Email Subject and Conversation Topic

[Alan McGowan]

I have quite a complicated macro running in Outlook which saves emails. One of the features is to pop up a userform as soon as a outgoing email hits the sent items folder. The user can then choose to save the email to a folder, delete the email or simply leave it in the sent items. If the choose to save it but not delete it from the sent items the message subject is prefixed with [Saved on /dd/mm/yyyy].

I'm having a problem that when someone replies to the sent message and I am using conversation view the emails aren't grouped together. I'm assuming that the conversation topic is somehow being changed when I save the email and add the prefix [Saved on /dd/mm/yyyy].

Question - am I correct in thinking the conversation topic will be getting changed? If so is there anyway to prevent this?

Thanks
Alan

 

[Diane Poremsky]

What version of exchange server do you use? the topic comes from a field in the header and the subject field so changing the subject *shouldn't* change the conversation if you use exchange... unless you are using an older version. It can be problematic in 2007, and i think 2010 as well as with pop & imap accounts.

 

[Alan McGowan]

We are running Office 365 so fully up to date I think. Not sure what version of Exchange but suspect that will be pretty much up to date too.

 

[Alan McGowan]

I've had a look at what is happening when I change the subject. The Conversation ID and Conversation Topic are not changing however, the Conversation Index is changing. I'm assuming this changing is why the messages are no longer being grouped in a Conversation.

 

[Alan McGowan]

I was hoping that I could take the Conversation Index Value prior to changing the subject and storing it as a String and then after the subject is changed I could change the new Conversation Index to the original Conversation Index. However the Conversation Index is read only so that doesn't work.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Redemption can change (at least some) read-only things, while VBA cannot. See Merge or Split Conversations for some code samples. I'm not sure it will help you as it did not work on my office365 mailboxes but worked on shared mailboxes.

 

[Alan McGowan]

Hi Diane, I found some code elsewhere that suggested the Conversation Index could be set to null using redemption. The code I'm trying to use is below. When I run it I get no error message and the Conversation Index isn't being set to null. Any ideas?

Sub convdel()

Dim objApp As Outlook.Application
Dim incomingMail As MailItem
Dim oNS As Object
Dim oRDOSess As Object
Dim oRDOItem As Object
Set objApp = Application
Set incomingMail = objApp.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)

Debug.Print "Creating Redemption Object ..."
' This requires: http://www.dimastr.com/redemption/download.htm
Set oRDOSess = CreateObject("Redemption.RDOSession")
Set oNS = Nothing
Set oNS = Outlook.GetNamespace("MAPI")
oNS.Logon
oRDOSess.MAPIOBJECT = oNS.MAPIOBJECT

Set oRDOItem = oRDOSess.GetMessageFromID(incomingMail.EntryID, incomingMail.Parent.StoreID)

Debug.Print "Trying to change conversation topic ..."
oRDOItem.ConversationTopic = incomingMail.Subject

Debug.Print "Trying to change conversation index ..."
oRDOItem.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x00710102") = Null

Debug.Print "Saving modified mail item ..."
oRDOItem.Save

End Sub

 

[Alan McGowan]

Apologies I am getting an error (I forgot to tick Redemption in references). The error is:

 

[Diane Poremsky]

It's working here to split a conversation in my exchange mailbox.

 

[Alan McGowan]

The code I posted above is working? Strange that it doesn't for me. Wonder if its because I'm not testing on an Exchange mailbox

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Yes, its is working here. What type of account are you testing it on? The error seems ot say it doesn't have write access - which could indicate a problem with redemption install.

It should work on any email account type. I'll test it in the morning with pop3 and imap just to be sure, but the code looks fine - it doesn't call anything that is not available in all accounts AFAICS.

 

[Alan McGowan]

I got the code to work by reinstalling redemption.

However it isn't solving my problem unfortunately. I'm actually not sure if I can solve my problem.

The basic issue I have is when I send an email I save it (to HD as msg) and keep a copy in my inbox. The copy in my inbox has a modified subject to indicate it has been saved. When someone replies to my original email it is not grouped with the original email. I thought this was because the Conversation Index had been changed when I saved the original email (with the modified subject). I amended the code above to keep the same Conversation Index after the subject line was modified but I have noticed that the conversation ID is also different so the messages still aren't being grouped.

Any thought on how I can ensure messages remain grouped even if the subject gets changed. I crucial point is the subject gets changed after the message has been sent.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

The differences in the conversation id between original and reply should be a few extra characters on the end. But... if the recipients system doesn't support conversation id, it could get a new one when you receive it. In that case, Outlook would look at the subjects to group.

Could you use a custom field or a category to mark as saved? This won't affect the subject so it will still group correctly.