Question:
I need to create a VB utility that will read and parse a flat text log file (no problem here) and then automatically send an email with any error messages that are encountered in the log file. What is the easist way to send a pre-formated email directly from VB to an Outlook outbox?
Answer:
Outlook exposes an object model that can be referenced from VB’s References dialog box. The toplevel object Outlook.Application has a CreateItem method that creates default Outlook items based on the value passed to it.
To create a new message pass olMailItem. Set Subject and Body properties. Add Recipients to the Recipients collection and call the Send method.
If you want to send a preformatted message, create a custom Outlook form. To programmatically create an instance of the form, you can’t use the CreateItem method, you’ll have to use the Add method of a folder’s items collection. Pass the custom form’s class ID to the Add method to create an instance of the form and set the properties as described above.
For more information, Microsoft Press has a great book on programming Outlook by Tom Rizzo.
