12.5 Manipulating the Contacts folder

Manipulating the Contacts folder

Outlook has a built-in address book, the folder called Contacts. It s like a super-Rolodex, capable of keeping track of multiple addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses for each person, represented by a ContactItem object.

Surprisingly, Outlook doesn t use collections to manage the various addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. Separate properties are used for each, and the number of each type is limited (three addresses, 19 phone numbers, three e-mail addresses). Table 4 lists some of the properties of ContactItem see Help for more, but the pattern should be obvious from the table.

The program in Listing 1 reads the Contacts folder and creates a cursor with an entry for each person, containing the name, selected mailing address, and primary telephone number. You ll find it as MakeContactList.PRG in the Developer Download files available at www.hentzenwerke.com.

Table 4. I m in the book. The ContactItem object represents a person in Outlook s address book.

Property	Type	Description
FullName	Character	The person s full name, unparsed. The name is also available in a variety of configurations, like LastNameAndFirstName, LastFirstAndSuffix, and so forth. See Help for a complete list.
FirstName	Character	The person s first name.
LastName	Character	The person s last name.
HomeAddress	Character	The person s home address, unparsed. As with name, the components are available individually. Outlook is also capable of doing sophisticated parsing of an address it s given to break it into components.
HomeAddressStreet	Character	The street portion (first line) of the home address.
HomeAddressCity	Character	The city portion of the home address.
HomeAddressState	Character	The state portion of the home address.
HomeAddressCountry	Character	The country of the home address.
HomeAddressPostalCode	Character	The postal/ZIP code of the home address.
BusinessAddress	Character	The person s business address, unparsed. The same individual components are available as for home address.
SelectedMailingAddress	Numeric	Indicates which address is the primary address for this person. Uses these constants: olNone 0 olBusiness 2 olHome 1 olOther 3
HomeTelephoneNumber	Character	The person s home telephone number.
BusinessTelephoneNumber	Character	The person s business telephone number.
HomeFaxNumber	Character	The person s home fax number.
BusinessFaxNumber	Character	The person s business fax number.
PagerNumber	Character	The person s pager number.
CarTelephoneNumber	Character	The person s car phone number.
PrimaryTelephoneNumber	Character	The primary phone number to use for this person.
Email1Address	Character	The first e-mail address for this person.
Birthday	Datetime	The person s birthday.

Listing 1. Collecting contact information. This program reads the Contacts from Outlook and puts them into a VFP cursor.

* Read Outlook contact information into a cursor

#DEFINE olContacts 10

#DEFINE olNone 0

#DEFINE olHome 1

#DEFINE olBusiness 2

#DEFINE olOther 3

LOCAL oNameSpace, oContacts, oContact

LOCAL cFirst, cLast, cAddr, cPhone

IF VarType(oOutlook) <> "O"

* Start or connect to Outlook

* Make it public for demonstration purposes.

RELEASE oOutlook

PUBLIC oOutlook

oOutlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")

ENDIF

oNameSpace = oOutlook.GetNameSpace("MAPI")

* Get Contacts folder

oContacts = oNameSpace.GetDefaultFolder( olContacts )

* Create a cursor to hold contact information

CREATE CURSOR ContactInfo ;

(cFirstName C(15), cLastName C(20), mAddress M, cPhoneNum C(30))

* Go through contacts

FOR EACH oContact IN oContacts.Items

WITH oContact

cFirst = .FirstName

cLast = .LastName

cPhone = .PrimaryTelephoneNumber

* Choose the right address. If the primary phone number is empty,

* pick up the phone number associated with this address.

DO CASE

CASE .SelectedMailingAddress = olHome

cAddr = .HomeAddress

IF EMPTY(cPhone)

cPhone = .HomeTelephoneNumber

ENDIF

CASE .SelectedMailingAddress = olBusiness

cAddr = .BusinessAddress

IF EMPTY(cPhone)

cPhone = .BusinessTelephoneNumber

ENDIF

CASE .SelectedMailingAddress = olOther

cAddr = .OtherAddress

IF EMPTY(cPhone)

cPhone = .OtherTelephoneNumber

ENDIF

CASE .SelectedMailingAddress = olNone

cAddr = ""

ENDCASE

INSERT INTO ContactInfo VALUES (cFirst, cLast, cAddr, cPhone)

ENDWITH

ENDFOR

* Show the results

BROWSE

RETURN

Chances are that you ll need to go the other direction, too, and create an Outlook contact from FoxPro data. While this book focuses on FoxPro solutions, be aware that Outlook supports the import of files in many formats directly, and has a pretty snappy and flexible interface to its Import Wizard. Consider exporting contact information from VFP into one of the common formats (like CSV) and then importing it into Outlook from there. Contacts are created like other Outlook items, by using the CreateItem method. The example shown in Listing 2 (MakeContact.PRG in the Developer Download files available at www.hentzenwerke.com) adds a record from the TasTrade Supplier table to Outlook s contacts.

Listing 2. Create an Outlook contact. This program sends data from VFP to Outlook to create a new contact.

* Add supplier information

#DEFINE olContactItem 2

#DEFINE olBusiness 2

LOCAL oNameSpace, oContact

IF VarType(oOutlook) <> "O"

* Start or connect to Outlook

* Make it public for demonstration purposes.

RELEASE oOutlook

PUBLIC oOutlook

oOutlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")

ENDIF

oNameSpace = oOutlook.GetNameSpace("MAPI")

* Open Supplier

OPEN DATA _SAMPLES + "TasTrade\Data\TasTrade"

USE Supplier

* Pick a random record for demonstration purposes

GO RAND()* RECCOUNT()

* Create a new contact record

oContact = oOutlook.CreateItem( olContactItem )

WITH oContact

.FullName = Contact_Name

.CompanyName = Company_Name

.BusinessAddressStreet = Address

.BusinessAddressCity = City

.BusinessAddressState = Region

.BusinessAddressPostalCode = Postal_Code

.BusinessAddressCountry = Country

.SelectedMailingAddress = olBusiness

.BusinessTelephoneNumber = Phone

.PrimaryTelephoneNumber = Phone

.BusinessFaxNumber = Fax

.Save()

ENDWITH

USE

RETURN

 

Copyright 2000 by Tamar E. Granor and Della Martin All Rights Reserved