I am trying to automate some emails using VBA for Excel. Everything so far is fine, except trying to keep my signature in the email.
Once you tell VBA to create a new email, it will already contain your default signature. This can be seen if you try Outmail.Display
. However if you overwrite the .HTMLBody
property, it will be deleted.
My simple attempt was to save the contents of .HTMLBody
to a signature
(string), and then reassign it to .HTMLBody
just to test it out. However the resulting email will be void of any signature.
Code to copy and re-insert the signature:
Dim myOlApp As Outlook.Application
Dim MyItem As Outlook.MailItem
Dim signature As String
Set myOlApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set Outmail = myOlApp.CreateItem(0)
signature = Outmail.HTMLBody
Outmail.HTMLBody = signature
Outmail.Display
Code to show that signature is automatically inserted:
Dim myOlApp As Outlook.Application
Dim MyItem As Outlook.MailItem
Set myOlApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set Outmail = myOlApp.CreateItem(0)
Outmail.Display
Edit: I tried replacing .HTMLBody
with .Body
. That works, but obviously takes out the HTML formatting of the signature
Edit 2: The code works on my friend's computer but not on mine
I solved that issue with this trick:
Then you can simply put your HTML text between Head and Signature:
I think it's a sort of VBA bug: if you don't use the .Display method, the MailItem object is not "fully" created.
Try to place a brakepoint and look at
?mymail.HTMLbody
values on Immediate Window (Ctrl + G) before and after the .Display method line....You can also obtain the same simply expanding
mymail
object in the Locals Window!Another potential solution is to grab the signature directly from the directory where Windows stores it and append it to the body. A Microsoft MVP explains the (somewhat lengthy) process here: https://www.rondebruin.nl/win/s1/outlook/signature.htm
You can read the signature file from the Signatures folder (keep in mind that the folder name is localized) and merge it with the message body (you cannot simply concatenate two well formed HTML documents and get back a valid HTML document). You would also need to be careful with the signature styles and images - they must be processed separately.
You can also display the message (Outlook populates the unmodified message body with the signature when the message is displayed) and then either read the
HTMLBody
property and close the inspector (the flicker is unavoidable). If you want to display the message anyway, display it first so that the signature is inserted by Outlook, and only then add your data (it needs to be inserted, not concatenated).If using Redemption is an option, it exposes the RDOSignature object. You can use its
ApplyTo
method to insert any signature into any message.cut the html source of your signature (for example in an editor or mozilla - source view) and then copy it into a cell. then you can add the value of the cell to your .htmlbody and will be perfect. all other solutions are awful, i tried them all :)
Solved. Simply restarting Outlook solved it.