outlook:// link to bring up post items?

[TroyWolf]

I am somewhat familiar with the outlook: protocol style links to
interact with the Outlook client. For example, you can probably go into
your browser and enter the URL:

outlook:Inbox

If you have Outlook installed, this will probably bring up your Inbox
in the Outlook client.

I am familiar with the special way to tell Outlook to link to a
specific item -- the tilde (~). For example, if you have a message in
your Inbox with the subject "marklar", this link MAY work to bring up
that specific message:

outlook:Inbox/~marklar

I have spent many, many hours researching and reading what the experts
have to say. Perhaps it is not surprising, but Microsoft does not
provide much information about this Outlook feature.

My issue is how to RELIABLY link to message items. For example, if you
have 2 messages with identical subjects, the link may or may not work,
and if it does, you are not guaranteed which message will be opened.
It the subject has characters that are not URL safe, the link will not
work. The popular wisdom suggests merely url-encoding the subject, but
this does not work reliably.

One particular scenario is linking to IPM.Post messages that have
forward slashes (/) in the subjects. Replacing the forward slashes with
"%3A" does not cut it.

I have developed WebDAV code that allows me to view all properties for
an item using the "allprop" property. This allows me to find the actual
filename of the item, but using the filename instead of the subject
does not work reliably either. I've seen hints about using the item's
ID in the form of:

outlook:unique_item_id_here

However, none of the "id"s that I see using allprop produces a working
link.

I hope that you can understand this issue, and if you have some
insight, please take the time to share. I truly appreciate the
community we have. Thank you.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

There is no 100% reliable way to link to an individual item like this. You've already pointed out the problems with duplicate subjects and certain strings. The EntryID syntax runs into problems if the user has not yet accessed the particular store yet, so it works reliably only for the default store.

FWIW, this feature is being deemphasized in Outlook 2007.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[TroyWolf]

Thank you very much for the reply, Sue. The Outlook Link functionality
will be deemphasized in future versions of Outlook? That is unfortunate
as I find it to be such a simple and useful feature to integrate my
Intranet CRM application with our Outlook data. (I'm sure if the
Microsoft development planners read this post, they'll change their
minds. <sigh>)

For example, I use WebDAV (in PHP) to read a company's contacts and
list them in a browser-based CRM screen. The user can then click any
contact to bring up that contact's Outlook Contact form, make changes,
etc

Seems it would be SO SIMPLE for Microsoft to include a special outlook
link designator that means "pop the default 'new item' form for the
specified folder". For example (to borrow from HTML's <a> element):

outlook:Inbox/~_blank

This could mean "open the new message form in the Inbox folder".
Something like that. Taking this further, the URL format could again
borrow from HTML and allow you to do something like this:

outlook:Inbox/~_blank?Subject=Cheap%20Cialis&[email protected]

Clicking this link on a computer with Outlook installed could bring up
the Inbox new message form with the Subject and To fields set
accordingly.

But you are telling me NOT to expect improvements to the link feature?
Instead, expect it to lessen? wimper, wimper

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Yes, that's what I'm telling you.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers