How can I program Excel to Work with Outlook?

Question

I have a fairly large Excel file. In this file there is a column with dates. I would like to know if/how it would be possible to make a program that would be able to read the date and post a notice 30 days in advance to Outlook Calendar or send out an email through Outlook in my office. Is there a decent API that I could use for this? If so, where may I find one? Or, are there any existing programs capable of this function?

Answer 1

You can run a macro when opening to excel sheet to check and update the calender and send email.

Here is an example about how to send email via outlook frommexcel. But the problem is that outlook will show us a security popup saying Excel is trying to send an email using outlook and whether you want to allow it or not.

Here is another example which shows how to override this security warning.

This thred has an example about how to send email using an mail server if you are interested (havne't tried it).

And here is an example about how to add an event to outlook calander. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

You should be able to write an Excel VBA script that interacts with Outlook. See http://www.dicks-clicks.com/excel/olAutomating.htm for a good guide on this. Specifically http://www.dicks-clicks.com/excel/olCalendar.htm#Creating_an_Appointment mentions how to create Calendar items. Just be aware most samples are for Outlook/Excel 2000, i imagine most should still work with newer versions but some objects may be renamed.

Outlook Code is another good site with code samples for Outlook integration in general. Eg. http://outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=49

Of course you don't have to code everything inside Excel you should easily be able to do the same thing in a custom application (eg. a .NET application).