How to access EmbeddedItem attachment in Outlook VBA

Question

I am using Outlook 2010 and the QuickSteps only allow to create a Task from an email with the email body copied to the task body or with the email as attachment.

I already have a small script which is called when a new task object is added to the task directory. If I have a an email attachment to the task I would like to copy its body to the task body.

Public WithEvents OlItems As Outlook.Items

Sub Application_Startup()
    Set OlItems = Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderTasks).Items
End Sub

Sub OlItems_ItemAdd(ByVal Item As Object)
    Dim obApp As Application

    If Item.Class = olTask Then
        Item.Status = olTaskDeferred

        If Item.Attachments.Item(1).Type = olEmbeddeditem Then
            Dim attachment As attachment
            Set attachment = Item.Attachments.Item(1)
            Debug.Print (attachment.FileName)
            '???: Item.body = attachment.body
        End If

    Item.Save
    End If

    Set obApp = Nothing
End Sub

The attachment is of type olEmbeddedItem. I can't figure out how to open/read from it?

Is this possible? My goal is to have both body and email attachment in the task item.

Answer 1

Outlook Object Model will not let you directly access embedded message attachments - if you were using C++ or Delphi, you could use Extended MAPI to open the embedded message attachment using IAttach::OpenProperty(PR_ATTACH_DATA_OBJ, IID_IMessage).

The only workaround is to save the attachment as an MSG file (Attachment.SaveAsFile) and open it using Application.Session.OpenSharedItem

Or you can use Redemption (I am its author - it wraps Extended MAPI and can be used from any language) and do something like the following:

RDOSession session = new RDOSession();
RDOMail msg = (RDOMail)session.GetRDOObjectFromOutlookObject(YourOutlookMailItem);
foreach (RDOAttachment att in msg.Attachments)
{
    if (att.Type == rdoAttachmentType.olEmbeddedItem)
    {
        RDOMail embeddedMsg = att.EmbeddedMsg;
        ProcessEmbeddedMessage(embeddedMsg);
    }
}