Displaying Outlook Address book in Delphi XE app: - delphi

I have a Delphi XE app and I'd like to pop up the address book dialog that Outlook uses from within my Delphi app - I assume there are COM classes to support this? What's the best way to get this done? Platform is Win7-64 with Outlook 2010.
TIA

Disclaimer: It is definitely possible to do so through COM, but Outlook will display warnings that a 3rd party application is accessing the address book (and rightfully so). If you want to avoid these warnings, you can run the code from within an Outlook add-in, resort to MAPI, or use Outlook Redemption, which is basically an advanced wrapper around MAPI that feels like the Outlook Object Model.
The Outlook Object Model offers the SelectNamesDialog dialog to display the address book. It is highly configurable, and you can initialize it with custom sets of addresses as well.
As a little example, here is some code that pops up the address book in multiselect mode. For brevity, it uses late binding (OleVariants). You'll probably want to use early binding in production code.
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
application: OleVariant;
dialog: OleVariant;
i: Integer;
recipients: String;
recipient: OleVariant;
begin
application := createOleObject( 'Outlook.Application' );
// Obtain the dialog
dialog := application.session.getSelectNamesDialog;
// Only show the a single 'add' field, multiselect
dialog.setDefaultDisplayMode( 6 ); // 6 = olDefaultDelegates
// Display the dialog
dialog.display;
// Display selection
recipients := '';
for i := 1 to dialog.recipients.count do
begin
recipient := dialog.recipients.item( i );
recipients := recipients + recipient.name + #13#10;
end;
showMessage( recipients );
end;

To do something like this you need to support the Extended MAPI interface.
Here is a link to a component which supports this on Win7-64 Outlook-2010.
Easy MAPI
Supports execution of address book dialogs.

Related

File Open Dialog with Preview in Delphi 10.3

I changed for Delphi 10.3 and its default TOpenDialog contains a preview pane. I made some searches and found the IFileDialogCustomize interface provided by Microsoft to customize standard WinAPI dialogs. I know I have to use the OnSelectionChange event handler to modify the picture of the pane. The big question for me is : how can I access the preview pane image by IFileDialogCustomize? What is the ItemID for this? I couldn't find any answer to this question on the net. Somebody know the answer? Then please share with me and the community! :)
I replaced some code fragments by ... for the sake of brevity, because these are trivial or app dependent sections.
procedure TMainWindow.OnSelectionChange( Sender : TObject );
var
dc : HDC;
aBMP : TBitmap;
function isSelectedFilePreviewAble : boolean;
begin
result := ...;
end;
functon getPreviewPictureDC : HDC;
var
iCustomize : IFileDialogCustomize;
h : THandle;
begin
if OpenDialog1.QueryInterface( IFileDialogCustomize, iCustomize ) = S_OK then
begin
h := iCustomize.??? this is the missing code fragment
result := GetDC( h );
end else
result := 0;
end;
procedure generatePreviewPicture;
begin
...
end;
begin
dc := getPreviewPictureDC;
if ( dc <> 0 ) then
begin
aBMP := TBitmap.Create;
try
if ( isSelectedFilePreviewAble ) then
generatePreviewPicture;
StretchBlt( aBMP.Handle, ...);
finally
aBMP.Free;
ReleaseDC( dc );
end;
end;
end;
I made some searches and found the IFileDialogCustomize interface provided by Microsoft to customize standard WinAPI dialogs.
First, IFileDialogCustomize does not "customize standard WinAPI dialogs". It customizes only IFileOpenDialog and IFileSaveDialog dialogs, no others.
Second, TOpenDialog primarily uses the legacy Win32 API GetOpenFileName() function. On Windows Vista+, GetOpenFileName() uses IFileOpenDialog internally with basic options enabled, so that legacy apps can still have a modern look.
Although, under the following conditions, TOpenDialog will instead use IFileOpenDialog directly rather than using GetOpenFileName():
Win32MajorVersion is >= 6 (Vista+)
UseLatestCommonDialogs is True
StyleServices.Enabled is True
TOpenDialog.Template is nil
TOpenDialog.OnIncludeItem, TOpenDialog.OnClose, and TOpenDialog.OnShow are unassigned.
But even so, TOpenDialog still does not give you access to its internal IFileOpenDialog interface, when it is used.
If you really want to access the dialog's IFileOpenDialog and thus its IFileDialogCustomize, you need to use TFileOpenDialog instead of TOpenDialog (just know that dialog won't work on XP and earlier systems, if you still need to support them).
The big question for me is : how can I access the preview pane image by IFileDialogCustomize?
You don't. The preview pane is not a dialog customization, so it can't be accessed via IFileDialogCustomize. Even if you could get a control ID for the preview pane (which you can't), there is no function of IFileDialogCustomize that would allow you to access the preview pane's HWND or HDC, or otherwise alter the content of the preview pane in any way. The preview pane is an integral and private component of IFileDialog for any file type that supports previews. It is not something that you can access and draw on directly. IFileOpenDialog itself will update the preview pane as needed when the user selects a file that has (or lacks) a preview to display.
My boss want to show previews for our own file formats.
The correct way to handle that on Vista+ is to create a Preview Handler for your custom file types. Then, any Shell component that wants to display previews of your files, including IFileOpenDialog, can use your handler.

