Working with Contact Groups as Addressees

[Peter Thompson]

I am working on a VBA project that scans outgoing emails for events that may breach good email ettiquette (such as not attaching something, replying to all, use of bad language etc).

One aspect is to review the addressee list and count internal and external recipients based on domain name. I struggle with this when the addressee entry is a Contact Group (which I first need t identify and then expand).

If I just have one addressee which is a contact group, my item.recipients.count is 1.. Even though there could be any number in the group.

Ideas or suggestions?

Thanks

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Is it an exchange DL or Outlook Contact Group? I'm not sure it makes a difference... but was thinking you could do a look up and check the message class. Or get the recipients email address - an outlook contact group won't have an address.

 

[Peter Thompson]

Thanks for the prompt response.

In this case its an Outlook Contact Group, although I'm sure that somewhere along the way I will run into Exchange DLs.

I'm not following getting a recipients email address as the outlook contact group won't have one?

I've created a short (3 addressees) contact group in Outlook. Each has a fully domain qualified address. Opening the Contacts pane, I've located the group and right clicked to Create > Email and the To... field is populated with a compacted icon (square with a plus inside) and the name of the contact group.

If I click send, my code does not expand the list and check and count the number of true recipients (it says 1 instead of the 3 I know are in there).

However if I expand the group before sending, it works fine because now the addressee list is shown as a collection of individuals, the domains of which can be checked.

So my quest is to take all of the addresseess and check each one for a domain. If a domain does not exist, to assume that it is a distribution/contact list and to grab that and check all the individual members domains.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

So my quest is to take all of the addresseess and check each one for a domain. If a domain does not exist, to assume that it is a distribution/contact list and to grab that and check all the individual members domains.

Correct, at least that is my theory. It might not work in real life.... the other option would be to expand (or attempt to expand) all recipients before counting.