How to Access a VBA Email Attachment

You can easily save e-mail attachments using VBA.

Having the knowledge on how to save email attachments using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) can save you time when working with attachments. You can use VBA in any of the Microsoft Office applications to automate processes such as saving email attachments from Outlook. In a few steps, you can write VBA code to save email attachments in any particular folder in your computer.

Instructions

1. Start Microsoft Access 2007, select "Database Tools" and click on "Visual Basic." Click the "Tools" menu and select "References." Check the box next to "Microsoft Outlook 12.0 Object Library" and select "OK."

2. Type the following to create a sub:

   Sub getOutlookAttachments ()

   Press "Enter"

3. Type the following to create your variables:

   Dim nameSpace As nameSpace

   Dim InboxFolder As MAPIFolder

   Dim outlookItem As Object

   Dim mailAttachment As Outlook.Attachment

   Dim fName As String

4. Type the following to define your variables:

   Set nameSpace = GetNamespace("MAPI")

   Set InboxFolder = nameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInboxFolder)

5. Type the following to loop through your inbox folder, search for attachments and save them to C:\:

   For Each outlookItem In InboxFolder.outlookItems

   For Each mailAttachment In outlookItem.Attachments

   fName = "C:\" & mailAttachment.fName

   mailAttachment.SaveAsFile fName

   Next mailAttachment

   Next outlookItem

6. Type the following to release your variables from memory:

   Set mailAttachment = Nothing

   Set outlookItem = Nothing

   Set nameSpace = Nothing

   Execute your sub to save your Outlook email attachments to "C:\"

References

• Microsoft: Programming Samples That Can Reference Items and Folders in Outlook by Using Visual Basic
• Microsoft: Attachment Object