JCLMAPI Delphi Non-Modal Email popup

I am currently using Delphi 7 on XP, but I would like to eventually migrate the code to DXE on Win8.
I am trying to send email using the JCL, using JCLMAPI to be specific. I tried using the JclSimpleSendMail routine in the JCLMAPI unit. Here's the interface to the call.
function JclSimpleSendMail(const Recipient, Name, Subject, Body: AnsiString; const Attachment: TFileName; ShowDialog: Boolean; ParentWND: THandle; const ProfileName: AnsiString; const Password: AnsiString): Boolean;
The problem is it pops up the default MAPI client message box modally (in my case Outlook 2010). I would like it to just open the email message window, but allow the user to continue working in the Delphi App. until they are ready to send, eg, in case a user wants to continue working in the Delphi App before sending the email. Is this possible?
I noticed there is a ParentHWND property in TJCLEmail, I tried setting that to zero (I know it was a reach), but I was hoping that removing the parent handle might change the modal behavior (no luck!)
function TForm1.SimpleSendHelper2(const ARecipient, AName, ASubject, ABody: AnsiString; const AAttachment: TFileName;
AShowDialog: Boolean; AParentWND: THandle; const AProfileName, APassword, AAddressType: AnsiString): Boolean;
var
AJclEmail: TJclEmail;
begin
AJclEmail := TJclEmail.Create;
try
**AJCLEmail.ParentWnd := 0; //TRIED FORCING THE ATTACHED HANDLE TO ZERO**
*//if AParentWND <> 0 then
// AJclEmail.ParentWnd := AParentWND;*
if ARecipient <> '' then
AJclEmail.Recipients.Add(ARecipient, AName, rkTO, AAddressType);
AJclEmail.Subject := ASubject;
AJclEmail.Body := ABody;
if AAttachment <> '' then
AJclEmail.Attachments.Add(AnsiString(AAttachment));
if AProfileName <> '' then
AJclEmail.LogOn(AProfileName, APassword);
Result := AJclEmail.Send(AShowDialog);
finally
AJclEmail.Free;
end;
end;
This also successfully opened up the Default MAPI app and filled in all of the information passed (TO, Subject, Body, Attachment). Unfortunately it still opens the message box modally.
Finally, I also tried the code at http://www.delphifaq.com/faq/delphi/network/f236.shtml This code just Uses MAPI directly (no JCL). Unfortunately, it also pops up the message box modally.
Any thoughts on how I can open the default MAPI client non-modally?
Thank you!
You can use Windows API function MAPISendMailW with flag MAPI_DIALOG_MODELESS assigned.
But then you have to use MAPISendMailHelper function for Win8 and later and MAPISendMailW for Windows 7 and earlier. And for Windows 7 such functionality available only with some (latest) versions of Office and only with Windows SDK for Windows 8 installed (according to MSDN). If another email client used (not MS Outlook), then there is no guarantee to get it working.
In other words, it is possible, but it is tricky. I suggest you keep it in modal form, it is safer for many reasons. If user "is not ready to send email", then he will not activate such function (or cancel it to return to the program).

How to use Delphi standard confirmation dialog but with checkbox "Don't ask me again"?

