Reference a folder by name

Question

I need to get a folder by name, not by folder number counts. I tried getting with various methods.

Dim olApp As Outlook.Application
Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace
'Dim OlFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim objFolder As Outlook.Folder
Dim myolItems As Outlook.Items
Set olApp = Outlook.Application
Set objNS = olApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
'Set myOlItems = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(37).Folders("Vijay Baswal").Items
'Open the folder
Set objFolder = olApp.Session.GetDefaultFolder("Vijay Baswal")

I wrote a detailed tutorial on accessing information within Outlook starting with the folders in response to an earlier question. See http://stackoverflow.com/a/8699250/973283. — Tony Dallimore, Jun 22 '12 at 08:56
I believe the right answer is AnswerC in the tutorial linked in the comment by @TonyDallimore . — NewSites, May 15 '23 at 23:42

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 26 '13 at 12:14

Say under the Inbox was a folder named Clients and under that was a folder named Vijay Baswal

Set objFolder = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox).Folders("Clients").Folders("Vijay Baswal")

OlDefaultFolders Enumeration http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/bb208072(v=office.12).aspx

The Inbox is olFolderInbox or 6. Appears there is no 37.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 15 '15 at 06:03

see below vba snippet to check how to read mail from specific folder

 Dim olApp As Outlook.Application
Dim olNs As Outlook.NameSpace
Dim olFldr As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim olItms As Outlook.Items
Dim olMail As Variant
Dim outFolder As Outlook.Folder

 Dim olItem As Outlook.MailItem


Dim i As Long

Set olApp = New Outlook.Application
Set olNs = olApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set olFldr = olNs.Folders("folder1").Folders("fol2")
Set olItms = olFldr.Items


olItms.Sort "Subject"

i = 1

For Each olItem In olItms
    'If InStr(olMail.Subject, "Criteria") > 0 Then

       Dim szVar As String
      szVar = olItem.Body
        szVar1 = olItem.Subject
        i = i + 1
    'End If
Next olItem

Set olFldr = Nothing
Set olNs = Nothing
Set olApp = Nothing

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 16 '23 at 03:45

I wrote a comment to the question, in which I said that the right answer is AnswerC in the tutorial linked in the comment by @TonyDallimore. The tutorial is very helpful for understanding the object model to see how to access Outlook folders by name. But there is one line of code from the answer here by @koolprasad2003 :

Set olFldr = olNs.Folders("folder1").Folders("fol2")

that gave me an idea of how to simplify Tony's AnswerC:

Function oOutlookFolder(sOutlookFolder As String, sDelim As String) As MAPIFolder

' Return the MS Outlook folder object represented by the structure of folder names in sOutlookFolder.

' sOutlookFolder has the structure "folder1|folder2|...|folderN" if sDelim = "|".

' Adapted from combination of subs AnswerC2() and AnswerC3() in:
'   www.stackoverflow.com/questions/8697493/update-excel-sheet-based-on-outlook-mail/#8699250
'   and
'   www.stackoverflow.com/questions/11151811/reference-a-folder-by-name/#34282145

Dim oFolders As Folders, oFolder As MAPIFolder, nCharPosn As Byte, _
    sFolder As String, sChildren As String, bFirst As Boolean

Set oFolders = CreateObject("Outlook.Application").GetNamespace("MAPI").Folders
sChildren = sOutlookFolder
bFirst = True
nCharPosn = 1

While nCharPosn <> 0
    nCharPosn = InStr(sChildren, sDelim)
    sFolder = Mid(sChildren, 1, IIf(nCharPosn = 0, 100, nCharPosn - 1))
    If (bFirst) Then
        Set oFolder = oFolders(sFolder)
      Else
        Set oFolder = oFolder.Folders(sFolder)
      End If
    bFirst = False
    If (nCharPosn <> 0) Then sChildren = Mid(sChildren, nCharPosn + 1)
  Wend

Set oOutlookFolder = oFolder

End Function ' oOutlookFolder()

That function basically replaces Tony's sub AnswerC2(), as well as AnswerC3(), which is called by AnswerC2(), as well as recursively by itself. Therefore, in Tony's code for AnswerC1(), AnswerD(), and AnswerE(), you can replace:

Call AnswerC2(FolderTgt, FolderNameTgt, "|")

with:

set FolderTgt = oOutlookFolder(FolderNameTgt, "|")

I have tested this successfully in Outlook 2021.

There are two weaknesses of my code for oOutlookFolder(). First, the while loop is inelegant since it checks the value of nCharPosn three times. And second, the function has no error checking and will crash if sOutlookFolder doesn't represent an existing Outlook folder. I would be happy for others to improve the code.

Reference a folder by name

3 Answers3

Linked