Save and send word

As I said earlier in the thread, when something like Word is used to open an email an Inspector window is opened. However while that Inspector is added to the Inspectors collection (since Outlook 2002), it does not fire the
NewInspector() event of the Inspectors collection.

To be able to detect that item if your addin is already running you need to use a timer. When the timer fires you need to check the Inspectors collection and if there are any Inspectors not being handled already you would handle
them.

In managed code a timer like that will fire on a background thread. The Outlook object model may not be accessed from a background thread, or you risk crashing or hanging Outlook. Therefore you would need to synchronize your
code that handles the new Inspector back to the main addin thread so your object model code is running on the same thread as the Outlook UI.

If your addin is not already running it will be opened in what’s called «headless» mode. In that mode there is no ActiveExplorer in the Explorers collection (Explorers.Count == 0). So to know that you’ve been started by a Simple
MAPI window you need to check for Explorers.Count and Inspectors.Count. If Explorers.Count == 0 in your Startup() event but Inspectors.Count != 0 then you just start handling that Inspector.

Simple MAPI windows are always opened as modal Inspector windows. There is and always has been a problem with modal Inspector windows, when you interact with them in code they often leave a «ghost» when closed. That «ghost»
window cannot be closed by normal means, and there is no Inspector in the Inspectors collection for it. It can be closed in the UI by clicking on the Close() box of the window.

This applies not only to Simple MAPI windows, BTW, but to all Inspector windows opened modally, they are nothing but trouble and problems.

What you often have to do after sending the item using code is to set up a timer in the send event that fires very shortly after the Send() event ends. I usually set the timer for something on the order of about 100 ms. In that
timer event handler I synch back to the main thread and call the Close() event on the Inspector. That’s something you need to do regardless of whether or not the item was a Simple MAPI item. 

Then, if the item was a Simple MAPI item (I set a flag for those), I also force the window closed in the Inspector.Close() event handler. What I do is grab the window handle of the Inspector window using a pinvoke of FindWindow().
You supply that Win32 API call the caption of the window (Inspector.Caption) and the window class «rctrl_renwnd32». I do that when I first start handling the Inspector. I then use a pinvoke of PostMessage with a message of WM_CLOSE to that window, forcing
it to close.

That’s pretty much how you have to handle Simple MAPI windows.

I haven’t been able to locate those threads about MAPI handling and workarounds Ken, can you help me out here?

From my own testing it seems that no properties in any other class may be accessed, like trying to MessageBox.Show() a string in ThisAddIn or global. But you can still use any methods in other classes.

Ken Slovak MVP — Outlook

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  Monday, February 28, 2011 8:42 PM