In many confirmation dialogs it is usefull to have such option (quick wayt to disable confirmation).
But i can't find how to do that. I don't want to design it myself because i need this dialog to be standard-like and don't wont to redesign with every update of Delphi. Is there simple way to use Delphi standard confirmation dialog with such checkbox ?
UPDATE2. Suggested SynTaskDialog library from Synopse project does great job (all i need and even more), i will use it in my projects. Thanks!
UPDATE. So, thank you guys for ideas. System function MessageBoxCheck is nice solution but seem to be not so stable as it should be. In general i agree that it is good idea to use latest API functions to provide users with best UI experience of modern os and use old-fashioned design for older systems. At moment i stay on simple solution (code is following), but if someone share the code with support of UI for modern OS, it will be nice.
function MsgDlgWithCB(const Msg,Title,CBMsg: string; DlgType: TMsgDlgType;
Buttons: TMsgDlgButtons; DefaultButton: TMsgDlgBtn;
var cbDontAskAnymore: TCheckBox): TForm;
var
i: integer;
b: TButton;
y: integer;
begin
Result := CreateMessageDialog(Msg, DlgType, Buttons, DefaultButton) ;
Result.Position := poScreenCenter;
cbDontAskAnymore := TCheckBox.Create(Result);
cbDontAskAnymore.Caption := CBMsg;
cbDontAskAnymore.Width := 130;
y := -1;
for i := 0 to result.ComponentCount-1 do
if result.Components[i] is TButton then
begin
b := TButton(result.Components[i]);
b.Left := b.Left + cbDontAskAnymore.Width + 16;
Result.ClientWidth := Max(Result.ClientWidth, b.Left+b.Width+16);
y := b.Top+b.Height-cbDontAskAnymore.Height;
end;
if y<0 then
y := Result.ClientHeight - cbDontAskAnymore.height - 16;
Result.Caption := Title;
cbDontAskAnymore.Parent := Result;
cbDontAskAnymore.Top := y;
cbDontAskAnymore.Left := 8;
end;
function MessageDlgCheckbox(const Msg: string; DlgType: TMsgDlgType;
Buttons: TMsgDlgButtons; DefaultButton: TMsgDlgBtn;
var cbDontAskAnymore: Boolean;
const Title: string ='Confirmation';
const CBMsg: string = 'Don''t ask anymore'): integer;
var
f: TForm;
c: TCheckbox;
begin
f := MsgDlgWithCB(Msg,Title,CBMsg,DlgType,Buttons,DefaultButton,c);
try
result := f.ShowModal;
cbDontAskAnymore := c.Checked;
finally
f.free;
end;
end;
You can use our Open Source SynTaskDialog unit.
Windows provides a generic task dialog available since Vista/Seven. But there is none available with previous versions of Windows, i.e. Windows XP or 2K.
This unit (licensed under a MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license) will use the new TaskDialog API under Vista/Seven, and emulate it with pure Delphi code and standard themed VCL components under XP or 2K. It supports Delphi 6 up to XE4, and is Win32/Win64 Unicode ready.
Here is the result under a Windows Seven 64 bit computer:
And here is the same dialog created from our emulated pure Delphi code:
Since this screenshot was made on a Win 7 machine, the styling is native for that OS. When the emulated version of the dialog runs on XP it displays in a style native to that OS.
You have your "Do not ask for this setting next time" checkbox... and potentially much more!
The system native functionality that offers such facilities is the task dialog API introduced in Vista. This provides means for you to show much more capable dialogs than the older MessageBox API.
Should you need to support XP then you will have to create your own dialog. For example by deriving from TForm and calling ShowModal. If you do this, make the form capable of building itself dynamically. Don't make one form per message that you show!
In my codebase, I have my own wrapper of the task dialog API. This detects at runtime versions of Windows that do not support task dialog and falls back on a custom built Delphi dialog.
Regarding SHMessageBoxCheck I'd be a little wary of taking a dependency on that. According to its documentation it's not supported beyond XP, and you have to import it by ordinal. I'd personally be worried that it might be dropped from a future version of Windows. That said, MS has a strong track record of doing whatever it takes to keep legacy apps working with new OS releases.

How to send virtual keys to other application using delphi 2010?

