Read Outlook mails from C#

Question

The above said task seems so simple as per this stack overflow question or this MSDN How To.

But I am just struck at the line foreach (Outlook.MailItem mail in items), where I get an exception saying "Unable to cast COM object of type 'System.__ComObject' to interface type 'Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.MailItem' ...".

Though there are quite a few posts about this exception, none could help me in getting over it.

Can someone please help me to solve this and to be able to read the emails from C#.

Thanks

You could try this: foreach (var mail in items), at least you will be able to check the item type of mail in the next line. — Core_F, Feb 02 '12 at 11:48

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 02 '12 at 11:53

3

Not every item in an Outlook Explorer is necessarily a MailItem. For example, public folders contain PostItems. If I remember correctly, conflict messages and meetings request also have their own item type.

Thus, I would design the loop as follows:

foreach (object item in items) {
    var mail = item as MailItem;
    if (mail != null) {
        // do something useful
        ...
    } else {
        // log or show some message box, so that you can debug this case
        ...
    }
}

answered Feb 02 '12 at 11:53

Heinzi

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Agree. In debugger I am able to see the contents of the 'Item' and it happens to be the Welcome email from Gmail (first mail). Just a simple plain email. Wouldn't that be a MailItem? By your design, 'mail' is still null for this email. This is my first Outlook program hence I'm not sure of its types. – ViV Feb 02 '12 at 12:24
1

@Vishruth: Does this happen for *all* mails or are there some which are of type MailItem? – Heinzi Feb 02 '12 at 12:40
You are right. I doesn't happen for all mails. It happens only for some. Thanks for your help. – ViV Feb 02 '12 at 12:55

Read Outlook mails from C#

1 Answers1