Programmatically working with Outlook's OFT format (on linux) - outlook

We have a project that has numerous Outlook OFT files. Users download these files and use them to send prewritten emails in Outlook.
I have been looking for a way to convert these files into plain text. Ideally, this conversion functionality would be incorporated into the web app that runs on Linux servers. I mention Linux because Outlook and OFT are Microsoft products.
I have not found any libraries, class, tutorials around this topic. I have found very little conversation besides trying to do HTML->OFT which points to a Microsoft only library. I am most experienced with PHP, but I am open to any approach.
FWIW, I believe OFT can have templating information in it. I am only interested in extracting the message content/body.

OFT is the same an MSG (with a different class signature GUID). Whatever library you can find for working with MSG files, will work with OFT as well.

Related

How to port existing vb .net office add-ins to work with office for mac?

I have an Office Word add-in that I wish to make it work with Office Word 2016 for Mac. I tried looking into official Microsoft documentation and could not find anything. I want to reuse as much code as possible while still having the extension to work with older versions of Word as well as Office Word 2016.
Is there any way to do this? Any help, even if it is something remotely related to this is appreciated.
TL;DR;
There is no way to do that.
Microsoft has bet on a new technology suite also called Office add-ins but web based. They are compatible with Mac. The old COM based approach (on which VSTO .NET add-in are built on) are legacy.
There is no way to reuse .NET code with this new technology, except of course to port business logic to the web server (which serves the web based add-in).
More reading on the comparison with the two add-ins generation: see this article I wrote
I second Benoit's answer. In addition, Not sure how complex is your add-in in terms of interactions with the document content, or if its a service that then inserts or imports data from a backend. Depending on that you will have more reusable code.
I would recommend you to do a full analysis on what APIs you need for your add-in to work properly. The new model offers big value with both supporting multiplatform and an easier deployment model. It also provides many rich APIs you can use, however the API depth its still not as rich as VSTO. Our goal is to get there.
I would be curious to understand if there are any gaps on you migration analysis.
thx!

UIAutomation event for when PDF downloaded in Internet Explorer

I am trying to handle an event for when a PDF has downloaded and been fully displayed in Internet Explorer.
Which UIAutomation event will handle this?
If you are referring to the UIAutomation object in the .NET Framework, it supports managed code. Internet Explorer is written in C++ as unmanaged code. Some folks have managed to write extensions using managed code, in spite of clear advice to the contrary, however, I've not heard of anyone successfully controlling IE using managed code.
Earlier versions of IE could be automated using COM interfaces or VBA objects, however, these features have been increasing deprecated over the years.
In addition, few of those interfaces supported extensions. (PDF is not a natively supported file type for Internet Explorer, so automation would depend on the surfaces exposed by the application registered to handle PDF mime types for the individual user.)
Since Edge is now the official browser, it's unlikely that IE will be updated to support managed code extensions. Note that Edge does not currently support extensions and little information is available describing when, or if, that will change. (There have been vague promises in the past, but little additional information.)
If you're trying to accomplish a specific effect, consider posting a more specific question, one showing:
The code that you're trying to use,
The effect you're trying to achieve, and
The behavior you're seeing instead.
Hope this helps...
-- Lance

Downloading pop3 mail attachment with vbscript

I am looking for a way to automatically download an email attachment from a pop3 account on a Windows Server 2008. I am limited to using default Windows technology to solve this problem (i.e. not installing additional software or scripting environment).
So far I have selected vbscript as a scripting solution, but struggle with the access to pop3 account. As far as I understood I could use ActiveX/COM or another dll to extend the functionality. Since another dll would mean additional software, this solution is not feasible.
To all you vbscript(-ing) professional: Could you provide an example or a hint on how do solve this download problem with vbscript?

Does Windows, Outlook, or Exchange have an API for reading iCal format?

I'm trying to add iCal import support to my existing scheduling application which needs to support Windows XP, Vista, and 7. Writing iCal format is easy, but reading it is another story, mostly trying to convert times to local times with the complex TIMEZONE/TZID/RRULE syntax. Ideally Windows would have a native API for this, but I haven't found one.
I know Outlook 2007+ has an OpenSharedItem function that would work. I don't want to require users to have Outlook installed though, since my application "competes" with Outlook. I thought about writing a web service that would use Outlook on my web server to do this, but I know using Outlook OLE/COM objects from a service has issues, so that probably isn't an option either. I do own about 300 Exchange Server licenses, are there any APIs with Exchange that would maybe work better? I do notice when I email iCal files from GoToMeeting.com they say they were created with "Microsoft CDO for Microsoft Exchange", so I have a feeling they are doing something like this to avoid writing the format themselves.
My application is written in C++ using mostly native Win32 API, but I don't mind creating a .NET DLL for this, or even requiring users to have Internet access so I can post the file to my web server and have it return a converted format my app can use easily. My web server runs on Windows though, so anything Unix-based might be dificult. Other than that, I'm pretty open to options.
Update: I did find CDOEX but as I've never used it before, can anyone tell me where to start and if it can in fact do what I need? I don't really see much about iCal in the docs, and I'd need to install Exchange on my dev PC (not crazy about that) to start playing around with this API.
You can try to use Redemption (I am its author) - it allows to explicitly import iCal files using RDOAppointmentItem.Import(..., olICal).

Automatic download/upload

We are going to develop a client-server application with web interface which will store office documents on server.
When we use browser as a client we need to perform these three steps to edit a document:
download document to the local machine;
open it in office program and edit;
upload document to the server.
It is very inconvenient. Sometimes it is hard to find where a document was downloaded to, when we need to upload it. Customers will also forget to upload document after editing.
Is there any way or technology to upload document automatically?
Or just any ideas how to make this process more convenient.
Thanks in advance!
I would, suggest, if applicable to store all documents as HTML then allowing editing in a web page powered by CKEditor or a similar tool.
If your documents must be in another format, like Office formats, you might start thinking at Office 365, or use ActiveX controls in your web application, something I believe should be deprecated but works in small (better restricted) enterprise environments.
These are just a couple of ideas.

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