Question

The medical company I work for has a EMR system setup to keep digital copies of patient files so they are searchable as well as quick to access. A new request has come through to be able to save e-mail to the EMR system, however it does not display .msg files very nicely. It does display files nicely as .htm, so was hoping i could figure out a way to save email messages to a specific folder in a .htm format with the user just hitting a single button.

Should i be looking at making an add-in using vs 2010 to do this simple task? Or would there be a better way to do this?

I’ve explored making an Add-In breifly over the past few days using command bars but have hit numerous problems with adding the menu item to mail items, as well as losing event handlers or having them fire quite a few times, so i’m wondering if i’m barking up the wrong tree.

Edit: Looking at ribbon bar customization as well, may have to upgrade some users that are still using 2003, but seems like it might be the better option than command bars going forward.

Answer 1

Ribbon bar was the best path i found, however i had trouble finding a great how-to for the start-to-finish project, so i’ll make a small write up here.

To add a button to the ribbon for only existing mail messages including a image for the button.

Using VS 2010
New project, Office, select “Outlook 2007 add in”, enter a name for your project.
To your newly created project, Add a new item “Ribbon (XML)” name it however you want, i’ll call it CustomRibbon
open your newly created CustomRibbon.xml file and change the tab node to have the following

  <tab idMso="TabReadMessage">

    <group insertBeforeMso="GroupActions" id="CustomGroup" label="GroupNameThatShowsInOutlook">
      <button id="btnCustomButton"
            label = "Text For The Custom Button"
            supertip="tip for the button hover"
            onAction ="ButtonClicked"
            size="large"
            getImage="GetCustomButtonImage" />

    </group>
  </tab>

This then has 2 callback functions to the CustomRibbon.cs file, one called GetCustomButtonImage, the other ButtonClicked.

open CustomRibbon.cs to fill this in, in the Ribbon Callbacks region add the following

public void ButtonClicked(Office.IRibbonControl Control)
{
   //Do work here
}

also add the following in the same section

public stdole.IPictureDisp GetCustomButtonImage(Office.IRibbonControl control)
{
   System.Drawing.Image myImage;
   myImage = OutlookAddIn.Properties.Resources.ImageName;
   return AxHostConverter.ImageToPictureDisp(myImage);
}

this will then show there is a class missing, we’ll get to that shortly, but first we are going to add in the last part we need in CustomRibbon.cs. In the IRibbonExtensibility Members region, in GetCustomUI change the existing code

public string GetCustomUI(string ribbonID)
{
   if (ribbonID == "Microsoft.Outlook.Mail.Read")
   {
      return GetResourceText("OutlookAddIn.CustomRibbon.xml");
   }
   else
   {
      return "";
   }
}

Add a new class to your project call it AxHostConverter, add add this to the top

using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Drawing;

Then change the class to have the following code

class AxHostConverter : AxHost
{
    private AxHostConverter() : base("") { }

    static public stdole.IPictureDisp ImageToPictureDisp(Image image)
    {
        return (stdole.IPictureDisp)GetIPictureDispFromPicture(image);
    }

    static public Image PictureDispToImage(stdole.IPictureDisp pictureDisp)
    {
        return GetPictureFromIPicture(pictureDisp);
    }
}

Add your image for your button to the project, and change the GetCustomButtonImage function to use that resource. I used a PNG and had good luck with transparencies displaying well.

And finally, all that should be left is to add the following to ThisAddIn.cs

    protected override Microsoft.Office.Core.IRibbonExtensibility CreateRibbonExtensibilityObject()
    {
        return new CustomRibbon();
    }

Add whatever code you are wanting to ButtonClicked and you are set.

Deploy using Clickonce and installation is fairly straightforward.