How to purge my junk mail folder of messages in the Cyrillic alphabet (Outlook 2007)?

Answer 1

the "Subject" property of the message returns a bunch of question marks.

A classic string encoding problem. Sounds like that property is returning ASCII but you want UTF-8 or Unicode.

Answer 2

It seems to me you have an easy solution already - just look for any subject line with (say) 5 question marks in it

Answer 3

The String datatype in VB/VBA can handle Unicode characters, but the IDE itself has trouble displaying them (hence the question marks).

I wrote an IsCyrillic function that might help you out. The function takes a single String argument and returns True if the string contains at least one Cyrillic character. I tested this code with Outlook 2007 and it seems to work fine. To test it, I sent myself a few e-mails with Cyrillic text in the subject line and verified that my test code could correctly pick out those e-mails from among everything else in my Inbox.

So, I actually have two code snippets:

• The code that contains the IsCyrillic function. This can be copy-pasted into a new VBA module or added to the code you already have.
• The Test routine I wrote (in Outlook VBA) to test that the code actually works. It demonstrates how to use the IsCyrillic function.

The Code

Option Explicit

Public Const errInvalidArgument = 5

' Returns True if sText contains at least one Cyrillic character'
' NOTE: Assumes UTF-16 encoding'

Public Function IsCyrillic(ByVal sText As String) As Boolean

    Dim i As Long

    ' Loop through each char. If we hit a Cryrillic char, return True.'

    For i = 1 To Len(sText)

        If IsCharCyrillic(Mid(sText, i, 1)) Then
            IsCyrillic = True
            Exit Function
        End If

    Next

End Function

' Returns True if the given character is part of the Cyrillic alphabet'
' NOTE: Assumes UTF-16 encoding'

Private Function IsCharCyrillic(ByVal sChar As String) As Boolean

    ' According to the first few Google pages I found, '
    ' Cyrillic is stored at U+400-U+52f                '

    Const CYRILLIC_START As Integer = &H400
    Const CYRILLIC_END  As Integer = &H52F

    ' A (valid) single Unicode char will be two bytes long'

    If LenB(sChar) <> 2 Then
        Err.Raise errInvalidArgument, _
            "IsCharCyrillic", _
            "sChar must be a single Unicode character"
    End If

    ' Get Unicode value of character'

    Dim nCharCode As Integer
    nCharCode = AscW(sChar)

    ' Is char code in the range of the Cyrillic characters?'

    If (nCharCode >= CYRILLIC_START And nCharCode <= CYRILLIC_END) Then
        IsCharCyrillic = True
    End If

End Function

Example Usage

' On my box, this code iterates through my Inbox. On your machine,'
' you may have to switch to your Inbox in Outlook before running this code.'
' I placed this code in `ThisOutlookSession` in the VBA editor. I called'
' it in the Immediate window by typing `ThisOutlookSession.TestIsCyrillic`'

Public Sub TestIsCyrillic()

    Dim oItem As Object
    Dim oMailItem As MailItem

    For Each oItem In ThisOutlookSession.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder.Items

        If TypeOf oItem Is MailItem Then

            Set oMailItem = oItem

            If IsCyrillic(oMailItem.Subject) Then

                ' I just printed out the offending subject line '
                ' (it will display as ? marks, but I just       '
                ' wanted to see it output something)            '
                ' In your case, you could change this line to:  '
                '                                               '
                '     oMailItem.Delete                          '
                '                                               '
                ' to actually delete the message                '

                Debug.Print oMailItem.Subject

            End If

        End If

    Next

End Sub