Solved: Is there any way that we can add short notes to invividual emails in outlook.

Sharath,

This option is not available in Outlook, and it is far beyond the scope of a Macro to add this. It would be the job of an expensive third-party add-on to achieve this, as it is not something Outlook was designed to do.

The best I can suggest is the features in Tasks, Contact and Calendar items, whereby you can click the 'Add Item' button to add an email or contact to a Task, Calendar or Contact.

Matthew.

David Lee

Hi, Sharath.

I agree with Matthew that this option is not available in Outlook. A 3rd-party add-on is certainly better suited to providing this capability, but I don't think it's beyond the scope of a macro. I think there are a couple of ways to do this with a macro.

1. Outlook messages have a Contacts property which can be set to a particular contact item. You could put the note in the body of the contact, connect the contact to the message via the Contacts property, then check for and open that contact each time the item is opened. The contact link will go out with the message, but the recipient cannot use it to access the contact, so your note is safe. The only real downside is that you have to remember to connect a contact to the message.

2. All Outlook items have the ability to store additional data in what is known as user-defined properties (UDP). With a bit of scripting you could display a dialog-box, enter some notes, and store them in a UDP. With a bit more code you could check items when they are opened to see if they have the UDP. If they do, then you could display the notes in a pop-up dialog. The downside of this solution is that the notes will go with the message to the recipient. They could potentially find that UDP and see what you wrote. That'd probably be a bad thing.

3. Another possibility, really a twist on #2, is to save the note outside of the message and include a link to it in the UDP. For example, the note could go into an actual Outlook note and a link to the note placed in the UDP. That wouldn't be very difficult to do. In fact, the code in the snippet shows how easy it is. This is strictly proof of concept. Open a message and run AddNoteToMsg. It will display a standard Outlook note (you can find it in your Notes folder) and embed a link to that note in a UDP of the open message. You can then open the message at any time and run DisplayLinkedItem. That block of code will get the address of the note from teh messages UDP and display it onscreen. The only caveats are that the note must remain in the folder it's created in, in a production version of this I'd advocate creating a folder just for these linked notes, and I've not designed a means of cleaning up notes associated with deleted messages.

Sub AddNoteToMsg()
    Dim olkMsg As Outlook.MailItem, olkNote As Outlook.NoteItem
    Set olkMsg = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
    Set olkNote = Application.CreateItem(olNoteItem)
    olkNote.Body = "Linked to: " & olkMsg.Subject
    olkNote.Save
    olkMsg.UserProperties.Add "LinkedNote", olText
    olkMsg.UserProperties.Item("LinkedNote").Value = olkNote.EntryID
    olkMsg.Save
    olkNote.Display
End Sub
 
Sub DisplayLinkedNote()
    Dim olkMsg As Outlook.MailItem, _
        olkNote As Outlook.NoteItem, _
        olkProp As Outlook.UserProperty
    Set olkMsg = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
    Set olkProp = olkMsg.UserProperties.Find("LinkedNote", True)
    If TypeName(olkProp) = "UserProperty" Then
        Set olkNote = Session.GetItemFromID(olkProp.Value)
        olkNote.Display
    End If
    Set olkMsg = Nothing
    Set olkNote = Nothing
    Set olkProp = Nothing
End Sub

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tigermatt

BDF - that's neat!

-Matt

David Lee

Thanks, Matt. I'm working on an improved version that I'll post shortly.

David Lee

Here's an improved version that opens a note, if the item has one, automatically. This version only works in Outlook 2007. Follow these instructions to use it.

1. Open Outlook
2. Press ALT+F11 to open the VB editor
3. If not already expanded, expand Project1
4. Right-click on Class Modules and select Insert > Class Module
5. Select the newly inserted module. Unless you already have one or more class modules, then the new module will be named Class1
6. In the Properties pane, click on name and change it to LinkedNoteManager
7. Copy the code between the CLASS MODULE CODE tags and paste it into the right-hand pane of the editor window
8. Double-click on the ThisOutlookSession module
9. Copy the code between the THISOUTLOOKSESSION tags and paste it into the right-hand pane of the editor window. If you already have subroutines with these names, then add the code from these routines into them

Here's how to use this.

