Huge VBA newb needs help with plugin automation.

Hey guys,
I need to implement PGP in my business to secure emails that must the sent securely on a monthly basis. Due to the fact that humans are human and bound both by habit and to forget, I need to automate the encryption of that monthly e-mail.
I'd like to have the process be near fully automatic, such as engaged when the user types a certain message into his or her subject line of the e-mail, or when there's a couple of conditions that are met in the message. I've yet to decide what the condition will be, but I think something in the subject will do.
I'm using GPG (the freeware open-source version of PGP), which creates a plug-in button in Outlook. For the sake of testing, I've made a shortcut to that button on the ribbon on my computer only. I anticipate this being something that only some users do and other's dont, so I can't depend on the presence of the ribbon. The presence of the Add-In should be enough.

Basically, then, what I need to do is monitor all outgoing subjects. If the subject contains "Monthly Report", for instance, that Add-In button will be clicked. If it doesn't it won't. Can anyone give me a starting point? I don't expect you to do the work for me, as I know I won't learn anything, but I don't even know where to start.

I know that my users are using varied versions of Office, ranging from Office 2000 to Office 2007, so the script (or idea) will need to be cross-version compatible.

If it helps, I'm an adept VB6 developer, and have 10+ years coding. I just don't know about the VBA object library or coding convention for VBA objects. For all I know there is a simpler way to do this than with a macro.

Hi Dragon, I haven't worked with PGP or GPG... but what I could understand that you want an addin which monitors the outgoing email and if a particular condition is met then do some action... Is that correct... also this addin should be compatible with all versions of outlook?

If that is correct the In the VBA environment, select Application from the left combobox above the code window, then select ItemSend from the right combobox. That will create the declaration of the procedure for you. You can read the Subject as shown below and set the Cancel argument to True if you want to cancel the sending process.

See the below code and screenshot...

vb Code:

'~~> This event checks and outgoing mail
Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
    Dim CheckString As String
    
    '~~> Say you want to check this word in the subject
    CheckString = "Facebook"
    
    If InStr(Item.Subject, CheckString) Then
        MsgBox "The Company Policy doesn't allow you to send this mail"
        '~~> The mail won't go even if the user presses send....
        Cancel = True
    End If
End Sub

Right. That is what I want to do.
The actual action that I need to perform, though, is changing the status of another add in. That's the part I'm a bit confused about.

Quote:

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The actual action that I need to perform, though, is changing the status of another add in. That's the part I'm a bit confused about.

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Can you explain it a bit more?

Well....I use GPG, the free version of PGP (as mentioned in post 1). A new MA law requires that all "personal information" being transmitted over e-mail be secured. As a temporary solution, while I rebuild the company's IT department, I'll get up a keyserver and use PGP (or GPG, as the case may be). GPG has an Outlook plug-in.
The GPG plug in is simply a toggle button to enable and disable encrypting the message using GPG via the plug-ins tab of a new e-mail message in Outlook 2007. (It's located in other places in other versions of Outlook, but so far Outlook 2007 is the only version with which I've tested.)

I don't trust human nature enough to ensure that the first and every time the "information" is transmitted that the sender will break habit and activate the plug-in, and I don't trust some people to respect the urgency with which this matter must be implemented. I want to write some code so they just have to enter a word, say "Activate" (it won't be that obvious - more than likely a simple subject that they're already using now, but that I can't reveal for the sake of company security), in the subject line and my macro will take care of enabling or disabling the plug-in.

So basically instead of showing a message you want to activate another macro/plugin which will encrypt the message? Sorry if I have misunderstood you...

That's exactly correct.

Does anyone know how to do this?

but how can i write same code in VSTO