Getting the contact behind the recipient

[siftach]

I am trying the use the distribution lists in Outlook, but for my application I need to get the phone numbers of the contacts. The distribution list members are of type Recipient, which does not have phone numbers, but if you open a member in outlook it will give you the original contact that was added to the list.

How can I get to the recipient's original contact?

 

[Remou]

Some notes:

Sub FindContact()
    Dim olApp As Outlook.Application
    Dim olNS As NameSpace
    Dim olItem As Outlook.ContactItem
    Dim olContacts As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    
    Set olApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
    Set olNS = olApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set olContacts = olNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts)
    
    Set olItem = olContacts.items.Find("[Email1Address] = 'a@b.c'")
    Debug.Print olItem.BusinessTelephoneNumber
    
    Set olNS = Nothing
    Set olContacts = Nothing
    olApp.Quit
    Set olApp = Nothing
End Sub

With thanks to:
Outlook-Global Distribution List
thread707-1054640

 

[siftach]

This method has a few problems:

1. the contact can be in a public folder, not necesserily in the default contacts folder, which means everytime I will have to search in all the contact folders - very slow.

2. I can have two contacts with the same email address but with different phone numbers - which one should I pick?

Like I wrote, Outlook can go directly to the contact, so there must be a link between the recipient and the contact it originated from.