <Diane> wrote in message
> news:A26E63D9-415F-4B4B-9E03-0A7F463CC2C8@microsoft.com...
> > Group,
> > As our company sends emails, we get a volume of returns with errors such
> > as
> > mailbox full, no such user, no mailbox by that name, etc...... Some of
> > these
> > messages includes an attachment "details.txt" which specifically list a
> > STATUS and Final-Recipient. I am looking for a getting started guide that
> > will help me read the attachment and pull out the status and the
> > "Final-Recipient. From this, I can update our email database. Any
> > "getting
> > started" guides would be appreciated.
> > Diane

>

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

VBA is fine for that. The main limitation for VBA code is it's not designed

for deployment to other users, and it can't handle Outlook 2007 or 2010

Ribbon or FormRegion callbacks. Other than that it shouldn't be any problem.

The link I provided has code you can modify to strip the attachments on the

selected items and save them to temp folders. From there you should be able

to do your parsing easily if you are familiar with VBA. I used

FileSystemObject for the file processing which should be OK, and if desired

you can just remove the lines that delete the saved attachments so they

remain on the original items.

For not using only selected items but for iterating the contents of a folder

looking for items with a "details.txt" attachment you can use a procedure

that gets passed the folder and does something like this:

Dim colItems As Outlook.Items

Dim obj As Object

Dim oMail As Outlook.MailItem

Dim colAttach As Outlook.Attachments

Dim oAttach As Outlook.Attachment

Set colItems = folder.Items

For Each obj In colItems

If obj.Class = olMail then

Set oMail = obj

Set colAttach = oMail.Attachments

If colAttach.Count > 0 Then

For Each oAttach In colAttach

If oAttach.DisplayName = "details.txt" Then

' process this item

And so on.

Searching at www.outlookcode.com for specific things such as "iterating

Outlook folders" should get you samples of the other pieces you need.

"Diane" <Diane> wrote in message

news:ED668632-0761-4E55-B731-301D0E2F9868@microsoft.com...
> Ken,
> I'm very familiar with VBA, this is the route that I intend to take.
> I've done many VBA projects in Word and some in Excel, but none with
> Outlook.

> I have subfolders that mail filters into within my inbox, from these
> subfolders, I would like to create a program that can

> 1) read the header, (or the attached "details.txt" file), find the error
> status,
> and
> 2) for any invalid emails, mailbox fulls, etc....., run an sql delete
> statement that will remove invalid emails from a database.

> I'm good with doing step 2, it's just getting me started on step #1. I
> have
> noticed for any "Mail Delivery" failures, that is where I find the
> attached
> "details.txt" file. This file has the status code and the Final-Recipient
> info that I would like to work with in step 1 of my VBA code.

> Anyway, I believe VBA is the way that I want to go with this, if you have
> other advice for this situation, I'm interested.

> Thanks,
> Diane

 

[Diane]

Ken,

I finally had a chance to work with your examples and found the "Strip All

Attachments From Selected Email Items" worked instantly. I understand what

is happening here, now I need to modify so that I can iterate through the

folder and not just on a selected item. I have done something similar to

this in MS WORD and with your example below, I should be good to go.

Many Thanks for getting me started!!

Diane
wrote:


> VBA is fine for that. The main limitation for VBA code is it's not designed
> for deployment to other users, and it can't handle Outlook 2007 or 2010
> Ribbon or FormRegion callbacks. Other than that it shouldn't be any problem.

> The link I provided has code you can modify to strip the attachments on the
> selected items and save them to temp folders. From there you should be able
> to do your parsing easily if you are familiar with VBA. I used
> FileSystemObject for the file processing which should be OK, and if desired
> you can just remove the lines that delete the saved attachments so they
> remain on the original items.

> For not using only selected items but for iterating the contents of a folder
> looking for items with a "details.txt" attachment you can use a procedure
> that gets passed the folder and does something like this:

> Dim colItems As Outlook.Items
> Dim obj As Object
> Dim oMail As Outlook.MailItem
> Dim colAttach As Outlook.Attachments
> Dim oAttach As Outlook.Attachment

> Set colItems = folder.Items
> For Each obj In colItems
> If obj.Class = olMail then
> Set oMail = obj
> Set colAttach = oMail.Attachments
> If colAttach.Count > 0 Then
> For Each oAttach In colAttach
> If oAttach.DisplayName = "details.txt" Then
> ' process this item

> And so on.

> Searching at www.outlookcode.com for specific things such as "iterating
> Outlook folders" should get you samples of the other pieces you need.

> >

>

> "Diane" <Diane> wrote in message
> news:ED668632-0761-4E55-B731-301D0E2F9868@microsoft.com...
> > Ken,
> > I'm very familiar with VBA, this is the route that I intend to take.
> > I've done many VBA projects in Word and some in Excel, but none with
> > Outlook.
> > I have subfolders that mail filters into within my inbox, from these
> > subfolders, I would like to create a program that can
> > 1) read the header, (or the attached "details.txt" file), find the error
> > status,
> > and
> > 2) for any invalid emails, mailbox fulls, etc....., run an sql delete
> > statement that will remove invalid emails from a database.
> > I'm good with doing step 2, it's just getting me started on step #1. I
> > have
> > noticed for any "Mail Delivery" failures, that is where I find the
> > attached
> > "details.txt" file. This file has the status code and the Final-Recipient
> > info that I would like to work with in step 1 of my VBA code.
> > Anyway, I believe VBA is the way that I want to go with this, if you have
> > other advice for this situation, I'm interested.
> > Thanks,
> > Diane

>