1. With a message open onscreen
2. Click the Developer tab
3. Click the Macros button
4. Run the ThisOutlookSession.LNMAddNote macro
5. Fill in and save the note

The class module also checks items as they're opened looking to see if they have a note linked to them. If they do, then the note is opened when the item is opened.

'<CLASS MODULE CODE>'
Option Explicit
 
'*** Constants
Const CLASSNAME = "Linked Note Manager"
Const VERSION = "v1.0"
 
'*** Class variables
Private WithEvents olkApp As Outlook.Application, _
        WithEvents olkInspectors As Outlook.Inspectors, _
        olkInspector As Outlook.Inspector, _
        olkNotesFolder As Outlook.Folder
 
Private Sub Class_Initialize()
    On Error Resume Next
    Set olkNotesFolder = Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderNotes).Folders("Linked Notes")
    If TypeName(olkNotesFolder) = "Nothing" Then
        Set olkNotesFolder = Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderNotes)
        Set olkNotesFolder = olkNotesFolder.Folders.Add("Linked Notes", olFolderNotes)
    End If
    Set olkApp = Application
    Set olkInspectors = olkApp.Inspectors
    On Error GoTo 0
End Sub
 
Private Sub Class_Terminate()
    Set olkApp = Nothing
    Set olkInspectors = Nothing
    Set olkInspector = Nothing
    Set olkNotesFolder = Nothing
End Sub
 
Private Sub olkInspectors_NewInspector(ByVal Inspector As Inspector)
    Dim olkMsg As Outlook.MailItem, _
        olkNote As Outlook.NoteItem, _
        olkProp As Outlook.UserProperty
    On Error Resume Next
    If Inspector.CurrentItem.Class = olMail Then
        Set olkMsg = Inspector.CurrentItem
        Set olkProp = olkMsg.UserProperties.Find("LinkedNote", True)
        If TypeName(olkProp) = "UserProperty" Then
            Set olkNote = Session.GetItemFromID(olkProp.Value)
            If TypeName(olkNote) <> "Nothing" Then
                olkNote.Display
            Else
                MsgBox "The note linked to this item could not be found.", vbInformation + vbOKOnly, CLASSNAME
            End If
        End If
    End If
    Set olkMsg = Nothing
    Set olkNote = Nothing
    Set olkProp = Nothing
    On Error GoTo 0
End Sub
 
Public Sub AddNoteToMsg()
    Dim olkMsg As Object, _
        olkNote As Outlook.NoteItem, _
        olkProp As Outlook.UserProperty
    On Error Resume Next
    Set olkMsg = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
    If olkMsg.Class = olMail Then
        Set olkNote = olkNotesFolder.Items.Add()
        olkNote.Body = "Linked to: " & olkMsg.Subject
        olkNote.Save
        Set olkProp = olkMsg.UserProperties.Add("LinkedNote", olText)
        olkProp.Item("LinkedNote").Value = olkNote.EntryID
        olkMsg.Save
        olkNote.Display
    End If
    Set olkProp = Nothing
    Set olkNote = Nothing
    Set olkMsg = Nothing
    On Error GoTo 0
End Sub
'</CLASS MODULE CODE>'
 
'<THISOUTLOOKSESSION CODE>'
Private olkLNM As LinkedNoteManager
 
Private Sub Application_Quit()
    Set olkLNM = Nothing
End Sub
 
Private Sub Application_Startup()
    Set olkLNM = New LinkedNoteManager
End Sub
 
Sub LNMAddNote()
    olkLNM.AddNoteToMsg
End Sub
'</THISOUTLOOKSESSION CODE>'

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David Lee

I should also have mentioned that this version creates a separate folder for the linked notes. That folder is under the default Notes folder.