Send outlook appointment through asp.net error HRESULT: 0x80004004 - outlook

I am trying to send an outlook appointment through code. My code is posted below. When I run it on the server with IIS 6 and an app pool under a domain account identity, it throws this error. I have tried changing various settings on the server and none worked. Outlook 2007 is installed. I have even made the domain account a local admin. Please help!
Description: An unhandled exception
occurred during the execution of the
current web request. Please review the
stack trace for more information about
the error and where it originated in
the code.
Exception Details:
System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException:
Operation aborted (Exception from
HRESULT: 0x80004004 (E_ABORT))
Line 201: objAppt.Send();
Code below:
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application objOL
= new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application();
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.AppointmentItem objAppt
= (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.AppointmentItem)objOL
.CreateItem
(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OlItemType.olAppointmentItem);
objAppt.Start = startTime;//datetime
objAppt.End = endTime;//datetime
objAppt.Subject = subject;
objAppt.Body = body;
objAppt.Location = location;
objAppt.MeetingStatus
= Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OlMeetingStatus.olMeeting;
objAppt.RequiredAttendees = "test#test.com";
objAppt.Send();
objAppt = null;
objOL = null;

Yes as casperOne said I wouldn't use outlook on the server. I would use CDO or RDO(redemeption) for this. or even use vcal and send the vcal on a system.Net.Mail.
Update:
Take a look at http://www.dimastr.com/redemption/rdo/RDOAppointmenItem.htm
Show you how to do excatly what you want to do using RDO. You can do the same with CDO as well. Check out CDOLive.com
You will have to construct a teh login details as you are on a server that has no Outlook profile (thats if you remove the one that you allready have on there)

Quite simply, you shouldn't be doing this. It is not recommended that you run Office in a server environment because of the threading (and desktop session) requirements that Office has.
Are you trying to do this on an Exchange server? If so, then I would interact directly with the Exchange server (using WebDAV perhaps?).
If not connecting with Exchange, then take a look at the headers for an invitation to the event. The invitations should be nothing more than regular emails with custom header information.

I guess the reason you cannot use Outlook from an IIS application is because the current user the IIS app is running under does not have an Outlook profile associated.
Therefore you can instantiate Outlook objects and set their properties, until profile-specific functionality is required, such as the Send() command, which would store the outgoing mail in the user's/profile's (non-existing) pst file.

Don't do this using Outlook automation.
Straight from the horse's mouth:
Microsoft does not currently recommend, and does not support, Automation of Microsoft Office applications from any unattended, non-interactive client application or component (including ASP, ASP.NET, DCOM, and NT Services), because Office may exhibit unstable behavior and/or deadlock when Office is run in this environment.
If you are building a solution that runs in a server-side context, you should try to use components that have been made safe for unattended execution. Or, you should try to find alternatives that allow at least part of the code to run client-side. If you use an Office application from a server-side solution, the application will lack many of the necessary capabilities to run successfully. Additionally, you will be taking risks with the stability of your overall solution.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757
Examine email headers sent by Outlook when it's doing this job to work out how this is done, and emulate it using the standard .NET SmtpClient stuff.

Related

Cannot send SMTP Email from Outlook VSTO Addin

I have a SendEmail method developed with System.Net.Mail that works fine. Calling it from my VSTO Outlook Addin, I get an error: A call to SSPI failed. The inner error contains "Function not supported".
I tried to send the same email from a regular c# environment (that worked), and from my Outlook VSTO add-in that did not.
Is there a reason why the smtp email cannot be sent from the Addin?
Solution (thanks to Eugene), I added
ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = SecurityProtocolType.Tls12
to the SendEmail method and now the Emails are sent.
Given the nature of the exception, it seems like you're more likely to have an email server problem than anything else.
Also it makes sense to check what TLS version is used in the code. SSPI stands for Security Support Provider Interface, so it makes sense try to find the difference between two .net applications. TLS is a starting point, see How to enable TLS 1.2 for more information.
You may consider your Outlook VSTO add-in as a regular .net application. There are minor differences like availability of configurations files and etc. If you need to put something into a config file you need to create a config for the host application which is Outlook in your case. Keep that in mind when developing VSTO add-ins.

How can we force a mailbox item to be persisted to EWS?

