Use VBA to add <style> tag to Email.

[JimG]

Hi. I've been experimenting with VBA for Outlook 2013. When I use my HTML in an Outlook HTML email message, it strips most of my styles from the <style> tag. I have my styles inline also, but when Outlook strips my <style> tag, it also removes my @media queries. A large percentage of my end-users will read my email using an iPhone, so I'd like to take advantage of @media. I'm forced to use Outlook 2013 to send the message by my employer.

With the VBA script below, I'm trying to replace the default <style> tag in Outlook HTML email with my own. Does anyone know if this can be done, or what may be wrong with my code below?

Public Sub routine()
Set myRegExp = New RegExp
myRegExp.IgnoreCase = True
myRegExp.Global = True
myRegExp.Pattern = myRegExp.Replace("[<style.*</style>]", "[>table.MsoNormalTable {font-size:1.5em;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;}div.MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:1.5em;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;}.jim {font-size:5em;}@media only screen and (max-width:580){table.MsoNormalTable{font-size:3em;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;}}</style>")
End Sub

Thanks for any advice,

Jim

 

[Michael Bauer]

My knowlegde about regex is 0. However, what I see is that your code has not relation to any email. Probably, one of the Replace arguments must point to the HTMLBody property of the email you want to edit.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

i know a little more about regex than Michael, but I've not used replace in a pattern. MSDN uses this is an example:

Dim pattern As String = "(\p{Sc}\s?)?(\d+\.?((?<=\.)\d+)?)(?(1)|\s?\p{Sc})?"
Dim input As String = "$17.43 €2 16.33 £0.98 0.43 £43 12€ 17"
Dim replacement As String = "$2"
Dim rgx As New Regex(pattern)
Dim result As String = rgx.Replace(input, replacement)

the result is
Original String: '$17.43 €2 16.33 £0.98 0.43 £43 12€ 17'
Replacement String: '17.43 2 16.33 0.98 0.43 43 12 17'



in your example, it would be
pattern = "[<style(.*)</style>]"
input = 'raw html body
replacement = ">table.MsoNormalTable {font-size:1.5em;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;}div.MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:1.5em;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;}.jim {font-size:5em;}@media only screen and (max-width:580){table.MsoNormalTable{font-size:3em;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;}}"

Dim rgx As New Regex(pattern)
Dim result As String = rgx.Replace(input, replacement)
debug.print result

will need to tweak the pattern and replacement to get it right - it all depends where you put the () in the pattern.
Regex.Replace Method (String, String) (System.Text.RegularExpressions)