Saving attachments in Outlook
February 26, 2010 • JP • 1 Comment • Rate This Article
People write to me sometimes and ask how they can do things with email attachments in Outlook. They want to print them, open them, copy or move them. Dammit, they want to use them! Unfortunately, there's no way to do so without saving the file first.
In other words, you can't print or open a workbook attached to an email without first saving it. Here are some methods to do so.
The Attachments Collection
This collection exists for the following Outlook objects:
- AppointmentItem
- ContactItem
- DocumentItem
- MailItem
- MeetingItem
- PostItem
- ReportItem
- TaskItem
- TaskRequestAcceptItem
- TaskRequestDeclineItem
- TaskRequestItem
- TaskRequestUpdateItem
(from Attachments Collection)
Here's a procedure (along with a series of helper functions) that returns the Attachments collection from any of these items:
Return Attachments Collection for any supported Object
Set GetAttachmentsColl = itm.Attachments
End Function
Function GetCurrentItem() As Object
' returns reference to current item, either the one
' selected (Explorer), or the one currently open (Inspector)
Select Case True
Case IsExplorer(Application.ActiveWindow)
Set GetCurrentItem = ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)
Case IsInspector(Application.ActiveWindow)
Set GetCurrentItem = ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
End Select
End Function
Function IsExplorer(itm As Object) As Boolean
IsExplorer = (TypeName(itm) = "Explorer")
End Function
Function IsInspector(itm As Object) As Boolean
IsInspector = (TypeName(itm) = "Inspector")
End Function
The GetAttachmentsColl function takes an item and returns its Attachments Collection. But how do we get that item? What I've done is write a function that returns the currently selected or open item (GetCurrentItem), but you could pass any object to the function. For example, an item you created using the CreateItem Method, or incoming items you're tracking using the ItemAdd or NewMail Events. But it needs to be one of the above items only.
Several of the items cannot be user-created, which is why I declared certain input and return objects As Object. For example, if I declared the GetAttachmentsColl function like this
(instead of As Object) then I could only check items from that class, and not all of them support an Attachments Collection.
What we should probably do is check the item class to make sure it's one of the above items, regardless of how the function is called.
Select Case itm.Class
Case olAppointment, olContact, olDocument, olMail, _
olMeetingRequest, olPost, olReport, olTask, olTaskRequestAccept, _
olTaskRequestDecline, olTaskRequest, olTaskRequestUpdate
Set GetAttachmentsColl = itm.Attachments
End Select
End Function
Sample usage
Dim attachs As Outlook.Attachments
Dim attach As Outlook.Attachment
Set attachs = GetAttachmentsColl(GetCurrentItem)
For Each attach In attachs
Debug.Print attach.fileName
Next attach
End Sub
Saving Attachments
Now on to the point of this post, which was saving (and eventually opening) attachments.
Outlook currently provides one method for saving attachments: the SaveAsFile Method. So far this has remained unchanged in Outlook 2003 through 2010.
The SaveAsFile Method belongs to the Attachment Object, so once we have our Attachments collection (courtesy of GetAttachmentsColl) we'll iterate through it and call the SaveAsFile method on each Attachment Object. Note that you must pass the full path and filename to the SaveAsFile method.
Dim attachs As Outlook.Attachments
Dim attach As Outlook.Attachment
Set attachs = GetAttachmentsColl(GetCurrentItem)
For Each attach In attachs
Debug.Print attach.FileName
attach.SaveAsFile "C:\" & attach.FileName
Next attach
End Sub
Now what?
Outlook ·
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Hi all, I have also a example page about it.
http://www.rondebruin.nl/mail/folder2/saveatt.htm