[AccessD] issues automating outlook

[John Colby]

I'm trying to automate outlook.  In fact I am more or less successfully
doing so.  However, while passing an email object around I run into the
following:

Private Sub mOLInboxItems_ItemAdd(ByVal item As Object)

This is an event that outlook raises, passing in an object ByVal, i.e.not a
pointer to the object.

As it happens, the item can be n email, or a calender event or... I know
not what all.  But I do know that one of the things that can be passed in
is an email.  So... the following works:

Dim Msg As Outlook.MailItem
    If TypeName(item) = "MailItem" Then
        'Msg = ctype(item, outlook.MailItem)
        MessageInfo = "" & _
            "Sender : " & item.SenderEmailAddress & vbCrLf & _
            "Sent : " & item.SentOn & vbCrLf & _
            "Received : " & item.ReceivedTime & vbCrLf & _
            "Subject : " & item.Subject & vbCrLf & _
            "Size : " & item.Size & vbCrLf & _
            "Message Body : " & vbCrLf & item.Body
            Debug.Print MessageInfo
        'Result = MsgBox(MessageInfo, vbOKOnly, "New Message Received")
        'ExtractDataFromMsgHeader item

        mProcessOrders item
    End If

Notice that trying to coerce Msg = ctype(item, outlook.MailItem) fails.  In
fact VBA doesn't even know what outlook.MailItem means, it gives a compile
error if I uncomment that line.  So I am unable to coerce item into a type
outlook.MailItem at least using ctype.  I'm assuming that ctype only works
with built-in vba types which outlook.MailItem obviously is not.

However... I then call mProcessOrders, passing in item

Private Function mProcessOrders(ByRef lOLMailItem As Outlook.MailItem)

In the function definition I cause a coercion to happen, no compile error.
Notice I also converted from ByVal to ByRef. Inside of mProcessOrders I
suddenly have a *pointer *to object  lOLMailItem of type Outlook.MailItem.
Or at least a pointer to the *ByVal copy* of the mail item.

Which I think is pretty cool.

Now inside of mProcessOrders I can see the properties of lOLMailItem ...

    Select Case *lOLMailItem.Subject*
    Case "AN Initial Order"
        Debug.Print "This email is an order" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf

        strEmailBody = *lOLMailItem.Body*

        Debug.Print *lOLMailItem.Body*

All of this works...until...

I dimension a class (to hold the email item and parse the body)

        Set lclsANEmailInitialPurchase = New clsANEmailInitialPurchase

and I pass my pointer to lOLMailItem into

fInit(ByRef lOLMailItem As Outlook.MailItem) of the class.

        lclsANEmailInitialPurchase.fInit lOLMailItem

 On the other side of that call I get  <automation error system call failed>

Damned inconvenient.  Not only does the system call fail but it corrupts
the mail item such that any reference to it now fails, even back in the
calling function.

Sigh.

So I have been passing the mailItem around functions of this class, but as
soon as I pass it off to another class it fails.

I don't really have to do things this way of course.  I really only care
about the values of the properties of the mail object which I can get and
pass those values into the class instead of the mailItem but still...  What
I was hoping was to create a class to hold each email, and all the stuff I
do to process an email (encapsulation)  and be able to refer back to these
emails later.

The vagaries of Windows...
-- 
John W. Colby
Colby Consulting