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Many Outlook solutions modify the contents of items in a folder. In most
scenarios you loop through the
Items collection in the Outlook object
model. If you do not properly reference the items in the collection, you
may receive unexpected results.
Before modifying an item and saving it, you should set an object variable
to the item, make changes to the item using the object variable, and then
save the object.
NOTE: Be sure to reference the
Microsoft Outlook 9.0 Object Library before running these code examples and be aware running this code will modify any existing contacts you have in your Contacts folder.
Consider the following Visual Basic automation code sample that is
designed to reset the birthday field for each contact in the default
Contacts folder:
Sub ResetBirthdays1()
Dim olns as Outlook.Namespace
Dim oConItems As Outlook.Items
Dim iNumItems As Integer
Set ol = New Outlook.Application
Set olns = ol.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set oConItems = olns.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts).Items
iNumItems = oConItems.Count
For I = 1 to iNumItems
oConItems.Item(I).Birthday = "1/1/4501"
oConItems.Item(I).Close olSave
Next
Set oConItems = Nothing
Set olns = Nothing
Set ol = Nothing
End Sub
In the previous example, the loop is adequately structured and will process
all of the items in the folder. However, within the loop each time
ConItems.Item(I) is executed, it retrieves the specific item from the
collection of items. In this case, the
Birthday is set for an item, but
then then following line of code gets the item from the collection again.
The end result is that an unmodified item is saved.
The following example is one way of modifying the previous code sample so
that it executes as expected:
Sub ResetBirthdays2()
Dim olns As Outlook.Namespace
Dim oConItems As Outlook.Items
Dim iNumItems As Integer
Set ol = New Outlook.Application
Set olns = ol.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set oConItems = olns.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts).Items
iNumItems = oConItems.Count
For I = 1 to iNumItems
Set oCurItem = oConItems.Item(I)
oCurItem.Birthday = "1/1/4501"
oCurItem.Close olSave
Next
Set oConItems = Nothing
Set olns = Nothing
Set ol = Nothing
End Sub
In the previous sample,
oCurItem is set to a specific item in the
collection, modifications to the item are made using that object variable,
and the object is saved. This avoids getting an item from the collection
and losing any changes.
The following example provides the same functionality as the previous
example, but uses the
For Each...Next structure to loop through the items:
Sub ResetBirthdays3()
Dim olns as Outlook.Namespace
Dim oConItems As Outlook.Items
Set ol = New Outlook.Application
Set olns = ol.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set oConItems = olns.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts).Items
For Each oCurItem in oConItems
oCurItem.Birthday = "1/1/4501"
oCurItem.Close olSave
Next
Set oConItems = Nothing
Set olns = Nothing
Set ol = Nothing
End Sub