How to create a script for the Rules Wizard in Outlook
Summary
The Outlook Rules Wizard allows you to "run a script" when you create a specific rule. As a developer, this allows you to perform an action on incoming mail that is not possible using the regular features of the Rules Wizard.
More Information
Important
Although the Rules Wizard refers to the custom code as "script," you must create the code in Outlook Visual Basic for Applications, not in Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) or other scripting languages such as Microsoft JScript. Also, Outlook Visual Basic for Applications is not designed to be deployed, so deployment of this custom code requires manual configuration on each user's computer. You cannot create the custom code in an Outlook COM Add-in. For additional information about limitations related to distributing Visual Basic for Applications projects, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
290779 Description of managing and distributing Outlook 2002 Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) projects
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To implement the custom code to process the message, create a subroutine in Visual Basic for Applications. The name of the subroutine does not matter, but it must accept one argument because the Rules Wizard will pass a mail message (MailItem) or meeting request (MeetingItem) to the subroutine. The argument must by of type MailItem or MeetingItem, otherwise the subroutine will not be available in the Rules Wizard. You cannot create one subroutine to handle both types of items by defining the argument to be of type Object. The following Outlook Visual Basic for Applications code illustrates how to create the subroutines:
Sub CustomMailMessageRule(Item As Outlook.MailItem)
MsgBox "Mail message arrived: " & Item.Subject
End Sub
Sub CustomMeetingRequestRule(Item As Outlook.MeetingItem)
MsgBox "Meeting request arrived: " & Item.Subject
End Sub
You can put the subroutine in any module, including ThisOutlookSession, but if you move the subroutine to another module or change the subroutine's name, you must modify the rule to point to the updated subroutine.