MailItem.BeforeDelete Event

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Outlook Developer Reference

Occurs before an item (which is an instance of the parent object) is deleted.

Syntax

expression.BeforeDelete(Item, Cancel)

expression   A variable that represents a MailItem object.

Parameters

Name Required/Optional Data Type Description
Item Required Object The item being deleted.
Cancel Required Boolean False when the event occurs. If the event procedure sets this argument to True, the operation is not completed and the item is not deleted.

Remarks

In order for this event to fire when an e-mail message, distribution list, journal entry, task, contact, or post are deleted through an action, an inspector must be open.

The event occurs each time an item is deleted.

Example

The following Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) example prompts the user regarding whether to delete the item currently open. For this example to run, you need to have an open e-mail item that can be deleted. If you click No, the item will not be deleted. If this event is canceled, Microsoft Outlook displays an error message. Therefore, you need to capture this event in your code. One way to do this is shown below. The sample code must be placed in a class module such as ThisOutlookSession, and the DeleteMail() procedure should be called before the event procedure can be called by Outlook.

Visual Basic for Applications 
  Public WithEvents myItem As Outlook.MailItem

Public Sub DeleteMail()
Const strCancelEvent = "Application-defined or object-defined error"
On Error GoTo ErrHandler
Set myItem = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
myItem.Delete
Exit Sub


ErrHandler:
MsgBox Err.Description
If Err.Description = strCancelEvent Then
MsgBox "The event was cancelled."
End If
'If you want to execute the next instruction
Resume Next
'Otherwise it will finish here
End Sub


Private Sub myItem_BeforeDelete(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
'Prompts the user before deleting an item
Dim strPrompt As String


'Prompt the user for a response
strPrompt = "Are you sure you want to delete the item?"
If MsgBox(strPrompt, vbYesNo + vbQuestion) = vbNo Then
    'Don't delete the item
    Cancel = True
End If



End Sub

See Also