Automating Outlook with Ruby: Calendar Appointments

In a previous article, we looked at how to automate Microsoft Outlook to create and send a new email message. This time around, we'll use Ruby to extract appointments data from the Outlook Calendar, delete an appointment, and create a new appointment.

As usual, we'll use the win32ole library to create a new instance (or connect to a currently running instance) of the Outlook application object:

require 'win32ole'
outlook = WIN32OLE.new('Outlook.Application')

Next we'll get the MAPI namespace:

mapi = outlook.GetNameSpace('MAPI')

Outlook consists of several Folder objects, including Inbox, Tasks, and Calendar. To get a folder object, call the MAPI object's GetDefaultFolder method, passing it an integer representing the folder to return. For the Calendar folder, this number is 9:

calendar = mapi.GetDefaultFolder(9)

The calendar folder's Items method returns a collection of all appointments, which you can iterate over. Each appointment object includes dozens of properties. The following code prints out six of the most-often used properties:

calendar.Items.each do |appointment|
    puts appointment.Subject
    puts appointment.Location
    puts appointment.Start
    puts appointment.Duration
    puts appointment.End
    puts appointment.Body
end

To delete an appointment, call its Delete method. For example, the following code locates an appointment based on its Subject value, then deletes it, if found:

calendar.Items.each do |appointment|
    if appointment.Subject == 'Punch Bud Selig in the Nose'
        appointment.Delete
    end
end

To create a new appointment, call the Outlook Application object's CreateItem method, passing it the number 1, which represents a Calendar Item. This returns a new Appointment object:

appointment = outlook.CreateItem(1)

Then set values for various properties of the new Appointment object:

appointment.BusyStatus = 2
appointment.Start = '7/29/2007 11:00 AM'
appointment.Duration = 300
appointment.Subject = 'Baseball Hall of Fame Induction'
appointment.Body = 'Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr.'
appointment.Location = 'Cooperstown, NY'
appointment.ReminderMinutesBeforeStart = 15
appointment.ReminderSet = true

The BusyStatus value is an integer with the following possible values:

olFree = 0
olTentative = 1
olBusy = 2
olOutOfOffice = 3

The Duration value is an integer representing the appointment length in minutes.

For an all-day event, forget the Duration property and instead set the AllDayEvent property to true:

appointment.AllDayEvent = true

To make an appointment recurring, you'll want to work with the Appointment object's Recurrence child object. You get this object by calling the GetRecurrencePattern method:

recurrence = appointment.GetRecurrencePattern

Now you'll set the RecurrenceType to one of the following values:

0 -- To set an appointment that occurs each and every day.
1 -- To set an appointment that occurs on the same day each week.
2 -- To set an appointment that occurs on the same day each month.
5 -- To set an appointment that occurs on the same day each year.

So, for an appointment that occurs on this day and time (as defined in your Start property above) each week:

recurrence.RecurrenceType = 1

Next, we'll set the PatternStartDate property. This value needs to be on or before the Start value defined above:

recurrence.PatternStartDate = '8/6/2007'

Finally, we set the PatternEndDate property:

recurrence.PatternEndDate = '8/27/2007'

When you've completed setting property values, call the Appointment object's Save method:

appointment.Save

And there you have it. Further details can be found in this Microsoft TechNet article.

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