Tjyylli

My question

How can get the currently selected text in Microsoft Outlook 2007

• in an open message window


• or in the currently selected message in the preview pane

and copy it into the clipboard?

I am using Microsoft Outlook 2007.

What I already tried

I know that I can use DataObjects to put text into the clipboard or get text from the clipboard.

The difficulty is to get the currently selected text

I tried the following commands:

• Outlook.copy


• Outlook.selection.copy


• Outlook.activeexplorer.selection.item(1). ...
  
  in many variations, but with no success.

I found some sources stating that it would not be possible to get the currently selected text in Outlook via VBA but I think it must at least be possible to invoke a Ctrl-C (copy) command and then use the content of the clipboard.

I also stumbled upon some solutions with the Inspector as described here, but I got an error message.
Maybe it is because I forgot to reference the "MS Word Object Library" - I'll try that on Monday.

Since Outlook uses Word (if installed) as its editor, it's a bit of a pain to get to get it. :)

You have to reference the Word application, then the Word document, then the selection.

For the following code to work in Outlook you need to add a Reference (VBA Editor -> Tools -> References) to the "Microsoft Word Object Library", and one to the "Microsoft Forms Object Library", so that we can actually copy the text the system clipboard.

Note: For me, in Office 2013, the MS Forms object wasn't in the list, so I just added a UserForm to the VBA project, which added the reference automatically, and then just deleted the form. The reference stuck.

Anyhow I dug around many sources and here's some code I stuck together that will copy the highlighted text to the clipboard, with some basic error checking (tested in Outlook 2013):

Public Sub CopyTextToClipBoard()



    Dim objItem As Object

    Dim objInsp As Outlook.Inspector



    Dim objWord As Word.Application

    Dim objDoc As Word.Document

    Dim objSel As Word.Selection

    On Error Resume Next



    ' Reference the current Outlook item

    Set objItem = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem

    If Not objItem Is Nothing Then

        If objItem.Class = olMail Then

            Set objInsp = objItem.GetInspector

            If objInsp.EditorType = olEditorWord Then

                Set objDoc = objInsp.WordEditor

                Set objWord = objDoc.Application

                Set objSel = objWord.Selection



                On Error GoTo NotText

                With New MSForms.DataObject

                    .SetText objSel.Text

                    .PutInClipboard

                End With

                On Error Resume Next       



            End If

        End If

    End If



    Set objItem = Nothing

    Set objWord = Nothing

    Set objSel = Nothing

    Set objInsp = Nothing



NotText:

    If Err <> 0 Then

        MsgBox "Data on clipboard is not text."

    End If



End Sub

if a use the code provided, I get only 1 selected text of my email.

how can i edit this code, in order to get more than one text selected?

Of course the 2 text selected are in the same active mail.

Thanks.