How to Create Birthday Reminders Using Microsoft Outlook, in C#

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Introduction

It might not be rocket science to create appointments in Microsoft Outlook but nevertheless, doing it in C# code cost me more effort than it should have. Anyway, here is a very simple example of how to create yearly recurring reminders, which I use to create reminders of birthdays for my family.

Doing this in C# was of course not easier than just using the Outlook user interface. Writing code for the sake of it is not very productive. So, why write code like this? Well, 2 reasons:

1. Because examples in this subject domain are relatively scarce. The only example I could find in MSDN was one in Java, which wasn't very well written either.
2. I have a different application which integrates with Outlook using VB6 and I wanted to see how easy it is in C#.

The Code

static void Main(string[] args)
  {
   Outlook._Application olApp = 
       (Outlook._Application) new Outlook.Application();
   Outlook.NameSpace mapiNS = olApp.GetNamespace("MAPI");
   string profile = "";
   mapiNS.Logon(profile, null, null, null);

   //create an appointment in the Calendar folder
   try
   {
    CreateYearlyAppointment(olApp, "Birthday", "Kim", 
      new DateTime(2004, 03,08, 7, 0, 0));
    CreateYearlyAppointment(olApp, "Birthday", "Lorraine",  
      new DateTime(2004, 02,21, 7, 0, 0));
    CreateYearlyAppointment(olApp, "Birthday", 
      "Evellyn",   new DateTime(2004, 05,29, 7, 0, 0));
    CreateYearlyAppointment(olApp, "Birthday", 
      "Mum", new DateTime(2004, 12,13, 7, 0, 0));
    CreateYearlyAppointment(olApp, "Tax",  
      "Quarterly tax bill", new DateTime(2004, 03,02, 7, 0, 0));
   }
   catch(Exception ex) 
   { 
    MessageBox.Show( ex.Message + " : " + ex.StackTrace); 
   }   
   MessageBox.Show("Appointments Created - toodle pip!");
   return;
  }
  static void CreateYearlyAppointment(Outlook._Application olApp, 
                 string reminderComment, string person, DateTime dt)
  {
   // Use the Outlook application object to create an appointment
   Outlook._AppointmentItem apt = (Outlook._AppointmentItem)
    olApp.CreateItem(Outlook.OlItemType.olAppointmentItem);
  
   // set some properties
   apt.Subject = person + " : " + reminderComment;
   apt.Body = reminderComment;

   apt.Start = dt;
   apt.End   = dt.AddHours(1);

   apt.ReminderMinutesBeforeStart = 24*60*7 * 1;  // One week
   // Makes it appear bold in the calendar - which I like!
   apt.BusyStatus = Outlook.OlBusyStatus.olTentative;  
   apt.AllDayEvent = false;
   apt.Location = "";

   Outlook.RecurrencePattern myPattern = apt.GetRecurrencePattern();
   myPattern.RecurrenceType = Outlook.OlRecurrenceType.olRecursYearly;
   //myPattern.Regenerate = false;
   myPattern.Interval = 1;
   apt.Save();
  }

Conclusion

Never forget your Mums birthday again!