I need to send several virtual keys (VK_RETURN) from my delphi application (myapp.exe) into another application (target.exe).
Eg : Send VK_RETURN twice , from myapp.exe , into target.exe
The OS that I use are Windows 7 64 bit and Windows XP.
I read : How to send an "ENTER" key press to another application? , Send Ctrl+Key to a 3rd Party Application (did not work for me) and other previous asked question.
But still I'm getting confused.
How to set the focus to the target application ?
How to send the virtual keys to the targeted application ?
Simple example : I want to send VK_RETURN twice into notepad.exe or calc.exe (already loaded) or any other program from my delphi application. How to do that ?
The simplest way to do this in Delphi 2010, please...
PS :
I tried SndKey32.pass from http://delphi.about.com/od/adptips2004/a/bltip1104_3.htm
And got error : [DCC Error] SndKey32.pas(420): E2010 Incompatible types: 'Char' and 'AnsiChar'
If (Length(KeyString)=1) then MKey:=vkKeyScan(KeyString[1])
If your target application isn't the foreground window, you need to use PostMessage to send keystrokes to its window handle. You can get that window handle using FindWindow. The code below sends the Enter key to a the text area in a running instance of Notepad (note it uses an additional FindWindowEx to locate the memo area first). It was tested using both Delphi 2007 and Delphi XE4 (32-bit target) on Windows 7 64.
uses Windows;
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
NpWnd, NpEdit: HWnd;
begin
NpWnd := FindWindow('Notepad', nil);
if NpWnd <> 0 then
begin
NpEdit := FindWindowEx(NpWnd, 0, 'Edit', nil);
if NpEdit <> 0 then
begin
PostMessage(NpEdit, WM_KEYDOWN, VK_RETURN, 0);
PostMessage(NpEdit, WM_KEYUP, VK_RETURN, 0);
end;
end;
end;
To find the window by title (caption) instead, you can just use the second parameter to FindWindow. This finds a new instance of Notepad with the default 'Untitled' file open:
NpWnd := FindWindow(nil, 'Untitled - Notepad');
Note that this requires as exact match on the window title. An extra space before or after the -, for instance, will cause the match to fail and the window handle to not be retrieved.
You can use both the window class and title if you have multiple instances running. To find the copy of Notepad running with Readme.txt loaded, you would use
NpWnd := FindWindow('Notepad', 'Readme.txt - Notepad');
To find other applications, you'll need to use something like WinSpy or WinSight to find the window class names. (There are others also, such as Winspector or WinDowse (both of which are written in Delphi).)
Your comment mentions Calculator; according to Winspector, the Calculator main window is in a window class called CalcFrame on Windows 7, and the area the numbers are displayed in is a Static window (meaning it doesn't seem to receive keystrokes directly). The buttons are simply called Button, so you'd have to loop through them using EnumChildWindows looking for the individual buttons to identify them in order to obtain their handles.
(How to enumerate child windows is a separate question; you can probably find an example by searching here or via Google. If you can't, post a new, separate question about that and we can try to get you an answer.)
Here's a quick example of sending keys to Calculator after finding it by window class. It doesn't do anything useful, because it needs some time spent to identify different buttons and the keys that each responds to (and the proper combination of messages). This code simply sends 11Numpad+22 to the calculator window (a quick test showed that they were properly received and displayed, and that's about all the time I wanted to spend on the process).
uses Windows;
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
NpWnd: HWnd;
begin
NpWnd := FindWindow('CalcFrame', nil);
if NpWnd <> 0 then
begin
PostMessage(NpWnd, WM_KEYDOWN, VK_NUMPAD1, 0);
PostMessage(NpWnd, WM_KEYDOWN, VK_ADD, 0);
PostMessage(NpWnd, WM_KEYDOWN, VK_NUMPAD2, 0);
end;
end;

