‘Special’ Emails (2003)

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We send lots and lots of emails at work. Some silly, some informational and some actually useful. Most are internal but every now and then we send emails externally. Periodically, we need to collect all the emails we send external and archive / copy them to a specific pst file. I’m trying to think of a way of doing this with as little pain as possible – any suggestions?

I have some ideas on this but I don’t want to ‘muddy the waters’ at the moment. Ok, maybe a little mud will help – as I see it, this requires something like this …

• a method of indicating that an email is ‘special’
• a method of gathering all the ‘special’ emails
• a method of moving the gathered ‘special’ emails to another folder[/list]

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We use a special address which we enter into the BCC field on outbound, file-able messages. Someone then accesses that mailbox and retrieves the messages all in one go. However, if the address wasn’t used…

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You could create a custom Category (“Messages intended to annoy Clients and Staff”) for these “special” e-mails, filter on that Category name, and then Edit | Move them to your “Annoying Archives” PST.

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Pray tell, what is a ‘custom category’?

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All Outlook items can have any number of Categories assigned to them, which helps locate them: a single task item might be in a ‘widgets’ product type Category, a ‘customer name’ Category, and a ‘losing money’ Category. To assign a Category to an item, right-click it, select Categories, and the list of existing Categories is displayed. To Add a Category, click on the Master Category List, type and Add your new Category. I vaguely believe that Exchange Administration can broadcast a company wide Custom Category list, but I have no idea how it’s done.

The only danger with Custom Categories is that they are sequestered away in the Registry, and are a pain to migrate to another machine or when you upgrade Office. Search for threads on that problem in this Forum.

Jefferson’s warning note about “If you forget to use the special BCC … ” also applies to Categories, but if you have some criteria to identify those messages/items you can retrospectively bulk apply Categories to a large number of items at once.

Also, corollary to Jefferson’s idea, you have probably seen messsages that come from “listserver@domain.com” which is a no-reply mailbox; the Exchange Server Admin can create this mailbox, and all the “Special” emails then are sent from it. (Avoids getting complaints back to your personal Inbox. )

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OK – this sounds like a good idea. Is it possible to add / delete categories to outlook using VBA? I am thinking of creating a number of categories and then interrupting the send process to ask which category to add to the outgoing email. Then when I go to ‘send items’ I can group all the special emails together and copy them at the same time.

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(Edited by JohnBF on 25-May-05 09:37. Several clarifications.)

You could hook into the Application ItemSend Event in the ThisOutlookSession module:

Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)

I guess what you could do is examine each message, and if there are no Categories assigned, pop up an InputBox or the Categories Dialog. The question would pop on each message sent with no Category (could be annoying), then you can optionally set Cancel to True, and the message is … umm … placed in the Drafts Folder I think … or you can set the code logic to Send the message after a Category has been selected.

Adding is easy, just assign the Category string to the Item Categories

objItem.Categories = “Newsletter”

or use the ShowCategoriesDialog Method, which is simply:

objItem.ShowCategoriesDialog

To delete, test for the existence of the Category and then delete it, for example something like

If InStr(objItem.Categories, “Newsletter”) Then objItem.Categories = Replace(objItem.Categories, “Newsletter”, “”, vbTextCompare)

remember to Save the Item after any changes:

objItem.Save

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Ok, here is the (current) plan.

Requirements …

1. tag each special email (both inwards and outwards emails) with a unique (job related) string
2. browse through all open folders for special emails that have been tagged
3. move tagged emails to a new PST file (one file for each job)

Current plan …

1. create a file with a list of job related strings (allow the user to delete and / or add strings)
2. create a button that is available for inwards and outgoing email that lists the job related strings and allows the user to select one
3. attach via categories the job related string to the email
4. create another button that searches through the open pst files for tagged emails (either all tagged emails or those tagged with a particular job related string), provide options that either list the results or move them to a PST file
5. create a new PST file (prompt for name, location, etc)
6. move located emails to the newly created PST file
7. close the PST file

I have, or have the ability to create, code for plan items 1 to 4. I haven’t used VBA to create a PST file, move emails (although that shouldn’t be too hard) or close a PST file. Can anyone give me a running start on items 5 and 7?

Finally – a security question – if I send the email externally, does the category that I have assigned to the email go too? I ask because I don’t want to attach strings to my external emails if the external person can see those strings without my knowledge.

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How about I point you down the path rather than provide a running start?

Create a PST or load an existing PST with the NameSpace.AddStore Method.

Some sample Move code is within post 457351.

Close the PST with the NameSpace.RemoveStore Method.

About your last question, perhaps you can test by sending a Categorized message to an associate?

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