Friday, September 09, 2005

VB.NET DLL Wrapper For C MAPIEx Extended MAPI

The Code Project - VB.NET wrapper for DLL of C MAPIEx Extended MAPI - VB.NET

"Since first encountering the 'Outlook Security Update', which has mangled many an important production VB program, I've wished for a better way to work around it in VB.

Sadly, there is still not a functional, direct VB way around that travesty. But programs can be brought back online in an 'Updated' Outlook environment with P/Invoke wrapping a DLL written in C++ to access the Extended MAPI calls.

The attached source is a wrapper to call the MAPIEx.dll library written by Noel Dillabough (as per the 08/25/2005 update to Noel's CMAPIEx article...which was posted but pending update as of this writing). The DLL must either be registered or in the working directory for this VB program to work."


One of these days I'll be needing Extended MAPI interface, preferable via VB.Net... While I really like Outlook Redemption, I'd rather not have to play in the COM world when I move to/rewrite in .Net.

Extended MAPI is much harder to use than OOM, CDO or Outlook Redemption, but you get so much closer to the raw data... In the last few years, as my EDD apps have matured, I've been moving closer and closer to ExMAPI. Now I get by with a mix of CDO, OOM, Redemption and ExMAPI, which just makes me crazy. I think it might be worth the effort to dive all the wave into the ExMAPI pool.

We'll see...

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