Sending a Message to Meeting Attendees Who Accepted

Recently I signed up for an account at Quora. One of the first Outlook questions I encountered was this one from Thomas Foote. Thomas is looking for a way to send a message to just those meeting invitees that accepted the meeting request. I explained to Thomas that while Outlook does not have a built in means of doing this, it is possible to do it with a script (macro).

This macro is very simple. It creates a new message then opens the selected meeting/appointment and loops through the list of invitees. If an invitee is a person, not a resource, and if they accepted, then they are added to the To line of the message. The message is then displayed on screen.

Instructions.

Thomas has Outlook 2010, which I still haven’t loaded yet. I am therefore unable to provide him with a complete set of instructions for adding the code. The best I can do is provide instructions for Outlook 2007 and hope that he can adapt them to Outlook 2010 without too much trouble.

1. Start Outlook
2. Click Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor
3. If not already expanded, expand Microsoft Office Outlook Objects
4. If not already expanded, expand Modules
5. Select an existing module (e.g. Module1) by double-clicking on it or create a new module by right-clicking Modules and selecting Insert > Module.
6. Copy the code from the Code Snippet box and paste it into the right-hand pane of Outlook’s VB Editor window
7. Edit the code as needed. I included comments wherever something needs to or can change
8. Click the diskette icon on the toolbar to save the changes
9. Close the VB Editor

Sub SendToAccepted()
    Dim olkApt As Object, olkMsg As Outlook.MailItem, olkRcp As Outlook.Recipient
    On Error Resume Next
    Select Case TypeName(Application.ActiveWindow)
        Case "Explorer"
            Set olkApt = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1)
        Case "Inspector"
            Set olkApt = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
    End Select
    If TypeName(olkApt) <> "AppointmentItem" Then
        msgbox "The item you selected is not a meeting/appointment.  Processing terminated.", vbCritical + vbOKOnly, "Send to Meeting Attendees"
    Else
        Set olkMsg = Application.CreateItem(olMailItem)
        With olkMsg
            .Subject = olkApt.Subject
            For Each olkRcp In olkApt.Recipients
                If olkRcp.MeetingResponseStatus = olResponseAccepted Then
                    If olkRcp.Type <> olResource Then
                        olkMsg.Recipients.Add olkRcp.Address
                    End If
                End If
            Next
        End With
        olkMsg.Display
    End If
    Set olkApt = Nothing
    Set olkMsg = Nothing
    Set olkRcp = Nothing
End Sub