Add to Message Ribbon in Outlook 2007

2
votes

My organisation is using Office 2007 and we are looking to add a button on the email form that we could use to replace the default Send button. This would be to Send the email encrypted (by adding specific words to the message) and then sending it.

I have looked at creating an Outlook Add-in but the problem we have is that the Add-In's are not immediately visible to the user (as they are on the Add-Ins tab).

Is it possible to create a Add-in and make it appear on the Message Tab (so the first tab) when emails are written?

Another possible solution would be to override the default Email form so that the extra Send button is there, however I am concerned about overriding the default form as have heard of problems with doing this.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Many thanks,

Graham

2
outlookoutlook-addinoutlook-2007

2 Answers

0
votes

I am not sure what you mean - add-in itself is never visible to an end user, only its UI is. What that UI is, the add-in gets to determine.

What farmework does your add-in use? Do you implement the IRibbonExtnsibility interface? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff868522.aspx

0
votes

In Visual Studio 2010, create a office add-in project, and add new "Ribbon (Visual Designer)". Check Microsoft.Outlook.Mail.Compose to show a ribbon on your compose window.

To setup ribbon type

Create tabs and controls as you want.

If you want to access a content of current message, get Context from Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Inspector

    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Inspector currentInspector = this.Context as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Inspector;

    if (currentInspector == null)
    {
        return;
    }

    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.MailItem currentMailItem =
        currentInspector.CurrentItem as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.MailItem;
    if (currentMailItem != null)
    {
        currentMailItem.HTMLBody = "<html><body><h1>Hello</h1><p>Wor<strong>ld!</strong></p></body></html>";
        System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("The Ribbon is hosted in a mail item.");
        return;
    }

Code Referenced from http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vsto/thread/60c5f2b2-6269-4609-9de1-b7c8f65c209a/

I hope that it helps you.