Inside the subroutine the first thing we do is use this line of code to create a collection of all the top-level subfolders found in the Inbox:<\/P>
Set colFolders = objParentFolder.Folders\n<\/PRE>\nIs it important to say \u201ctop-level\u201d subfolders instead of just subfolders? Yes, it is. Suppose our Inbox looks like this:<\/P>![\"Hey,](\"http:\/\/img.microsoft.com\/library\/media\/1033\/technet\/images\/scriptcenter\/qanda\/inbox.jpg\")
\n
Which of these folders do you suppose are part of the Folders collection? That\u2019s right: only Sample and Test; that\u2019s because they\u2019re the only top-level subfolders in the Inbox. What about Test 2? Well, as a sub-subfolder Test 2 is actually part of the Folders collection for the Test<\/I> folder: to get at sub-subfolders we need to access the Folders collection for all the top-level folders. That\u2019s why we have to use a recursive function: we need to look at a folder, then look at any folders within that folder, then look at any folders within those<\/I> folders. <\/P>\n
Etc.<\/P>\n
After retrieving the Folders collection we set up a For Each loop to walk through all the items in that collection. Inside that loop we start out by creating an object reference that binds us to the first folder in the collection:<\/P>
Set objSubfolder = objParentFolder.Folders(objFolder.Name)\n<\/PRE>\nAfter connecting to that<\/I> folder we can echo back the folder name; we can also do this:<\/P>GetSubfolders objSubfolder\n<\/PRE>\nYes, we\u2019re calling the subroutine GetSubfolders from inside the GetSubfolders subroutine. Why? Well, if the first folder in the collection is Sample we now need to see whether Sample has any sub-subfolders. This is the part where people\u2019s eyes begin to glaze over, but that\u2019s OK; there\u2019s nothing wrong with simply having faith that this works. It all sounds extremely complicated, and it is. But fortunately VBScript takes care of the hard stuff for us.<\/P>\n
When we\u2019re all done we\u2019ll get back a list of every<\/I> folder (top-level or not) found in the Inbox:<\/P>Inbox\nTest\nTest 2\nSample\n<\/PRE>\nOf course, you didn\u2019t just want the folder names, you wanted to be able to access all the items (e.g., all the mail messages) found in those folders. Hey, no problem. We won\u2019t explain this revised script in any detail; we\u2019ll just note that we use the Items<\/B> collection to retrieve all the items in a folder and then, for each item, we echo back the Subject<\/B> line. Obviously you can modify this script to echo back the sender\u2019s name, the message text, or anything else you want to echo back.<\/P>\n
Here\u2019s the script:<\/P>
Const olFolderInbox = 6<\/p>\nSet objOutlook = CreateObject(“Outlook.Application”)\nSet objNamespace = objOutlook.GetNamespace(“MAPI”)<\/p>\n
Set objInbox = objNamespace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)<\/p>\n
Wscript.Echo objInbox.Name<\/p>\n
Set colItems = objInbox.Items<\/p>\n
For Each objItem in colItems\n Wscript.Echo objItem.Subject\nNext<\/p>\n
GetSubfolders(objInbox)<\/p>\n
Sub GetSubfolders(objParentFolder)\n Set colFolders = objParentFolder.Folders\n For Each objFolder in colFolders\n Set objSubfolder = objParentFolder.Folders(objFolder.Name)\n Wscript.Echo objFolder.Name<\/p>\n
Set colItems = objFolder.Items<\/p>\n
For Each objItem in colItems\n Wscript.Echo objItem.Subject\n Next<\/p>\n
GetSubfolders objSubfolder\n Next\nEnd Sub\n<\/PRE>\n
OK. You kow, that wasn\u2019t as bad as we thought it would be. Maybe tomorrow we will<\/I> tackle the question: is there a God?<\/P>\n
Or, then again, maybe we won\u2019t.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I write a script that accesses all the subfolders in my Outlook Inbox?— MB Hey, MB. You know, after you\u2019ve written a daily scripting column for nearly two years (have we mentioned the Hey, Scripting Guy 500th column celebration lately?) you learn that certain subjects are strictly off-limits. Discuss religion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[212,49,3,5],"class_list":["post-67093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-microsoft-outlook","tag-office","tag-scripting-guy","tag-vbscript"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I write a script that accesses all the subfolders in my Outlook Inbox?— MB Hey, MB. You know, after you\u2019ve written a daily scripting column for nearly two years (have we mentioned the Hey, Scripting Guy 500th column celebration lately?) you learn that certain subjects are strictly off-limits. Discuss religion […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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