OL98: How to Programmatically Filter by Category (187296)

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The following Visual Basic for Applications sample subroutine automates Outlook to find contacts based on the categories assigned to them. Before running this sample code, you should create some contacts in your default Contacts folder and set the Categories field for these contacts to a certain value.

NOTE: The following sample code assumes the contacts are categorized by "Business" and "Personal." You can use these keywords or modify the code to use other keywords of your choice. The categories that are found are displayed in the Immediate window of Visual Basic Editor.

    Sub FilterCategories()
      Dim objOutlook As Outlook.Application
      Dim objNameSpace As Outlook.NameSpace
      Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
      Dim objContacts As Outlook.Items
      Dim objContact As Outlook.ContactItem
      Dim objResItems As Outlook.Items
      Dim obhResItem As Outlook.ContactItem
      Dim i As Integer
 
      Set objOutlook = New Outlook.Application
      Set objNameSpace = objOutlook.GetNamespace("MAPI")
 
      ' Retrieve the default Contacts Folder
      Set objFolder = objNameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts)
 
      ' Retrieve the Items collection
      Set objContacts = objFolder.Items
 
      ' Create a Restriction on the Items
      Set objResItems = objContacts.Restrict("[Categories] = 'business'")
 
      ' Display the number of items that match the restriction
      MsgBox "Found: " & objResItems.Count
 
      ' Process each of the Restricted Items
      For Each objResItem in objResItems
         Debug.Print objResItem.FullName & "  " & objResItem.Categories
      Next
 
      Set objOutlook = Nothing
    End Sub
				

The Categories field is a Keywords type field, which is designed to hold multiple values. When accessing it programmatically, the Categories field behaves like a text field, because the string must match exactly. The preceding sample will work only if the contacts have been assigned one category. If you assign more than one category to a contact, the code must search for the full list of categories. For example, if you use Restrict to search for "Business" contacts when one contact's categories are "Business, Personal" and another contact's categories are "Personal, Business", neither contact will be returned. If you search for "Business, Personal", the first contact will be returned.

Category strings are not case sensitive.

The following are variations of the clause for the Restrict method so you can specify multiple criteria:

• The following line of code demonstrates the "OR" logical relationship. It returns all contact items that have either "Business" or "Personal" in their categories list.

        Set objRestrictedItems = objContacts.Restrict( _
           "[Categories] = 'Personal' OR [Categories] = 'Business'")

• The following line of code demonstrates the "AND" logical relationship. It returns all contact items that have both "Business" and "Personal" in their categories list.

        Set objRestrictedItems = objContacts.Restrict(_
           "[Categories] = 'Business' AND [Categories] = 'Personal'")