8

I want to be able to drag and drop an Outlook message into the browser and fire a Javascript event that, for example, creates a link to the message using the message's GUID.

But I'm stuck at the first step—attempting to drag an Outlook message anywhere outside the folder list shows the not-allowed cursor.

I was about to give up, except I found some posts suggesting ways to enable the operation, e.g. How to drag and drop an email, from Outlook, into a .NET application?

Is there some way to make this possible? (Including writing a browser extension, though not ideal.)

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Andrew Cheong
  • 29,362
  • 15
  • 90
  • 145

4 Answers4

15

Free plugin solution for older browsers and older Outlook:

https://tonyfederer.github.io/OutlookFileDrag/

From the website:

When you try to drag and drop from Outlook, Outlook correctly identifies the format as virtual files (CFSTR_FILEDESCRIPTORW) since the files do not exist directly on disk. Instead, they are contained in a PST file, OST file, or on an Exchange server.

However, many applications do not support, such as web browers and most .NET/ Java applications.

To work around this issue, Outlook File Drag hooks the Outlook drag and drop process and adds support for physical files (CF_HDROP). When the application asks for the physical files, the files are saved to a temp folder.

I looked at https://outlook2web.com/ and https://www.wilutions.info/ddaddin-download.html

but this free one works just fine and it's open source.

Update regarding newer browsers and Outlook:

After updates to Outlook and the dataTransfer API, drag and drop functionality seems to be available in the latest versions of Chrome and Edge via the "items" property of the "dataTransfer" property of the "drop" event. You then have to iterate the items and check if they are files or not and then use them. However FireFox still seems to be incompatible with Outlook via this API. Not sure about other applications. Here is their bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=580928

You can vote for a bug in bugzilla if you have an account by expanding the details section of the page.

ADJenks
  • 2,973
  • 27
  • 38
  • Great find!! :) – Nicki Jun 18 '18 at 10:16
  • Works perfectly, very nice – Perogy Jun 21 '19 at 18:13
  • for anyone finding this, it seems while dragging from your mailbox works great with newer browsers and outlook... dragging emails sent from a shared mailbox still suffer from the same problem where outlook is essentially dragging a "pointer" or "uri" to the message and thus a solution like this is still needed – Jared Wilkin Aug 26 '21 at 16:34
1

Another solution (not free) is DDAddin. This works really well. The solution will add an Outlook add-in that converts the selected emails from HTML 5 to CF_HDROP so browsers can understand it.

Make sure to restart Outlook after installing the add-in. The link has more details on how to test the functionality but you can easily drag and drop an email to your browser to see it working.

Cody Gray - on strike
  • 239,200
  • 50
  • 490
  • 574
Moe
  • 1,599
  • 11
  • 16
0

For Outlook attachments, see Upload fails when user drags and drops attachment from email client.

It is similar for the messages. BHO for IE is certainly doable, but it will fairly involved - you'd essentially need to create your own implementation of the IDropTarget interface and set the browser window to use your implementation. You can then transform the message being dragged (you can save it as an MSG file) and pass it to the old IDropTarget interface implemented by the browser, which will in turn pass it to the script on the web page.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Dmitry Streblechenko
  • 62,942
  • 4
  • 53
  • 78
  • Thank you for your correct answer at the time. I've reassigned the accepted answer however because there appears to be a solution now. (Your upvote from me remains. Someone else must have downvoted.) – Andrew Cheong Oct 16 '19 at 10:45
0

I'm sorry to re-open this kind of ancient post. I'm a coworker at DragDrop and we use our own tool "DragDrop for Outlook". It is an Add-in that supports Outlook 2007 and up, and makes dragging and dropping through outlook and any dropzone possible.

I use it very often and it is such a handy and powerful tool. Besides that, our customers tell us that the support team is super friendly and helpful.

You can find DragDrop here

Oh, and we also provide a free trial here

Let me know your thoughts.

Good to know: This is a product that receives updates and new features now and then.

Roel
  • 11
  • 1
  • 2
    No worries. It's also okay to promote your own product as long as you begin the post with something like, "Disclaimer: I am the author / I was a developer for this product," because it may still help people. (But I can understand why you wrote your post that way for fear of it not being allowed.) Could you edit your post to include your involvement? Then I will upvote and delete this comment :-) – Andrew Cheong May 20 '20 at 09:07