COM Interop & Outlook - Make Outlook Visible?

Question

I'm automating Outlook from a VB.NET program, transferring items into the calendar and contacts at the user's request. It's all working, that isn't the problem; the problem is that automating Outlook like this when it wasn't already open creates a hidden instance. I can perhaps understand how this could be useful, to stop the user closing it down while you're still working on it, but since Outlook appears to force one instance only, if the user tries to inspect the changes made while my program is still hooked into Outlook, nothing happens - the one instance is that hidden instance and the user can't see anything.

In the old days of COM automation I used to be able to make Word or Excel visible, but I seem unable to do that with Outlook. I've tried:

OutlookApp.Visible = True

OutlookApp.Application.Visible = True

OutlookApp.ActiveWindow.Visible = True

OutlookApp.ActiveExplorer.Display()

but none of them work.

It's not critical, but does anyone know if I can get Outlook to show its main window? Bonus points if I can get it to disallow the user to close down the instance, but I'll settle for just showing the window :)

Answer 1

I normaly test to see if the "Outlook" process is running first, if not then shell up Outlook.exe then attach. This way you should never get a hidden process.

There really is no way to cancel the shut down outlook, you can hook the application quit event to disconnect and dispose in your app though.