******* DONE External Links to Outlook Emails Get Broken When Emails Are Moved :blog:microsoft:software:pim:programming:emacs:
CLOSED: [2018-01-24 Wed 14:21]
:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 2018-01-24-broken-outlook-links
:CREATED:  [2018-01-24 Wed 14:02]
:END:
:LOGBOOK:
- State "DONE"       from "DONE"       [2022-03-15 Tue 14:44]
- State "DONE"       from "NEXT"       [2018-01-24 Wed 14:21]
:END:

- Update 2022-03-15: Email from Eric

A [[https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/4gtqhk/windows_users_what_email_client_are_you_currently/d2lvitd/][reddit post]] gave me the idea to link Outlook emails within my
Org-mode. Unfortunately, this method comes with some drawbacks.

******** Setup

I registered the link type in the Windows registry, added the VBA code
below and made it work from the command line:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
' Adds an Org-mode link to the currently selected message to the clipboard:
Sub AddLinkToMessageInClipboard()

   Dim objMail As Outlook.MailItem
   Dim doClipboard As New DataObject

   'One and ONLY one message must be selected
   If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count <> 1 Then
       MsgBox ("Select one and ONLY one message.")
       Exit Sub
   End If

   Set objMail = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)
   doClipboard.SetText "[" + Format(objMail.ReceivedTime, "yyyy-mm-dd ddd Hh:Nn") + _
           "] [[outlook:" + objMail.EntryID + "][Email: " + _
           Replace(Replace(objMail.Subject, "[", "{"), "]", "}") + " (" + _
           objMail.SenderName + ")]]"
   doClipboard.PutInClipboard
End Sub
#+END_EXAMPLE

After adding a Quick Access Toolbar item which gave me direct access
to the functionality, I get clipboard content like this:

: [2018-01-24 Wed 13:27] [[outlook:00000000CC2...1054E0][Email: Testsubject (Karl Voit)]]

Please note that the actual ID is much longer. In =cmd.exe= the
following command now works:

: "C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Office/Office16/OUTLOOK.EXE" /select outlook:00000000CC2...1054E0

Clicking the link within Emacs works after I [[https://github.com/novoid/dot-emacs/blob/master/config.org#links-to-outlook-entities][added this lisp code]] to
my Emacs config.

Please note, that even the location of =OUTLOOK.EXE= is a subject to
change. Its location on my Office 2016 changed from =C:\Program Files
(x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16= to =C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office16= during a simple Office update.

******** Where It Fails

Now you will recognise, that these IDs are changing according to the
time and the folder the associated email is stored to. This means that
you'll get different IDs for the same email when it is in your inbox,
stored to your archive folder and even once again when stored back to
your inbox.

[[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42986796/hyperlink-to-an-existing-outlook-mail-message][This page shows some attempts using =PR_SEARCH_KEY= or Outlook Links]]
which fail as well.

To my knowledge, there is *no possible way to get a unique ID to an
Outlook email* which does not change when email is moved to folders.

Hence, this linking method only works as long as you link emails only
from their final storage location.

******** Email Comment by Eric
:PROPERTIES:
:END:

#+BEGIN_QUOTE
Hello,

I wonder whether an alternative approach could be to generate not a link to
a specific message ID, but rather a link that would launch outlook and
search for, say, the message author + date, which would almost surely return
only the wanted message (or multiple copies of it if there are). This is the
approach introduced (for different reasons) in the [[https://camiel.bouchier.be/en/cb_thunderlink][cb_thunderlink addon]] to
Thunderbird.
#+END_QUOTE

Yes, this would be an approach to fix this issue with Outlook.
Depending on the API exposed by Outlook via command line, this might
be feasible to implement.

I, myself, don't have access to Windows any more (lucky me). So I
won't follow that train unless I'm forced to use Windows again in
the future.