Note: This particular issue has significant impact on our customers, which translates to high business impact with direct consequences on revenue.
TL;DR.
How can our Office add-in for Outlook, when a user interacts with our add-in while composing an email draft, minimize the amount of time it takes before the EWS GetItem API will return an OK response for the itemId we receive from Office.context.mailbox.item.saveAsync()?
If it turns out that our add-in has no control over when the item will be persisted to EWS, then what could an end-user do to speed this up?
We are looking for either (a) a technical solution, or (b) messaging to instruct our customers on how to mitigate/fix/work around this issue.
End-User Impact
Some of our customers are unable to send emails using our Office add-in for Outlook, or have to wait an exceedingly long time (> 2 minutes) before their email will send.
Our Goal
We want all of our customers to be able to send emails using our add-in, without having to wait for an unreasonable amount of time.
Additional Context
Based on our logs and customer reports, this issue only exists in the Outlook 2016 for Windows desktop application. We have no evidence to suggest the issue is present in any other version of Outlook, including Outlook 2013 or Outlook for Mac, however it is possible that the issue may be present in those clients as well.
Overview of our add-in
Our add-in integrates with Compose mode to provide additional functionality while composing email messages, such as templates, follow-ups, open and click tracking, and scheduling.
Our add-in works in tandem with our SaaS product like this:
Our add-in sets EWS extended properties on the email message with metadata indicating which features are enabled on that message.
Our SaaS product, out of band, is configured to read from the customer's mailbox via the EWS API. When it encounters EWS extended properties our Office add-in has written, it triggers the code paths to satisfy the desired behavior.
Root Cause Analysis
The root cause of our problem is our interaction with EWS in Outlook 2016 for Windows. In order to successfully interact with EWS to read/write to a mailbox item, it must be aware of that item.
The documentation for Office.context.mailbox.item.saveAsync() says:
In Outlook Web App or Outlook in online mode, the item is saved to the server. In Outlook in cached mode, the item is saved to the local cache.
It goes on further to say:
Note: If your add-in calls saveAsync on an item in compose mode in order to get an itemId to use with EWS or the REST API, be aware that when Outlook is in cached mode, it may take some time before the item is actually synced to the server. Until the item is synced, using the itemId will return an error.
Thus, we have concluded that Office.context.mailbox.item.saveAsync(), although it does indeed return an eventually valid itemId, does not guarantee that any subsequent EWS interaction will succeed. So far, we have found no way to accelerate the process of the Outlook client actually making EWS aware of the mailbox item.
Mitigation
We have attempted to mitigate this problem by polling EWS GetItem to attempt to obtain a ChangeKey for the item with the itemId we receive from Office.context.mailbox.item.saveAsync(). While we have seen that this does eventually succeed, it may take a minute or longer before this occurs. That is simply far too much time for our customers to have to wait.
Understanding "online mode" vs "cached mode"
If the Outlook 2016 for Windows desktop client is in "cached mode", is there anything the user can do to:
…know whether the client is in "cached mode" or "online mode"?
…attempt to force the client into "online mode"?
There is no way to speed this up in cached mode. Unfortunately this is a limitation of saveAsync in compose mode. Some things of note:
1) The EWSId is only valid while the item is a draft. After it is sent, when the item is in sent items, it will have a new EWSId which is not obtainable from the Office.js
2) Could you save your information into the custom properties, instead of the EWS Extended Properties. (Office.context.mailbox.item.customProperties) https://dev.office.com/reference/add-ins/outlook/1.5/CustomProperties?product=outlook
These properties will be saved to the mail in the sent item, but will NOT be transmitted. Then could you find those properties
These are stored as a JSON dictionary on the item in Key/Value pairs. The name of the mapi property is "cecp-[extension id from manifest]" (in PS_PUBLIC_STRINGS)
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/cc842512.aspx
3) It does kind of sound like a better way to solve this would be an Office.js function that gives write access to this? (though we don't completely understand your scenario). Request for new features should go through UserVoice:
https://officespdev.uservoice.com/forums/224641-general/category/131778-outlook-add-ins.
4) Being in Online Mode would greatly mitigate the time. A User can know whether or not he or she is in online mode, but an Add-in cannot.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-on-Cached-Exchange-Mode-7885af08-9a60-4ec3-850a-e221c1ed0c1c
Additionally, the status bar will say "Connected to Microsoft Exchange" in cached mode, and "Online with Microsoft Exchange" in online mode.
Switching to Online mode, removes a lot of the benefits that cached mode has. Cached mode is default in Outlook 2016.

