Importing contacts from Outlook

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Introduction

Outlook has become a de-facto standard in Personal Information Management software. Almost everyone uses this software for managing their needs. There arises the need for programmatically manipulating information stored in Outlook. Microsoft has provided the Outlook Object Model for this very same purpose. A closer look at the samples on MSDN reveals that almost all samples are in Visual Basic. What should the (not so poor ;-)) C++ programmer do for this? Since the Outlook Object Model is a collection of COM interfaces, any COM compliant language can useit. This sample can import contacts from any contacts folder in Outlook.

To use Office/Outlook Objects in C++, following files needs to be imported...

//For Office XP
#import "E:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office10\mso.dll" named_guids
#import "E:\Microsoft Office\Office10\MSOUTL.OLB" \ no_namespace
    exclude("_IRecipientControl",    "_DRecipientControl");

//For Office 2000 
#import "E:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office10\mso.dll" named_guids
#import "E:\Microsoft Office\Office10\MSOUTL.OLB" \ no_namespace
    exclude("_IRecipientControl", "_DRecipientControl");

//Code to import Contacts...

_ApplicationPtr pApp;
_ItemsPtr pItems;
MAPIFolderPtr pFolder;
_ContactItemPtr pContact;
  
HRESULT hr;

try
{

  hr=pApp.CreateInstance(__uuidof(Application));
  if (FAILED(hr))
  {
    MessageBox("Unable to instantiate Outlook.",
               "Outlook Error",MB_OK);
    return;
  }

  if (m_Option.GetCheck()) //default outlook contacts folder
  {
    pFolder=pApp->GetNamespace(_bstr_t("MAPI"))->
                    GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts);
    if (pFolder==NULL)
    {
      MessageBox("Could not find default contacts folder.",
                 "Outlook Error");
      return;
    }
    
  }
  else //display folder selection window
  {
    pFolder=pApp->GetNamespace(_bstr_t("MAPI"))->PickFolder();
    if (pFolder==NULL)
      return;

    if (pFolder->GetDefaultItemType()!=olContactItem)
    {
      MessageBox("Select folder is not a Contact folder.",
                 "Outlook Contacts");
      return;
    }
  }

  pItems=pFolder->GetItems();
  if (pItems==NULL)
  {
    MessageBox("Unabel to get Contact Items.",
               "Outlook Error");
    return;
  }

  pContact=pItems->GetFirst();


  m_ContactList.ResetContent();

  while(1)
  {
    if (pContact==NULL)
      break;
    CString strTemp;
    strTemp=(char *)pContact->GetFullName();
    strTemp=strTemp + "<";
    strTemp=strTemp + (char *)pContact->GetEmail1Address();
    strTemp=strTemp + ">";
    m_ContactList.AddString(strTemp);

    pContact=pItems->GetNext();
  }

}
catch(_com_error &e)
{
  MessageBox((char *)e.Description());
}

This sample imports contact information but a slight modification will enable this to import any other information from Outlook as well. This includes Appointment Items, Email Messages, Notes, Tasks, and more. For example, to import Appointment Items from a Calendar folder one just needs to make an object of _AppointmentItemPtr smart pointer class instead of _ContactItemPtr.

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