How to Search Specific Subject, find, & reply all?

Question

I need to search the inbox, sent, draft, & outbox, for the latest message containing a particular Subject line & reply all. (Trying to continue the threads of specific emails.)

Posted on other sites, however I have not received any actionable advice.

Answer 1

The Outlook object model provides the Find/FindNext or Restrict methods of the Items class to search for items in a single folder. But the most powerful and reliable search is using the AdvancedSearch method of the Application class.

The key benefits of using the AdvancedSearch method in Outlook are:

• The search is performed in another thread. You don’t need to run another thread manually since the AdvancedSearch method runs it automatically in the background.
• Possibility to search for any item types: mail, appointment, calendar, notes etc. in any location, i.e. beyond the scope of a certain folder. The Restrict and Find/FindNext methods can be applied to a particular Items collection (see the Items property of the Folder class in Outlook).
• Full support for DASL queries (custom properties can be used for searching too). You can read more about this in the Filtering article in MSDN. To improve the search performance, Instant Search keywords can be used if Instant Search is enabled for the store (see the IsInstantSearchEnabled property of the Store class).
• You can stop the search process at any moment using the Stop method of the Search class.

One of your links leads to the code you are interested in:

Option Explicit

' Event handler for outlook
Dim WithEvents OutlookApp As Outlook.Application
Dim outlookSearch As Outlook.Search
Dim outlookResults As Outlook.Results

Dim searchComplete As Boolean


' Handler for Advanced search complete
Private Sub outlookApp_AdvancedSearchComplete(ByVal SearchObject As Search)
    'MsgBox "The AdvancedSearchComplete Event fired."
    searchComplete = True
End Sub


Sub SearchAndReply(emailSubject As String, searchFolderName As String, searchSubFolders As Boolean)

    ' Declare objects variables
    Dim customMailItem As Outlook.MailItem
    Dim searchString As String
    Dim resultItem As Integer

    ' Variable defined at the class level
    Set OutlookApp = New Outlook.Application

    ' Variable defined at the class level (modified by outlookApp_AdvancedSearchComplete when search is completed)
    searchComplete = False

    ' You can look up on the internet for urn:schemas strings to make custom searches
    searchString = "urn:schemas:httpmail:subject like '" & emailSubject & "'" ' Use: subject like '%" & emailSubject & "%'" if you want to include words see %

    ' Perform advanced search
    Set outlookSearch = OutlookApp.AdvancedSearch(searchFolderName, searchString, searchSubFolders, "SearchTag")

    ' Wait until search is complete based on outlookApp_AdvancedSearchComplete event
    While searchComplete = False
        DoEvents
    Wend

    ' Get the results
    Set outlookResults = outlookSearch.Results

    If outlookResults.Count = 0 Then Exit Sub

    ' Sort descending so you get the latest
    outlookResults.Sort "[SentOn]", True

    ' Reply only to the latest one
    resultItem = 1

    ' Some properties you can check from the email item for debugging purposes
    On Error Resume Next
    Debug.Print outlookResults.Item(resultItem).SentOn, outlookResults.Item(resultItem).ReceivedTime, outlookResults.Item(resultItem).SenderName, outlookResults.Item(resultItem).Subject
    On Error GoTo 0

    Set customMailItem = outlookResults.Item(resultItem).ReplyAll

    ' At least one reply setting is required in order to replyall to fire
    customMailItem.Body = "Just a reply text " & customMailItem.Body

    customMailItem.Display

End Sub

You may find the Getting started with VBA in Office article helpful.