Forgetting Attachments

Originally posted 2005-07-11 13:56:45

Today, for the 4,256th time in my email career, I sent an email that promised an attachment but sallied forth with no files attached. After the recipient pointed out my mistake, I hastily resent the email with the proper file attached. Then I got to thinking: why don’t email clients detect this sort of behavior and protect us poor digital scribes from ourselves? This seems to be exactly the sort of thing that computers excel at. So, I launched Google and found this:

http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=341

It’s a VBA macro that scours an outgoing message for \”attach\” or \”enclos,\” determines whether the email has attachments, and prompts me if I’ve flubbed. I changed the prompt a bit. Here’s my modified code:

Option Explicit

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
    If Item.Class <> olMail Then Exit Sub
    If Item.Attachments.Count > 0 Then Exit Sub
    If Not SearchForAttachWords(Item.Subject & \":\" & Item.Body) Then Exit Sub
    If UserWantsToAttach Then
        ExecuteInsertFileCommand
    End If
End Sub

Function SearchForAttachWords(ByVal s As String) As Boolean
    Dim v As Variant
    For Each v In Array(\"attach\", \"enclos\")
        If InStr(1, s, v, vbTextCompare) <> 0 Then
            SearchForAttachWords = True
            Exit Function
        End If
    Next
End Function

Function UserWantsToAttach() As Boolean
    If MsgBox(\"Did you forget the attachment?\", vbQuestion + vbYesNo) = vbYes Then UserWantsToAttach = True
End Function

Sub ExecuteInsertFileCommand()
    Application.ActiveInspector.CommandBars(\"Standard\").Controls(\"&File...\").Execute
End Sub

Now I’m just dying to goof, so my computer can save me. The one problem I’ve found is that Outlook apparently pops up a confirmation box anytime a macro launches, to try to stave off Sasser, so that’s a bit annoying. I’ll see how long I can live with it.

BTW, for those who caught it, Pete Rose deserves to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.