MS Outlook custom rule help

[Mikev078]

Hello all,

I am trying to figure out a way to create a custom rule in Outlook to display an alert/notification or sound based on a future time after a specific e-mail arrives. Listed below is what I'm trying for:

1. An email arrives with a subject keyword "severity - 3"
2. This triggers the rule to send a notification/alert or sound 5 hours from when that e-mail arrived.

I have searched all over without having much luck in this. Can someone please help?

Thank you,
Mike

[Hack]

Welcome to the forums.

What version of Office are you using?

[Mikev078]

Thanks

I'm using Office 2007

[Hack]

Have you gone through The Rules and Alerts Wizard in Outlook?

[Mikev078]

Yes, I have gone through it quite extensively. The only way I figure this could be done easily would be to create a custom VBA macro to have Outlook take the email, create a task using the subject line from the email and set a reminder trigger for 5 hours from the time that task was created. However, I do not know anything about VBA at all.

[Hack]

In that case, you might want to check out some of the third party add-ins that have been created for Outlook.

Here are some links that might be useful for you.

Outlook Custom Add-ins

[Mikev078]

Thanks for the suggestions, Hack. I found a couple websites that had some examples I could relate to, and was able to piece together the code I needed, which works great.

Sub ProcessMailItemIntoTask(Item As Outlook.MailItem)
    Dim strTaskName As String
    strTaskName = Trim(Item.Subject)
    
    If Len(strTaskName) < 1 Then
        ' No subject - use the first line of the body
        strTaskName = Trim(Item.Body)
        Dim intCrLfPos As Integer
        intCrLfPos = InStr(1, strTaskName, Constants.vbCrLf, vbTextCompare)
        If intCrLfPos > 0 Then
            strTaskName = Trim(Left(strTaskName, intCrLfPos - 1))
        End If
    End If

    ' Create the task
    Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem
    Set objTask = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    objTask.Subject = strTaskName
    objTask.StartDate = Item.ReceivedTime
    objTask.ReminderSet = True
    objTask.ReminderTime = DateAdd("h", 5, Now)
    objTask.Save
    Set objTask = Nothing


End Sub

This script takes any e-mail and automatically creates a task using the same subject line, or first line in the body if there are no subject, and creates a reminder for 5-hours from the time that email arrived.

[Mikev078]

Actually, if anyone knows how I could incorporate that script to only count the hours between 8am-5pm, that would be great. Not sure if that is even possible though.

[Mikev078]

Ok, this is very odd. This code worked great for one day. After I rebooted my computer and opened up Outlook again, it does not work anymore. I verified the rule is still active and nothing has changed in the script. There aren't any error messages either. It just stopped working. Any ideas?

Sub ProcessMailItemIntoTask(Item As Outlook.MailItem)
    Dim strTaskName As String
    strTaskName = Trim(Item.Subject)
    
    If Len(strTaskName) < 1 Then
        ' No subject - use the first line of the body
        strTaskName = Trim(Item.Body)
        Dim intCrLfPos As Integer
        intCrLfPos = InStr(1, strTaskName, Constants.vbCrLf, vbTextCompare)
        If intCrLfPos > 0 Then
            strTaskName = Trim(Left(strTaskName, intCrLfPos - 1))
        End If
    End If
 
    ' Create the task
    Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem
    Set objTask = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    objTask.Subject = strTaskName
    objTask.StartDate = Item.ReceivedTime
    objTask.ReminderSet = True
    objTask.ReminderTime = DateAdd("h", 5, Now)
    objTask.Save
    Set objTask = Nothing
 
 
End Sub