Tip #19: How to Create New Outlook E-mail from the Command Line

There are numerous Outlook 2007 command line switches that can be executed from the Run line or a command prompt. One of these switches creates a new e-mail message.

The Outlook 2007 executable is outlook.exe. It is found in %programfiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\. You can call outlook.exe from the command line with the full path (or add the location to the Path environment variable). The command line switch for creating a new object is /c. You can then identify the type of object, or the messageclass, to create with a different parameter for each Outlook form. For example:

• ipm.activity creates a Journal entry
• ipm.appointment creates an appointment
• ipm.contact creates a contact
• ipm.note creates an e-mail message
• ipm.stickynote creates a note
• ipm.task creates a task

When using the command line parameter /c you can also assign a recipient address to the new e-mail form using the /m switch. If you needed to add an attachment, that can also be accomplished with a command line request. The /a switch with the file path will attach the specified file to the new e-mail form. So, as an example, to create a new e-mail form addressed to someone@gmail.com with an attachment logfile.txt, you would run from the command line:

c:\>"c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe" /c ipm.note /m someone@gmail.com /a "c:\logs\logfile.txt"

This is shown in the image to the left. The image on the right shows the output for this command. The path to outlook.exe is in quotes because there are spaces in the path.

You can create a desktop shortcut to launch this email message as well. Right click on the desktop and select New Shortcut and enter the same path used from the command line. Now double-clicking the shortcut will create the new message. I have used this basic process for a recurring message that manually sent a text file to a recipient. The user did not have to create and address the message every time.

There are other methods of creating new emails without using the Outlook user interface. To expand on this tip, check out Microsoft KB article 287573.