Skip to main content

Add a Picture to Contact in Outlook 2003 via Script

I'm currently writing some code for an event sink that will convert a Vcard attached to a message into a contact in a public folder. Mostly the Vcards that I want to import are from the Palm desktop software which allows you to add images into the contact similar to the new functionality added to Outlook 2003. So as part of my code I had to come up with something that would decode the picture from the vcard file and then add it to the contact in a way Outlook 2003 would understand it. Although I haven't quite finish the vcard code i thought this was worth a separate post.

Basically to add a picture to a contact in Outlook you need to first have the file in jpg format and the name of the file your going to attachment must be ContactPicture.jpg. Once you have attached that file you then need to modify/Add 2 properties on that attachment itself. The only API that you can use to successfully do this (well that I've found) is MAPI. So this means you need to use CDO 1.2 if your scripting. The two props you need to set are

H7FFF000B Set it to true which makes outlook 2003 hide the attachment(still visible in 2002 though)
H370B0003 PR_RENDERING_POSITION needs to be set to -1

The other thing that needs to be done is you need to add a property to the contact itself that tells Outlook that there is Picture for the contact. This property is the named property {00062004-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}0x8015 .

I've put a barebones script together that will do this using a hardcode EntryID that needs to be pulled from the contact using OulookSpy or pfDavAdmin. I've posted a downloadable copy of the code here the script itself looks like.

mapiserver = "servername"
mapimailbox = "mailbox"
contactEntryID = "000000002F7E...etc"
filename = "c:\temp\ContactPicture.jpg"
set objSession = CreateObject("MAPI.Session")
Const Cdoprop1 = &H7FFF000B
const Cdoprop2 = &H370B0003
strProfile = mapiserver & vbLf & mapimailbox
objSession.Logon "",,, False,, True, strProfile
Set objInbox = objSession.Inbox
Set objInfoStore = objSession.GetInfoStore(objSession.Inbox.StoreID)
set objmessage = objSession.getmessage(contactEntryID)
set objAttachments = objmessage.Attachments
Set objAttachment = objmessage.Attachments.Add
objAttachment.Position = -1
objAttachment.Type = 1
objAttachment.Source = filename
objAttachment.ReadFromFile filename
For Each objAttachment In objAttachments
if objAttachment.name = "ContactPicture.jpg" then
objAttachment.fields.add Cdoprop1,"True"
objAttachment.fields(Cdoprop2).value = -1
end if
Next
objmessage.fields.add "0x8015",11,"true","0420060000000000C000000000000046"
objmessage.update

Popular posts from this blog

The MailboxConcurrency limit and using Batching in the Microsoft Graph API

If your getting an error such as Application is over its MailboxConcurrency limit while using the Microsoft Graph API this post may help you understand why. Background   The Mailbox  concurrency limit when your using the Graph API is 4 as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling#outlook-service-limits . This is evaluated for each app ID and mailbox combination so this means you can have different apps running under the same credentials and the poor behavior of one won't cause the other to be throttled. If you compared that to EWS you could have up to 27 concurrent connections but they are shared across all apps on a first come first served basis. Batching Batching in the Graph API is a way of combining multiple requests into a single HTTP request. Batching in the Exchange Mail API's EWS and MAPI has been around for a long time and its common, for email Apps to process large numbers of smaller items for a variety of reasons.  Batching in the Gr...
Read more

Sending a MimeMessage via the Microsoft Graph using the Graph SDK, MimeKit and MSAL

One of the new features added to the Microsoft Graph recently was the ability to create and send Mime Messages (you have been able to get Message as Mime for a while). This is useful in a number of different scenarios especially when trying to create a Message with inline Images which has historically been hard to do with both the Graph and EWS (if you don't use MIME). It also opens up using SMIME for encryption and a more easy migration path for sending using SMTP in some apps. MimeKit is a great open source library for parsing and creating MIME messages so it offers a really easy solution for tackling this issue. The current documentation on Send message via MIME lacks any real sample so I've put together a quick console app that use MSAL, MIME kit and the Graph SDK to send a Message via MIME. As the current Graph SDK also doesn't support sending via MIME either there is a workaround for this in the future my guess is this will be supported.
Read more

Export calendar Items to a CSV file using Microsoft Graph and Powershell

For the last couple of years the most constantly popular post by number of views on this blog has been  Export calendar Items to a CSV file using EWS and Powershell closely followed by the contact exports scripts. It goes to show this is just a perennial issue that exists around Mail servers, I think the first VBS script I wrote to do this type of thing was late 90's against Exchange 5.5 using cdo 1.2. Now it's 2020 and if your running Office365 you should really be using the Microsoft Graph API to do this. So what I've done is create a PowerShell Module (and I made it a one file script for those that are more comfortable with that format) that's a port of the EWS script above that is so popular. This script uses the ADAL library for Modern Authentication (which if you grab the library from the PowerShell gallery will come down with the module). Most EWS properties map one to one with the Graph and the Graph actually provides better information on recurrences then...
Read more
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.