Opening Outlook Windows Programmatically

Last post 08-30-2007 10:48 AM by Aksen. 3 replies.

Sort Posts:

  • Opening Outlook Windows Programmatically

    06-27-2007, 5:59 PM

    Hi. I'm trying to write some code that can programmatically open various outlook Windows. Here is my situation:

    I am writing a web application in ASP .Net 2005. One area of my site displays lists of names of people in my corporation. I have a checkbox by each name, and buttons at the bottom that say "Send email to selected people" and "schedule meetings with selected people". I would really like to be able to have those buttons open an Outlook 2003 email window and an Outlook 2003 meeting request window (these are the windows that open when you click "new mail message" or "new meeting request" in Outlook 2003). I would assume that this needs to be done in Javascript or VB script somehow, because I want the email window to open for the person using the browser (IE 6). Does anyone know how to programmatically call Outlook and get it to open a window (and let me prepopulate some fields in those windows)?

     NOTE: The mailto link will not work in this situation for the following two reasons:

    1. The user may select enough names to overrun the 255 character limit of a mailto link (especially since we would also prepopulate subject and body of the email).

    2. The mailto link will not let me open a meeting request window, let alone a window like that with the names filled in already.

     Any help would be greatly appreciated!

  • Re: Opening Outlook Windows Programmatically

    06-27-2007, 11:16 PM
    • Loading...
    • A1ien51
    • Joined on 05-06-2005, 6:46 PM
    • MD USA
    • Posts 2,912

    Reason why the person would use a web page instead of outlook to do it in the first place? Sounds funny to me! You will not get around the character limit with a GET. You might be able to find some activeX control that does this. I am not sure about that.

    You should be able to do all of this on the server without involoving the user's version of outlook. There is ways to hook VB.NET/C# into Oulook to do all of this.

    Eric 

  • Re: Opening Outlook Windows Programmatically

    06-28-2007, 9:50 AM

    Reason why the person would use a web page instead of outlook to do it in the first place? Sounds funny to me! You will not get around the character limit with a GET. You might be able to find some activeX control that does this. I am not sure about that.

    The reason a person needs to do this from a web page is that the list of users returned is one that will be determined through interaction with the web application. You will have no way of knowing who these people are until the web app returns you the list it compiles. Then, since you are already in the web application, being able to select just those users you want and just click a button that says send email or schedule meeting is a FAR more seemless experience for the user. It also makes for a much better and less error prone process than seeing all those names and then having to open Outlook and sit and enter them all into the To field, and then sit and enter text into the subject line (which we want to have some control over anyway), and then sit and enter information into the body that we could prepopulate, etc.

     You will not get around the character limit with a GET.

    If this is done on the client side, there is no issue with a GET because we aren't going to be using one to open the outlook window.

    You should be able to do all of this on the server without involoving the user's version of outlook. There is ways to hook VB.NET/C# into Oulook to do all of this.

    We need to allow the user to use outlook though in order to manually pick a time that is most convenient for them, etc. If we do outlook stuff on the server, won't the user be unable to see it? We need the user to be able to interact with outlook windows on their own machine (especially since they need support for adding additional people to the email that may be in their address book), and I would assume for all those reasons that they need to have their local copy of Outlook running with a window open on their own, local machine.

     If anyone else has any ideas, it would be greatly appreciated!

  • Re: Opening Outlook Windows Programmatically

    08-30-2007, 10:48 AM
    • Loading...
    • Aksen
    • Joined on 08-30-2007, 10:31 AM
    • Posts 1

    I have a similar problem.

    The customer wants Outlook to be open and selected files (files on the server) attached. It looks terrible to download the files to the client and then attach them. Is there any way to imitate attaching files and only pass the IDs?

    Best regards,

    Eugene.
     

Page 1 of 1 (4 items)
Microsoft Communities
Page view counter