Best practices of exception handling in Outlook Addin

Question

I am developing outlook addin for Outlook 2003 using C#. Everything works fine, but I am finding difficulty on getting the exception details from Outlook when there is an exception. I am using Invoke() method to do the COM call. When this fails, all I get is a COMException and a TragetInvocationException as inner exception. I am wondering is this the right behaviour? Outlook won't give meaningful error messages? If it gives, how can I get them in my application?

Any help would be great.

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*Mark the best reply as "Answered"

Sincerly,
Navaneeth.K.N

Answer 1

What do you mean you're using Invoke(), are you using reflection to make all your object model calls and not using a PIA? About all you could do in that case would be to try to get the COM exception error number if you can.

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
http://www.slovaktech.com
Author: Professional Programming Outlook 2007.
Reminder Manager, Extended Reminders, Attachment Options.
http://www.slovaktech.com/products.htm

 

 

"Navaneeth" <=?utf-8?B?TmF2YW5lZXRo?=> wrote in message news:f3acaed0-08e4-42b2-b7e6-07ca6106f921...

I am developing outlook addin for Outlook 2003 using C#. Everything works fine, but I am finding difficulty on getting the exception details from Outlook when there is an exception. I am using Invoke() method to do the COM call. When this fails, all I get is a COMException and a TragetInvocationException as inner exception. I am wondering is this the right behaviour? Outlook won't give meaningful error messages? If it gives, how can I get them in my application?

Any help would be great.

---

*Mark the best reply as "Answered"

Sincerly,
Navaneeth.K.N

---

Ken Slovak MVP - Outlook

Answer 2

What do you mean you're using Invoke(), are you using reflection to make all your object model calls and not using a PIA? About all you could do in that case would be to try to get the COM exception error number if you can.

Yes, I am using reflection to do the call. AFAIK, PIA is supported only from Office 2007 and doesn't have any support on 2003. Am I correct?

Also what is the recommended way of interacting with Outlook on 2003 version?

 

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*Mark the best reply as "Answered"

Sincerly,
Navaneeth.K.N

Answer 3

The recommended way of interfacing is by using a PIA. It's faster than using reflection.

 

There most certainly are PIA's for Office 2003, I use them in almost every project I write. If I'm supporting 2003 - 2010 with one project I develop it using the 2003 PIA's on a development machine that has Office 2003 installed on it.

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
http://www.slovaktech.com
Author: Professional Programming Outlook 2007.
Reminder Manager, Extended Reminders, Attachment Options.
http://www.slovaktech.com/products.htm

 

 

"Navaneeth" <=?utf-8?B?TmF2YW5lZXRo?=> wrote in message news:5fc63c2e-d18e-4479-b239-07b22c956e6f...

What do you mean you're using Invoke(), are you using reflection to make all your object model calls and not using a PIA? About all you could do in that case would be to try to get the COM exception error number if you can.

Yes, I am using reflection to do the call. AFAIK, PIA is supported only from Office 2007 and doesn't have any support on 2003. Am I correct?

Also what is the recommended way of interacting with Outlook on 2003 version?

 

---

*Mark the best reply as "Answered"

Sincerly,
Navaneeth.K.N

---

Ken Slovak MVP - Outlook

Answer 4

The recommended way of interfacing is by using a PIA. It's faster than using reflection.

 

There most certainly are PIA's for Office 2003, I use them in almost every project I write. If I'm supporting 2003 - 2010 with one project I develop it using the 2003 PIA's on a development machine that has Office 2003 installed on it.

Thank you. I will take a look at PIA. One last question, so you used to get proper exception from the Outlook calls?

---

*Mark the best reply as "Answered"

Sincerly,
Navaneeth.K.N

Answer 5

You may get only a COM exception and possibly an error number or message in the inner exception. In most cases the information is minimal however.

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
http://www.slovaktech.com
Author: Professional Programming Outlook 2007.
Reminder Manager, Extended Reminders, Attachment Options.
http://www.slovaktech.com/products.htm

 

 

"Navaneeth" <=?utf-8?B?TmF2YW5lZXRo?=> wrote in message news:b54dfe4e-282a-4792-8044-b9fb061a1291...

The recommended way of interfacing is by using a PIA. It's faster than using reflection.

 

There most certainly are PIA's for Office 2003, I use them in almost every project I write. If I'm supporting 2003 - 2010 with one project I develop it using the 2003 PIA's on a development machine that has Office 2003 installed on it.

Thank you. I will take a look at PIA. One last question, so you used to get proper exception from the Outlook calls?

---

*Mark the best reply as "Answered"

Sincerly,
Navaneeth.K.N

---

Ken Slovak MVP - Outlook