outlook: can't get started

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Guest

Experienced, but first time outlook programmer asks...

Each day I get an e-mail containing a gzipped tar archive as an attachment.
I'd like an automated way to (1) save the archive as-is in a particular
folder and (2) unpack the archive with gunzip & tar, either directly from the
mail message or from its saved location in step 1.

Sorry to ask such a vague question, but there seem to be a zillion ways to
think about doing this--outlook custom action, vba from inside outlook, .net
from outside outlook--and I need some direction on which way to go.

Completely unattended operation would be nice. It would be nice to trigger
on arrival of the message, but as the archive arrives at a predictable time
I'd also be satisfied to trigger on time of day.

Thanks for insight & direction,
Eric
 
Eric,
There are lots of options to do what you want. Here are a number of links
that may help you.

Rather then tie myself to Outlook, I would consider creating a Windows
Service that can run in the background unattended. If I had Exchange Server,
I would consider running it on a server box, so a client PC would not need
to be running. You can still run a Windows Service on a client PC, I would
have it log in under my normal login account. Not sure if the OOM (Outlook
Object Model) will work, however CDO 1.2.1 does. With Exchange Server there
are other technologies available instead of CDO 1.2.1...

An alternative to a Windows Service would be to create a standalone program
that Task Scheduler started that used OOM to look for the file & process it.

For a discussion on selecting development technologies for Exchange Server,
start here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/e2k3/e2k3/_techsel_intro.asp

To avoid the Outlook security prompts its generally easiest to create a
properly constructed COM-Addin for Outlook 2003. There are other methods
available for other versions of Outlook...

See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...dc_ol2003_ta/html/odc_olsecnotescomaddins.asp

Further info can be found at:
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/ol2003problems.htm
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/esecup/admin.htm


For a list of resources on using Outlook from VB.NET & C#:
http://www.microeye.com/resources/res_outlookvsnet.htm

For help & information on programming Outlook (mostly VB6, some VB.NET):
http://www.outlookcode.com/

Some samples of using Outlook with VB.NET:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/de...y/en-us/odc_OL2003_ta/html/odc_OLOMwVBNET.asp

A sample COM Add-in for Outlook written in VB.NET:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...n-us/odc_OL2003_ta/html/odc_OLWhatsNew2k3.asp

Hope this helps
Jay
 
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