Automatically saving attachments of certain emails

Question

I'm trying to write a macro to automatically save certain reports we get via email at work. Another department has something very similar in place, so I can re-use a lot of their code. However, they couldn’t really explain to me what certain parts of the code do and googling it wasn't particularly helpful.

If it helps, I’ll post the whole code, I left it out because a) I’d have to edit some things (names etc) and b) I don’t think it’s relevant to my problem.

The point of the code is that on startup the macro starts; every new email gets then checked (by sender; subject line; attachments). I struggle understanding the startup-part of the code because I’m not that experienced with VBA in general and have never used VBA in Outlook.

Option Explicit

Private WithEvents olInboxItems As Items

Private Sub Application_Startup()
  Dim objNS As NameSpace
  Set objNS = Application.Session
  Set olInboxItems = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox).Folders("reports").Items
  Set objNS = Nothing
End Sub

Private Sub olInboxItems_ItemAdd(ByVal Item As Object)

If Item.Attachments.Count > 0 Then

    ….

End Sub

Questions:

Private WithEvents olInboxItems As Items - What does Private WithEvents mean or do? I know about events in VBA, like opening a workbook, but I couldn’t figure out what was meant with this line.

NameSpace: Simply put, what is a NameSpace? What I read was that in Outlook there’s a different structure to the object model compared to say Excel, the NameSpace is just below the application level. If that’s correct, then I guess that’s good enough for me, but if anyone has a neat explanation, I’d appreciate it.

Why would you Set objNS = Nothing?

Does this answer your question? [When should an Excel VBA variable be killed or set to Nothing?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19038350/when-should-an-excel-vba-variable-be-killed-or-set-to-nothing) — braX, Jan 31 '20 at 11:54

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 31 '20 at 21:26

Private WithEvents olInboxItems As Items - What does Private WithEvents mean or do?

WithEvents Specifies one or more declared member variables refer to an instance of a class that can raise events.

To create an event handler for Microsoft Outlook objects in Microsoft Visual Basic see

Using Events with Automation MSDN

Using Outlook Visual Basic for Applications to Respond to Outlook Events MSDN

NameSpace: Simply put, what is a NameSpace?

NameSpace object (Outlook) it represents an abstract root object for any data source and accessing storage objects directly.

NameSpace object (Outlook) MSDN

good code example

Option Explicit
Private WithEvents Items As Outlook.Items

Private Sub Application_Startup()
    Dim olNs As Outlook.NameSpace
    Set olNs = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")

    Dim Inbox  As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    Set Inbox = olNs.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
    Set Items = Inbox.Items

End Sub

Private Sub Items_ItemAdd(ByVal Item As Object)
    If TypeOf Item Is Outlook.MailItem Then
        DoEvents
        '' call another sub
    End If
End Sub

Setting Object to Nothing - https://stackoverflow.com/a/517202/4539709

Automatically saving attachments of certain emails

1 Answers1