Forget about it!

August 25, 2008 – 9:57 pm by JP

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to stop working on the Excel add-in I was creating to export Contacts, Tasks and Appointments to Excel. I haven’t been spending enough time working on it, and rather than continuing to procrastinate, I’ve decided to just release the source code and let others pick up the development.

Turns out, accessing the Outlook object model is harder than it looks, and several key elements (email addresses, MeetingItem .Body Property) are protected by the Object Model Guard (OMG). This Outlook “feature” requires third-party object libraries like Redemption, which has a low learning curve, but a few strikes against it:

Most non-developers (aka you and me) don’t have it, so it requires separate install and check routines over and above the existing VBA, to make sure it would work on a remote PC.
Redemption can’t be distributed, since it is commercial software and wouldn’t be protected by Excel/VBA.
Redemption costs $199, and I’m not prepared to buy it for something I could still do manually, or in VBA if I’m willing (perfectly) to live with the security prompt.

So the next few posts will contain bits of the mostly finished code, and if anyone wants to download the whole xla “as is”, let me know and I will send you a copy.

ps- If anyone was wondering, I usually use ClickYes to get around the security prompt if I am doing something like a mail merge to email. Then you can go get coffee while your computer is working hard Seriously, download it before the free version goes pay.