MeetingItem vs. AppointmentItem (OL2kSR1)

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Just to be sure;

a MeetingItem is a calendar item which resides in the Inbox?
an AppointmentItem is a calendar item which resides in the Calendar?

or is there more to the Item difference between these two? (I understand there are Method and Property differences … I think.)

TIA

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meeting should be the same as calendar, but it’s emailed and adds a calendar item to the users calendar when accepted. a copy may remain in the inbox, i don’t recall and don’t have one in the inbox to check.

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The answer kind of depends on what you had in mind. But you can’t do much with a MeetingItem. If you open one, you see that design this form is not available. It’s also not listed in design a form. It’s really a “system” message the recipients outlook creates in the in box when a MeetingRequest comes in. All the good stuff is in the request, which is an appointment with meetingStatus set to olMeting (I think).

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I’m trying to identify common Items which could have Attachments, and the VBA Help wasn’t helping. See this thread.

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OK. I can’t find anything that indicates a meeting item can have an attachment. It will display one if one is included with the meeting request, but it is coming from the associated appointment item, so that’s where you’d work with it.

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meeting requests and acceptances in the inbox include *.ics files attached. Outlook normally hides them and they are only visible if you open the mailbox with other clients or view the source from the server.

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OL2000 and Exchange 2000. I don’t think I need information about the message type, rather I’m trying to ensure that I have covered any Item which can carry an attached file.

File Attachments (Word, XL, PPT, etc.) can be in:
1. Meeting Requests in the Inbox or Sentbox, which I think are MeetingItems
2. Accepted or Issued Meetings in the Calendar, which I think are AppointmentItems
3. Regular E-Mail in any Mail Folder, which are MailItems

… hence my original question, and see the thread I referred to to make more sense of it.

Here’s the code I have so far, with my one problem point highlighted in red.

Option Explicit

Sub DetachandStamp()
‘Variation on the work of Jefferson Scher
‘Since there are three kind of items, use Object rather than specific namedItem
Dim objContainer As Object, attAttFile As Attachment
Dim cbtnSAF As CommandBarButton
Dim strFileName As String, strFileStamp As String
Dim boolValidItem As Boolean, intCtr As Integer

‘ensure item is open and has attachments,
On Error Resume Next
boolValidItem = TypeName(ActiveInspector.CurrentItem) = “MailItem” Or _
TypeName(ActiveInspector.CurrentItem) = “AppointmentItem” Or _
TypeName(ActiveInspector.CurrentItem) = “MeetingItem”

If Err.Number Or Not boolValidItem Or _
ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Attachments.Count = 0 Then
Beep
MsgBox “No item is selected which has attachments,” & _
vbLf & “or an unknown error has occurred.”, vbExclamation
Exit Sub
‘dunno/don’t care how to handle when Word is set as Editor, so avoid it
ElseIf ActiveInspector.EditorType = olEditorWord Then
Beep
MsgBox “Not set up for Word as editor,” & vbLf & _
“no action will be taken.”, vbExclamation
Exit Sub
End If

‘got this far so set object reference to item
Set objContainer = ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
‘and set reference to the Save Attachments dialog
Set cbtnSAF = ActiveInspector.CommandBars.FindControl(, 3167)

‘show the Save Attachments dialog
‘brings up two different dialogs depending if there is one, or more than one, attached files
cbtnSAF.Execute
‘need to handle the cancel or close without save; BUT dialog does not return anything

‘set up text notation for end of message
strFileStamp = vbCrLf & “Attachment:

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tasks and task requests can also have attachments- as can contacts and posts. Basically anything except notes.

For meeting (and task) requests there is always an embedded item that gets added to the calendar (or task list)

The referenced thread doesn’t really add any information other than you want to delete attachments. if so, just recurse through all outlook folders and look for attachments to delete, skipping notes. You also don’t have to open the item to delete attachments.

Have you read Randy Byrne’s or Sue Mosher’s books on outlook programming? I think a crash course in outlook programming might prove to be a big help to you. It’s not like programming in word or excel but once you get the hang of it, it’s actually very easy.

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Thanks, good points.

In my work I have a heavy volume of E-Mail and Meeting attachments which I need to store and work on. I want to do more than delete attachments, I want to:
save the attachment,
then only if the save is successful,
stamp the saved attachment file name onto the Item,
then delete the Attachment from the Item.

Since nobody sends me tasks or contacts, I don’t need to process those; any attachments to Tasks or Contacts are mine and already exist on my drives.

You are right, time to buy a book, which do you recommend for someone with rudimentary VBA code skills but no knowledge of the OL object model?

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do you use exchange 2000? or access the mailbox with an imap acct? if so you can get some information about the message type by looking at the raw message source.

this is on a meeting request and the acceptance:
content-class: urn:content-classes:calendarmessage

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