How to fetch emails found by instant search in Outlook using VBA?

Question

I use VBA to find email(s) by content of it's pdf attachment.

From what I understood, the only method without opening each email is Instant search.

I find the emails I look for. How do I work with emails that show as the result?

I didn't find how to save them to collection or something.

My search code:

Sub Search_Email()
Dim ol As Outlook.Application
Dim ns As Outlook.Namespace
Dim olFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim strFilter, txtSearch As String

Set ol = New Outlook.Application
Set ns = ol.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set olFolder = ns.Folders("RS Cash Application Inbox").Folders("Remittances")

Set ol.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder = olFolder

strFilter = "5860626494"

txtSearch = "attachment:" & strFilter

ol.ActiveExplorer.Search txtSearch, olSearchScopeCurrentFolder
End Sub

Result of the instant search. I need to download attachments from both displayed emails.

Answer 1

When calling Search, the query is run in the user interface, and there is no programmatic mechanism to obtain the search results. Also the Search method does not provide a callback to enable the developer to determine when the search is complete.

Instead, I'd suggest using the AdvancedSearch method of the Application class which provides the callback to get the results after. The key benefits of using the AdvancedSearch method in Outlook are:

• The search is performed in another thread. You don’t need to run another thread manually since the AdvancedSearch method runs it automatically in the background.
• Possibility to search for any item types: mail, appointment, calendar, notes etc. in any location, i.e. beyond the scope of a certain folder. The Restrict and Find/FindNext methods can be applied to a particular Items collection (see the Items property of the Folder class in Outlook).
• Full support for DASL queries (custom properties can be used for searching too). You can read more about this in the Filtering article in MSDN. To improve the search performance, Instant Search keywords can be used if Instant Search is enabled for the store (see the IsInstantSearchEnabled property of the Store class).
• You can stop the search process at any moment using the Stop method of the Search class.

To retrieve the search results you need to handle the AdvancedSearchComplete event which is used to return the object that was created by the AdvancedSearch method. This event only fires when the AdvancedSearch method is executed programmatically.

Public blnSearchComp As Boolean

Private Sub Application_AdvancedSearchComplete(ByVal SearchObject As Search)
  MsgBox "The AdvancedSearchComplete Event fired."
  blnSearchComp = True
End Sub


Sub TestAdvancedSearchComplete()
  Dim sch As Outlook.Search
  Dim rsts As Outlook.Results
  Dim i As Integer
  blnSearchComp = False
  Const strF As String = "urn:schemas:mailheader:subject = 'Test'"
  Const strS As String = "Inbox"

  Set sch = Application.AdvancedSearch(strS, strF)

  While blnSearchComp = False
    DoEvents
  Wend

  Set rsts = sch.Results
  For i = 1 To rsts.Count
     MsgBox rsts.Item(i).SenderName
  Next
End Sub

After using the Search on the Outlook UI you can get access to the CurrentView by accessing corresponding properties on the Explorer object. The View class provides the Filter property which returns a string value that represents the filter for a view. The value of this property is a string, in DAV Searching and Locating (DASL) syntax, that represents the current filter for the view. So, you can use it for the AdvancedSearch search string.