How to automate windows 10 email client from vb6 application

Our vb6 application allows users to open an email with an attachment in Outlook (user clicking on cmdEmail opens Outlook in new process with details populated and a document attached). I've been asked to extend this so that an email with attachment can be opened in the new Windows 10 mail app.
Is anyone aware of any way to do this?
I've tried a few avenues:
I can't use mailto: because of the attachment requirement. I can create the email in the win10 app, but Attachment= or Attach= don't work
I've tried Simple MAPI and CDO but had trouble even getting it to work with Outlook because of an "unspecified error" when trying to send with showdialog = true, or a security warning when opening the address book when showdialog = false (although showing the client is a requirement). I've also read it's not supported by Outlook 2010 (or 2007 for CDO) so I'm doubtful it will be supported by the mail app.
The vb6 application automates Outlook by creating an Outlook.Application object (same sort of method as shown here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/220595). Is there anyway to recreate this sort of logic with the Mail app? I can't see any object models online or see an object library in my program files.
Has anyone else managed to do this, or might be able to suggest an avenue I can explore? I've not done anything like this before (even mailto was new to me) so any suggestion or point-in-a-direction would be appreciated
Thanks

Outlook 2007 contacts access warning

I'm trying to get the contacts from Outlook (2007) using the following code:
Outlook.Application outlookApp = new Outlook.Application();
Outlook.MAPIFolder fldContacts = outlookApp.Session.GetDefaultFolder(Outlook.OlDefaultFolders.olFolderContacts) as Outlook.MAPIFolder;
foreach (Outlook._ContactItem contact in fldContacts.Items) {...}
The problem is that I get a warning from Outlook when I try to get the email address, something like that:
A program is trying to access e-mail address information stored in Outlook.
If this is unexpected, click Deny and verify your antivirus software is up-to-date.
For more information about e-mail safety and how you might be able to avoid getting this warning, click Help.
I would like the user to have a clean experience (this fetch is for adding new friends to the application based on their mail addresses). Skype manages to do that without Outlook asking the user to approve. The solutions I have found thus far by uncle Google turned out to be mostly dirty hacks, and I'm wondering if there's a clean way to do it.
Ideas?
A nice clean way to avoid the Outlook warning is using Add-in Express's Outlook Security Manager. It's really easy to use:
SecurityManager.DisableOOMWarnings = true;

Is it possible to send an e-mail using the VS2010 development server?

Is it possible to send an e-mail using the VS2010 development server? If that's possible, can someone point me to a sample the web?
I'd like to send an e-mail to the person who register so to keep a proof that we (yes or not) received his request. The e-mail will contains a few pertinent info, such as the name, time, and son on.
EDIT
At my work, we collect data and to whoever needs as long as the ministry we work for tells as to do so. After we receive the paper form, we write an e-mail to the form sender. Until now, we use a paper form to know who needs data. I'd like to put that form online and also be able to generate an e-mail to the sender of the request. So, since I'm still developing the application, I need to test how sending the e-mail will work. That's why I'm asking if I can send an e-mail, for instance, to my Yahoo account from my laptop using VS2008 web development server.
I remember, 2 years ago, while learning HTML with DreamWeaver, we where able to send e-mail and received them in our Yahoo e-mail accounts (without any special configuration).
Thanks for helping
The web server won't make a difference. Whether you can will depend on the environment your server is in.
The simplest option is to use .NET's built-in email classes. You're probably using .NET 3.5 so that's System.Net.Mail, e.g.
MailMessage message = new MailMessage()
{
From = new MailAddress("you#youraddress", "Your Name"),
Subject = "The subject",
Body = #"Simple text body; set IsBodyHtml for HTML"
};
message.To.Add(new MailAddress("first#recipient.address", "First recipient - can add more"));
SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient("your.smtp.server");
smtpClient.Send(message);
If you don't specify an SMTP server name in the constructor it will read it from web.config.
If you don't have access to an SMTP server but do have permission to use external web services then you could use something like http://postmarkapp.com/ - I've seen other questions about them here but haven't used them myself.
Not answering straight to the question, but:
If testing the emails sent when running on a development server is the purpose, a simple SMTP stub server like smtp4dev is a good alternative?

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