How To Set An Appointment Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003

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Introduction

Sending an email using Microsoft Outlook 2003 is nothing original for most of the VBA developers. It is very common and also a very good practice. I hope that most of the VBA developers are very much familiar with this one. This article is not about how to send an email from customized Microsoft Office Applications using Microsoft Outlook API, it’s about how to place / set an appointment using Microsoft Outlook 2003 API. 

Background

A large number of companies use the Microsoft Office application for their In/external office automation application. In this article, I would like to demonstrate how to set an appointment using Microsoft Outlook 2003 API.

Using the Code

Using the code is very simple. Before we start, I would like to share some objects of Microsoft Outlook 2003 API, which I used for this purpose. The objects list is given below:

Objects

• Outlook.Application
• Outlook.Namespace
• Outlook.MAPIFolder
• Outlook.Recipient
• Outlook.AppointmentItem

More details on Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Integration API Reference can be found at this link.

I wrote a very simple procedure for doing this. A sample code example is given below.

Sample Code Example

Public Sub myAppointment(strRecipient As String, _
                          strSubject As String, _
                          strBody As String, _
                          dtStartDate As Date, _
                 Optional intReminder As Variant, _
                 Optional intDuration As Variant)
'Author: Md. Marufuzzaman
'Created:
'Description: Set an appointment;

On Error GoTo ErrorHandler:

    Dim ObjApplication As Outlook.Application
    Dim ObjNamespace As Outlook.Namespace
    Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    Dim ObjRecipient As Outlook.strRecipient
    Dim ObjApplicationt As Outlook.AppointmentItem
    Dim apptDate As Date
    Dim strContact As String
    
    Set ObjApplication = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
    Set ObjNamespace = ObjApplication.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set ObjRecipient = ObjNamespace.CreatestrRecipient(strRecipient)
    Set objFolder = ObjNamespace.GetSharedDefaultFolder(ObjRecipient, olFolderCalendar)

    If Not objFolder Is Nothing Then
        Set ObjApplicationt = objFolder.Items.Add
        If Not ObjApplicationt Is Nothing Then
            With ObjApplicationt
                .strSubject = strSubject
                .strBody = strBody
                .Start = dtStartDate
                If Not IsNull(intReminder) Then
                    .ReminderSet = True
                    .intReminderBeforeStart = intReminder
                End If
                If Not IsNull(intDuration) Then
                    .intDuration = intDuration
                Else
                    .intDuration = 10
                End If
                .Save
            End With
        End If
    End If
    Set ObjApplication = Nothing
    Set ObjNamespace = Nothing
    Set objFolder = Nothing
    Set ObjRecipient = Nothing
    Set ObjApplicationt = Nothing


Exit_myAppointment:
        Exit Sub
    
ErrorHandler:

        MsgBox Err.Description, vbCritical, "Error!"
        Resume Exit_myAppointment:

End Sub

Conclusion

I hope that this article might be helpful to you. Enjoy!

History

• 26^th August, 2009: Initial post.
• 5^th September 2009: Use data type Variant instant of Integer type.