Launch Outlook from c# Winforms

Question

Launch Outlook from c# Winforms

John Noble 1

Hi there,

I am trying to launch Outlook with the subject and body already completed. It works fine on my own PC but when I try it on the customers PC, it tries to start Outlook 2016 and create a new account.

 var app = new Outlook.Application();
 Outlook.MailItem mail = (Outlook.MailItem)app.CreateItem(Outlook.OlItemType.olMailItem);
 mail.Subject = "Course Enquiry";
 StringBuilder htmlContent = new StringBuilder();
 htmlContent.AppendLine("<html>");
 htmlContent.AppendLine("<body>");
 htmlContent.AppendLine("Hello " + EntFirstName.Text + ", ");
 htmlContent.AppendLine("</body>");
 mail.HTMLBody = htmlContent.ToString();
 mail.Display(true);   // Opens Outlook compose window

Outlook 2016

How can I force it use the version of Outlook that the client is actually using ?

Thanks,

J

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Answer 1

Bruce (SqlWork.com) 84,946

The lastest version of outlook no longer supports com automation, so an older version needs to be installed.

The approach I use is to use graph API to create a draft message, then open the draft in the browser version of outlook via the url supplied by graph API. Note, this only works with Microsoft email servers.

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