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vb.net - Outlook - Counting the number of items in a conversation

Merry Christmas guys ...

I am implementing a function will will return the number of items in an Outlook Conversation - I have cobbled the following together and whilst no error is thrown - it doesnt seem to return the correct count:

    Function GetConv(mailItem As Outlook.MailItem)
        Dim Conversation As Outlook.Conversation ' Get the conversation
        Dim Items As Outlook.SimpleItems
        Dim expMessage$

        '   // If Item = a MailItem.
        Try
            If TypeOf (mailItem) Is Outlook.MailItem Then
                Conversation = mailItem.GetConversation
                If Not IsNothing(Conversation) Then
                    Items = Conversation.GetChildren(mailItem)
                    GetConv = Items.Count
                End If
            Else
                GetConv = 0
            End If

        Catch ex As SystemException
            expMessage = ex.Message
            MsgBox(expMessage)
            GetConv = 0
        End Try

    End Function

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Can someone assist to ensure that the correct count of the items in the conversation are returned?

MTIA

DWE

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Bill Prew

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dwe0608

ASKER

Hi Bill, Thanks for the direction ... the following function now works and returns the correct number of children in the conversation ...

I haven't done a lot of VB.Net stuff - in VB6 I would have disposed of the objects by setting them to nothing (ie set Conversation = nothing) ... is it still good practice to do that ... (ie maybe like this conversation = nothing) - I notice that the set assignment is no longer supported...

    Function GetConv(mailItem As Outlook.MailItem) As Integer
        Dim Conversation As Outlook.Conversation
        Dim oTable As Outlook.Table

        Dim expMessage$

        '   // If Item = a MailItem.
        Try
            If TypeOf (mailItem) Is Outlook.MailItem Then
                Conversation = mailItem.GetConversation
                If Not IsNothing(Conversation) Then
                    oTable = Conversation.GetTable() '.GetChildren(mailItem)
                    GetConv = oTable.GetRowCount()
                Else
                    GetConv = 0
                End If
            Else
                GetConv = 0
            End If

        Catch ex As SystemException
            expMessage = ex.Message
            MsgBox(expMessage)
            GetConv = 0
        End Try

    End Function

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dwe0608

ASKER

Thanks for the help ... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours.

Bill Prew

Honestly, I see a lot of discussion from time to time about disposing of objects or not. I still often do it, but have never found a single definitive answer to the question. There are arguments for and against and hard to sort out fact from fiction sometimes. In theory any variables that are scoped to a function or procedure are freed up after that procedure ends, but the runtime engine decided when the space from those objects gets released ("garbage collection"). Within a procedure, if I am going to reuse the same variable to reference multiple occurrences of an object type (one at a time, in a loop say) I often will set the variable to Nothing between uses, just to make sure I don't pick up the prior value somehow. Beyond that it seems to be somewhat a personal choice, from my perspective...

»bp

dwe0608

ASKER

Thanks for that Bill ... I agree with what you say ... I don't program enough nowadays to have an opinion on it, but there are some procedures I have written where it just doesn't seem natural to leave the objects seemingly alive when the function or sub exits ...