Outlook being closed causing problems during copy to Excel

[bnj1776]

I've used "Set objOutlook = New Outlook.Application" in my Excel VBA, but while I'm copying Contacts to an array and the user closes Outlook, Excel dies with

Run-time error '462':
The remote server machine does not exist or is unavailable.​

Is there any way to prevent this error within the Excel VBA?

Thank you,
Brian

 

[bnj1776]

Added test to prevent copy from even starting if Outlook open, but with thousands of contacts the user can still open & close Outlook causing the problem while the copy is running.

 

[Michael Bauer]

You cannot really prevent the user closing Outlook but you can catch the error in your code. For instance

on error goto err_handler
'do your stuff here
exit sub
err_handler:
msgbox err.description

 

[bnj1776]

Error trapping added for this, but not finding any way to easily resume to the middle of for next loop of all contact items.

Not able to sort by EntryID??? Am I missing something here???

Otherwise if initially the Contact Items were sorted by LastModificationTime, restricting the continued pass by LastModificationTime > last record successfully copied should work correctly.

Thanks

 

[Michael Bauer]

err_handler:
resume next

resumes at the line after the one that raised the error.

Why do you want to sort by EntryID? LastModificationTime is a way to go. See the Items.Sort function, which is explained in the VBA help file.

 

[bnj1776]

My attempts to sort by EntryID creates:

Run-time error '-2147467259 (80004005)'
The operation failed.​

I've looked at the MSDN Items.Sort Method page many times. EntryID is not on the list of Cannot Be Used specifically, so it must fall under "Category" or "Class"???

With 4000+ contacts it takes some time to copy them all from Outlook to Excel. So I was trying to sync only Outlook changes to Excel. To me sorting both data sets by EntryID would be the best way to go via For Next loops to sync adds, mods & deletes from Outlook to Excel. I was trying this in hopes that the testing and the skipping of matches would be faster than pulling a full copy of everything from Outlook. I can certainly do a full copy to a temporary table, sort and compare, but that means I've just done a full download PLUS the time to sync the two tables. This would take more time, not less.

Maybe EntryID is not the key field normally used in this type of operation? I'm new to Outlook and assumed such a field would be the best to key on, but apparently not. I was worried about using CompanyAndFullName as those are user changeable fields, but that field appears to be the only option for syncing. Or am I missing one that would be better?

Regarding the error created by the user closing Outlook (FYI opening Outlook while the VBA code is running is not an issue). The database links created by the VBA code simply disappear when the user closes Outlook while the VBA code is running. Effectively "Set objOutlook = Nothing" randomly in the middle of Excel's VBA code. This surprises me as I thought that the "Set objOutlook = New Outlook.Application" was creating a new and separate instance of Outlook that would be unaffected by the user's actions. This is not the case in my testing. Maybe I am not setting up my link to Outlook correctly??? Regardless, "Resume Next" fails because the connection to Outlook has been lost, completely. Maybe I'm wasting my time, but I'm working on reconnecting an picking up where the "interruption" happened now because I prefer to "bullet proof" my code.

Outlook's "features" are very frustrating and I'm in hopes that I'm missing something magical that will save me all this trouble... So if you have any ideas, please, please share.

Thank you.

 

[Michael Bauer]

See my comments about Entryid vs. LastModificationTime.

It's obvious that a simple 'resume what has already failed' has no benefit at all. I just demonstrated how to create an error handler. In the error handler check the error number or if the Outlook variable is nothing, re-set all the variables, then re-start the export.

You cannot create multiple instances of Outlook.