CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#vbapowershelloutlook
skjold
skjold

Reputation: 51

Execute VBA Outlook Macro from Powershell or C# Console app

I have made an VBA Macro which gets all the events from an Outlook calendar and writes them to an excel file.

I then need to execute this macro from either a powershell script, or an C# console app.

Is there any way to do this?

Im on win10 using Outlook 2013.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1746

Answers (1)

Mathieu Guindon
Mathieu Guindon

Reputation: 71217

Outlook's Application class doesn't have a Run member, and makes it extremely hard to invoke VBA code out-of-process (heck, even in-process), presumably for security reasons. When Rubberduck initially implemented unit testing support for Outlook VBA, it was a literal hackjob involving creating a commandbar button and assigning its "OnAction" to the unit test procedure we wanted to invoke - like this:

var app = Application;
var exp = app.ActiveExplorer();
CommandBar cb = exp.CommandBars.Add("RubberduckCallbackProxy", Temporary: true);
CommandBarControl btn = cb.Controls.Add(MsoControlType.msoControlButton, 1);
btn.OnAction = declaration.QualifiedName.ToString();
btn.Execute();
cb.Delete();

So if you make btn.OnAction = "YourMacro"; and have a reference to the Outlook interop assembly (Application is Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application), I believe this can work - the macro must be in a standard module though - if it's in ThisOutlookSession then the wheels come off.

(note, since then we've figured out a much more elegant, host-agnostic way to run the user's test methods, but that wouldn't work out-of-process)

The ThisOutlookSession object is extended at run-time with the public members of that class, so if your macro is written in ThisOutlookSession then from VBA code you can invoke it like app.MacroName, but we haven't been able to get that to work from C# code.

Lastly, note that the above code will be leaking COM objects. Make sure you clean up unmanaged objects properly, otherwise you'll see a ghost OUTLOOK.EXE process lingering in the task manager waiting to be killed, well afer your script/console app is gone.

Upvotes: 2

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