Outlook Attachment Reminder Macro

How many times have you written an email about “the attached file” only to forget to attach the file before hitting send? If you follow the instructions in this post, that’ll never happen again!

We’re going to add a VBA macro to Microsoft Outlook that searches your email for the text “attach” when you click “send”. If it finds that string of text (ie. attached, attachment…) it will check to see if you actually attached a file. If there’s no file attached, you’ll be prompted with a message box. Then, you can either continue without attaching anything, or you can stop the email from sending so you can include your file. Yes, it’s that simple.

*Note: This will not work in Outlook Express as it doesn’t support macros.

How to set it up:

1. Open Outlook.
2. Press Alt+F11 : This will open the Visual Basic editor.
3. Expand the project until you find “ThisOutlookSession” and select it.
4. Copy the code below into the Visual Basic code window.
5. Save.

Now to test:
6. Close & Reopen Outlook for good measure.
7. Write an email containing the word attach.
8. Click send. *This is when you should get the pop-up.

*Note: If you have an image in your email signature, that would count as an attachment. Just change “intStandardAttachCount” from 0 to 1.

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
‘ Pops up a reminder if the word “attach” is found but there is no attachment on your email.
Dim m As Variant
Dim strBody As String
Dim intIn As Long
Dim intAttachCount As Integer, intStandardAttachCount As Integer

On Error GoTo handleError

‘Edit the following line if you have a signature on your email that includes images or other files. Make intStandardAttachCount equal the number of files in your signature.
intStandardAttachCount = 0

strBody = LCase(Item.Body)

intIn = InStr(1, strBody, “original message”)

If intIn = 0 Then intIn = Len(strBody)

intIn = InStr(1, Left(strBody, intIn), “attach”)

intAttachCount = Item.Attachments.Count

If intIn > 0 And intAttachCount <= intStandardAttachCount Then

m = MsgBox(“It appears that you mean to send an attachment,” & vbCrLf & “but there is no attachment to this message.” & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & “Do you still want to send?”, vbQuestion + vbYesNo + vbMsgBoxSetForeground)

If m = vbNo Then Cancel = True

End If

handleError:

If Err.Number <> 0 Then
MsgBox “Outlook Attachment Reminder Error: ” & Err.Description, vbExclamation, “Outlook Attachment Reminder Error”
End If

End Sub

Also, LifeHacker has a script for GreaseMonkey that does the same thing for GMail.

Credit for this Outlook macro goes to Mark Bird. I’ve seen this macro a few times on the internets, but I believe he’s the original creator. You may also find some answers to any questions on his site. Thanks Mark!

There you go! Now anytime you mention an attachment in your email, you’ll be sure to have it attached.

Tagged as: Macro, Outlook, VBA