How to retrieve Outlook inbox emails using R RDCOMClient?

Question

library(RDCOMClient)
## create outlook object
OutApp <- COMCreate("Outlook.Application")

I want to retrieve today's email from an Outlook folder named 'AUX'. Parse through the email's title and if it meets certain conditions, I want to parse the content of the email for certain strings.

I managed to write an email from R and send it out but so far not able to retrieve the emails.

Answer 1

Here is some sample code I got to work by trial and error:

library(RDCOMClient)

folderName = "AUX"

## create outlook object
OutApp <- COMCreate("Outlook.Application")
outlookNameSpace = OutApp$GetNameSpace("MAPI")

folder <- outlookNameSpace$Folders(1)$Folders(folderName)
# Check that we got the right folder
folder$Name(1)

emails <- folder$Items

# Just doing first 10, get total number with emails()$Count()
for (i in 1:10)
{
  subject <- emails(i)$Subject(1)
  # Replace "#78" with the text you are looking for in Email Subject line
  if (grepl("#78", subject)[1]){
    print(emails(i)$Body())
    break
  } 
}

Sorry, but I don't know why some of these COM object require parameters (like Subject(1)), but others don't (like Body()). This worked for me on Outlook 2013, but it should also work on all versions of Outlook from 2007 on.

To get more info on the Outlook Object model I would suggest you either get Ken Slovak's Outlook 2007 book (still relevent for later versions of Outlook), or else check out my personal website, http://www.gregthatcher.com (check out the "Scripts" section -- I have been compiling these for many years.)