Bulk Reply Form

This form is designed to respond with a single message to all the messages that have arrived in a particular folder, typically those diverted there by a specific rule. It uses the Outlook Object Model to get the folder, then CDO to loop through the messages and extract the sender's address, and finally the Outlook Object Model again to display the newly create message that contains all the incoming addresses in the To or Bcc field, according to your choice.

This form should work with any version of Outlook, but has been tested only with Outlook 2000 and Outlook 97 8.03. For Outlook 2000, you'll need to install the Collaboration Data Objects component.

Setup

Download the bulkrep.zip file (8kb), then unzip it and open BulkReply.oft in Outlook. You may see a Select Folder dialog that asks you to choose a folder. It doesn't really matter which folder you choose. (This dialog should no longer appear after you publish the form.)
If you see Warning: Opening "Create Bulk Reply," choose Enable Macros, if you plan to run it right away. If you plan to publish it first, it doesn't matter which you choose.
Publish the form to the Personal Forms or Organization Forms Library.

Usage

To use the Bulk Reply form, choose Compose | Choose Form (Outlook 97) or Tools | Forms | Choose Form (Outlook 98 or later). If you want to put the addresses for the outgoing message in the Bcc field, check the Put addresses in Bcc field box.

Switch to the folder full of messages whose senders you want to use to create a new outgoing message. Then click the Create Reply button on the form. When the form finishes gathering all the sender addresses, it displays the new message. You can then add your own subject and text.

Notes

Because the main use of this form is likely to be for bulk replies to messages that came in from the Internet, I have not made any effort to handle non-SMTP addresses. This could be done by examining the Type portion of the Sender and adding code to include the type for non-SMTP addresses, using the syntax [<type>:<address>]. For code to get the SMTP address of an Exchange sender, see Get the SMTP address of the originator of a messagem

Limitations

This form gathers only the address for the Sender CDO property. It ignores any Reply To addresses. (HINT: You can get the Reply To address by generating a reply to the message and grabbing the address of the To recipient in the reply.) See To get the sender's address from a Microsoft Outlook mail message for alternative code.

Problems

The form, as written, will trigger security prompts when used with a version of Outlook that includes the Outlook Email Security Update. It could be rewritten to use Redemption objects instead of CDO and Outlook objects. See To get the sender's address from a Microsoft Outlook mail message for alternative code.

Other Tools

Email Templates	Utility that allows you to select multiple messages, then choose a template to create individualized replies to each one.
How to extract all sender addresses from a mail folder	Method using just the Import and Export wizard
Inbox Buddy	Utility with a New Mail command to send a new message to the sender(s) of the currently highlighted message(s)
Mailing List Service	Adds senders of selected email messages to the Contacts folder or a separate mailing list text file. Can also export from contacts to a mailing list file.

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