How to run background task in Outlook 2007 add-in efficiently?

Question

I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction as far as how to run background task in Outlook 2007 while preserving a good User experience. I have a process that loops through each item in a default Outlook calendar and sends information (subject, location, etc.) to a back-end server. I have tried ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem and creating a Thread and setting it isBackground to true, but the User experience of normal operation in Outlook while this task is running seems to be compromised. Ideally I would like for this background task to run and not have Outlook seem sluggish. Any thoughts on how I could achieve this?

Thanks

Answer 1

Running background threads in out are not recomended, it can be done but it depends on what you are actualy doing in your code, The OOM is run in a single threaded apartment COM server, so every COM call is executed on the main thread of outlook.exe

From you description the best bet would be to process the items not using the OOM.

If you are running Exchange (dependant on the version) you can use EWS or ExchangeDav. Otherwise MAPI.

Marcus