Send Email in HTML Format

At the moment we are using MAPI to send a plain text email from our application. We specify the dialog flag when the user invokes this function, so that the email will appear in their email client and they can then modify it and send it.
We would like to embelish the email and send it in an HTML format.
According to this link MSDN link MAPI is not sutiable for this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/268440
I have seen an article on ExpertsExchange that say you can use MAPI to do it but I can't get the example to work with Outlook (not tried anyother client yet)
procedure ShowMailDlg(ToName,Address,HTMLMessage: string);
var
li: integer;
lMessage: TMapiMessage;
lRecipArray: array of TMapiRecipDesc;
lREs: DWord;
begin
SetLength(lRecipArray,1);
lRecipArray[0].ulRecipClass:=MAPI_TO;
lRecipArray[0].lpszName:=pChar(ToName);
lRecipArray[0].lpszAddress:=pChar(Address);
lMessage.ulReserved:=0;
lMessage.lpszSubject:=nil;
lMessage.lpszNoteText:=pChar(HTMLMessage);
lMessage.lpszMessageType:= nil;//pChar('HTML');
lMessage.lpszDateReceived:=nil;
lMessage.lpszConversationID:=nil;
lMessage.flFlags:=0;
lMessage.lpOriginator:=nil;
lMessage.nRecipCount:=length(lRecipArray);
lMessage.lpRecips:=PMapiRecipDesc(lRecipArray);
lMessage.nFileCount:=0;
lMessage.lpFiles:=PMapiFileDesc(nil);
lRes:=MapiSendMail(0, 0 , lMessage,MAPI_DIALOG, 0);
end;
Anyone have any ideas how I can do this. I could probably automate Outlook but I would like to keep it fairly independant of email client (hence MAPI)
Thanks
Update: thanks to everyone for the suggestions. The feature is question is not that heavily used, so asking the user to configure SMTP details is not really an option. I think we will just stick to the plain text email.
Thanks
MAPI doesn't support HTML formatted messages. From Microsoft : "Extended Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) should not be used to generate HTML-formatted messages. As an alternative, consider using the Microsoft Outlook Object Model, CDONTS, CDOSYS, CDOEX, or a third-party SMTP control."
I would echo the comments about sending via Indy. I published a unit that works to send HTML messsages with Indy very simply here or feel free to write your own. If you really want to make the messages editable, try a combination of WPTools and Indy. WPTools has good support for HTML markup and then you can send the resulting message via Indy.
I don't have any experience with Synapse so I can't say how easy/hard it is with that project.
If you only have to serve Outlook clients you could try accessing Outlook by OLE:
procedure SendMail(const aRecipient, aSubject, aNote, aFile: string; Silent, HTML: boolean);
const
olMailItem = 0;
var
ii: integer;
MyOutlook, MyMail: variant;
begin
//*** Send something via OLE/Outlook...
//*** Outlook- und Mail-Objekt erstellen...
MyOutlook := CreateOLEObject('Outlook.Application');
MyMail := MyOutlook.CreateItem(olMailItem);
//*** create a mail message...
MyMail.To := aRecipient;
MyMail.Subject := aSubject;
if aNote <> '' then begin
if HTML then
MyMail.HTMLBody := aNote
else begin
MyMail.Body := aNote;
end;
end;
//*** Add Attachment...
if aFile <> '' then begin
MyMail.Attachments.Add(aFile);
end;
if Silent then
MyMail.Send
else
MyMail.Display;
MyOutlook := UnAssigned;
end;
This is also possible using the Synapse library. A specific example is available from the howto page titled "About MIME and its MIME Parts". I personally have used this technique in several programs to send HTML email.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work over MAPI, you will need to get the users SMTP or IMAP information and handle that communication yourself (the Synapse library has routines to do just that).
If you decide to download Synapse, I strongly suggest getting the latest version from the subversion repository. The update available there includes support for Delphi 2009.
For Delphi emailing I would recommend SakEmail
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sakemail/
If you're using a version of delphi higher then 7,
you should add the version definition to the .inc file.
that's supplied with SakEmail, else it will fall back to
Delphi4 compatibility mode. After patching the inc file it seems
fine with Delphi 2005.
also, it seems HTML over MAPI works in Thunderbird, but no other client.
There is an undocumented feature of MAPISendMail for including an HTML body:
set lpszNoteText to nil (or a pointer to an empty string)
add an HTML attachment
MAPI will use the html attachment as the body of the e-mail (and not include the attachment).
You can use SMTP with Indy:
HTML Messages
New HTML Message Builder class (Indy 10)
You should consider using an SMTP component, Indy for example, and adding the user doing the sending to the CC or BCC field of the message. This largely satisfies the need to have such sent messages appear in the user's own mail client, which is the primary advantage of MAPI. The user may even set up a separate account specifically for receiving such copies.
Doing it this way allows you to completely customize every detail related to sending mail (MHTML being one such example), including caching all mail and doing the sending in a separate thread, or at a different time, and so on. Also, this method is more client-agnostic than even MAPI; for example, this still works even if the user is using web-based email such as Gmail.

Resources