ANOTHER UPDATE: The content of this article is superceded by a newer version with more features, outlined in this article on MSDN:
Office Developer Center: Viewing Multiple Picture Attachments in Outlook 2003:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/aa168469%28v=office.11%29.aspx
UPDATE: The information in this post is really intended for those of you who have some decent experience programming within the Outlook VBA Editor. I never meant for this to be consumed by general users, so if you don’t know how to set references to Type Libraries, create User Forms or compile and debug VBA, then you know you are not the intended audience. I may redo this solution as a downloadable, installable COM Add-In sometime – for use by ALL Outlook users – so stay tuned…
This is one of my most heavily used weapons in my Outlook macro arsenal, and saves me a lot of grief. Take a look at the screenshot below:
Doesn’t this drive you nuts? You can select all of the attachments in an e-mail, but you can’t launch all of them at the same time. You have to double-click each one individually. I’m sure there’s been many times when you’ve received an e-mail from one of your friends with 15 joke pictures, or Aunt Rose sends you 5 photos of her new cat, and it quickly becomes a real chore to open – view – close every single attachment.
Read on, and I’ll show you the code for a much better way to handle this.
The Message Attachments Form
Ultimately, this is what you will see when you click a custom button on one of your toolbars:
This form will contain a list of all the picture attachments in the current message (those with .gif, .jpg, .tif or .bmp extensions; you can enter additional ones in the frmAttachments.FillList procedure). You can selectively choose non-contiguous entries in the list with Shift-clicks, all entries, just one attachment (double-clicks are enabled), and then click a button to show the picture(s).
Launching the Message Attachments Form
First off, to launch this form, create this macro and put it either in your ThisOutlookSession module or any Modules you have in your VBA Project:
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Sub ViewAttachments() On Error GoTo EH: Dim objMessage As Object Set objMessage = Application.ActiveInspector If objMessage.CurrentItem.Attachments.Count = 0 Then Exit Sub Set frmAttachments.objMessage = objMessage.CurrentItem frmAttachments.FillList frmAttachments.Show EH: If Err.Number <> 0 Then MsgBox "Something is wrong!" Exit Sub End If End Sub |
You’ll also need to create a custom button on one of your message Toolbars. To do this, choose Customize from the Toolbars sub-menu under the View menu of your message. Click the Commands tab, choose Macros from the Categories list, and select OutlookVBA.ViewAttachments. Now drag that to a spot on any of your Toolbars and you’re good to go.
Message Attachments Form Code
Here is the code for the frmAttachments UserForm. Rather than recreating the UserForm yourself, you can download the file to save yourself some trouble. I’ll include the code here for reference anyway:
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Option Explicit Public objMessage As MailItem Dim objFs As New Scripting.FileSystemObject Dim objTempFolder As Scripting.Folder Dim strTempFolderPath As String Dim strTempFilesUsed() As String Dim lngTempFileCount As Long Const ImageViewerFilePath As String = """C:Program FilesInternet Exploreriexplore.exe """ 'ALTERNATELY, IF YOU HAVE Office XP's Photo Editor INSTALLED, USE THAT AS IT IS FAST AND SUPPORTS 'MULTIPLE IMAGE WINDOWS; LOOK FOR C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedPhotoEdPHOTOED.EXE 'OR YOU CAN USE WHATEVER IMAGE VIEWER YOU WANT, AS LONG AS IT CAN TAKE ONE FILE NAME AS AN ARGUMENT 'FROM THE COMMAND LINE OR RUN DIALOG Sub FillList() 'PRE-POPULATE THE LIST BOX WITH PICTURE ATTACHMENT FILE NAMES Dim objAtt As Attachment, objAtts As Attachments Set objAtts = objMessage.Attachments lstAtts.Clear For Each objAtt In objAtts Select Case Right(objAtt.FileName, 3) Case "jpg", "gif", "tif", "bmp", "JPG", "GIF", "TIF", "BMP" Me.lstAtts.AddItem objAtt.Index Me.lstAtts.List(lstAtts.ListCount - 1, 1) = objAtt.FileName End Select Next End Sub Private Sub cmdClose_Click() Unload Me End Sub Private Sub cmdOpen_Click() On Error GoTo EH: Dim strFileName As String Dim intX As Integer, varRet As Variant If lstAtts.ListIndex = -1 Then Exit Sub 'LOOP THROUGH SELECTED PICTURE ATTACHMENTS For intX = 0 To lstAtts.ListCount - 1 If lstAtts.Selected(intX) = True Then strFileName = strTempFolderPath & "" & objMessage.Attachments.Item(lstAtts.List(intX, 0)).DisplayName objMessage.Attachments.Item(lstAtts.List(intX, 0)).SaveAsFile strFileName ReDim Preserve strTempFilesUsed(lngTempFileCount) strTempFilesUsed(lngTempFileCount) = strFileName lngTempFileCount = lngTempFileCount + 1 'LAUNCH IMAGES IN DEFINED IMAGE VIEWER varRet = Shell(ImageViewerFilePath & " " & """" & strFileName & """", 1) End If Next EH: If Err.Number 0 Then MsgBox Err.Number & vbCrLf & Err.Description & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "[error in cmdOpen_Click]", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "ERROR" Exit Sub End If End Sub Private Sub cmdOpenAll_Click() On Error GoTo EH: Dim strFileName As String Dim intX As Integer, varRet As Variant If Me.lstAtts.ListCount <= 0 Then Exit Sub 'LOOP THROUGH ALL PICTURE ATTACHMENTS For intX = 0 To lstAtts.ListCount - 1 strFileName = strTempFolderPath & "" & objMessage.Attachments.Item(lstAtts.List(intX, 0)).DisplayName objMessage.Attachments.Item(lstAtts.List(intX, 0)).SaveAsFile strFileName ReDim Preserve strTempFilesUsed(lngTempFileCount) strTempFilesUsed(lngTempFileCount) = strFileName lngTempFileCount = lngTempFileCount + 1 'LAUNCH IMAGES IN DEFINED IMAGE VIEWER varRet = Shell(ImageViewerFilePath & " " & """" & strFileName & """", 1) Next EH: If Err.Number 0 Then MsgBox Err.Number & vbCrLf & Err.Description & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "[error in cmdOpenAll_Click]", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "ERROR" Exit Sub End If End Sub Private Sub lstAtts_DblClick(ByVal Cancel As MSForms.ReturnBoolean) cmdOpen_Click End Sub Private Sub UserForm_Activate() GetTempFolder End Sub Private Sub UserForm_Terminate() DeleteTempFiles Set objMessage = Nothing Set objFs = Nothing Set objTempFolder = Nothing End Sub Sub DeleteTempFiles() On Error GoTo EH: Dim objFile As Scripting.File Dim intX As Integer For intX = 0 To UBound(strTempFilesUsed) Set objFile = objFs.GetFile(strTempFilesUsed(intX)) objFile.Delete True Next EH: If Err.Number 0 Then If Err.Number = 9 Then Exit Sub 'strTempFilesUsed ARRAY IS EMPTY; NO FILES WERE OPENED If Err.Number = 53 Then Resume Next 'FILE NOT FOUND; MAY HAVE GOT DELETED ALREADY IF THE SAME FILE WAS 'OPENED MORE THAN ONCE, AS THE FILE NAME WOULD HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED IN THE ARRAY WE ARE PARSING MsgBox Err.Number & vbCrLf & Err.Description & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "[error in DeleteTempFiles]", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "ERROR" Exit Sub End If End Sub Sub GetTempFolder() On Error Resume Next Dim objTempFolder As Scripting.Folder 'GET THE TEMP FOLDER Set objTempFolder = objFs.GetSpecialFolder(2) 'path is found in the TMP environment variable If objFs.FolderExists(objTempFolder & "AttachmentsTemp") = False Then Set objTempFolder = objFs.CreateFolder(objTempFolder & "AttachmentsTemp") Else Set objTempFolder = objFs.GetFolder(objTempFolder & "AttachmentsTemp") End If If Err.Number 0 Then 'UNABLE TO RETRIEVE TEMP FOLDER 'YOU MAY WANT TO HARDCODE A FOLDER HERE THAT WILL WORK ON YOUR SYSTEM strTempFolderPath = "C:Temp" If objFs.FolderExists(strTempFolderPath) = False Then objFs.CreateFolder strTempFolderPath End If Set objTempFolder = objFs.GetFolder(strTempFolderPath) Else strTempFolderPath = objTempFolder.Path End If End Sub |
Final Comments
You might notice that I’m using Internet Explorer to launch the images. I can’t assume what you are using as the default image viewer on your PC, but IE is always there (!) so I chose that. Feel free to change the viewer to whatever you like. See the inline comments in the code for more information. Have fun using this! I hope it makes your life easier when working with multiple picture attachments.
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COMMENTS RESTORED FROM BACKUP:
Sun 6/5/2005 11:40 PM Jimmy
“Hi Eric .. I get a compilation error for the line “objFs As New Scripting.FileSystemObject”. It says “User defined type not defined”. Please help!
Jimmy”
Mon 6/6/2005 1:15 AM Jimmy
“”90
Object variable or with block variable not set
[error in cmdOpen_Click]
”
This is the error I got while trying to open any picture attachment. Anyone got that problem?”
Mon 6/6/2005 6:50 PM Jimmy
“Thanks for that Mate, now I got this runtime error
“91
Object variable or with block variable not set
[error in cmdOpen_Click]
”
This is the error I got while trying to open any picture attachment. Anyone got that problem? ”
END COMMENTS RESTORE
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