Automatically Create Contacts

I often find myself creating a Outlook contact from the signature in an email or some text in a work document. Rather than do it by hand each time, I have put together a few vba commands and a new vba class to parse the text on the clipboard and create a new contact from what it gathers.

To set it up, in ThisOutlookSession add:

Public Sub ParseClipboard()
    Dim Selection As DataObject
    Dim SelectionStr As String

    Set Selection = New DataObject
    Selection.GetFromClipboard
    SelectionStr = Selection.GetText

    CreateAddrFromStr SelectionStr
End Sub

In a new module add:

Option Explicit

Public Sub CreateAddrFromStr(str As String)
    Dim MyContact As ContactItem
    Debug.Print "create"
    Set MyContact = Outlook.CreateItem(olContactItem)
    MyContact.Display

    Dim MyParsed As ContactObj
    Set MyParsed = New ContactObj

    Debug.Print str
    MyParsed.Parse str

    MyContact.FullName = MyParsed.Name
    MyContact.Title = MyParsed.Title
    MyContact.CompanyName = MyParsed.Company
    MyContact.BusinessTelephoneNumber = MyParsed.PhoneWork
    MyContact.BusinessFaxNumber = MyParsed.PhoneFax
    MyContact.MobileTelephoneNumber = MyParsed.PhoneMobile
    MyContact.HomeTelephoneNumber = MyParsed.PhoneHome
    MyContact.BusinessAddress = MyParsed.Address
    MyContact.Email1Address = MyParsed.Email1
    MyContact.Email2Address = MyParsed.Email2
    MyContact.Email3Address = MyParsed.Email3
    MyContact.Body = MyParsed.Note

End Sub

Then you need to import ContactObj.cls which will create the ContactObj Class Module.

There are a handful of reference that you will need to setup in order to use the regex and pull from the clipboard. In the VBA editor, go to Tools then References and add:

If MS Forms 2.0 isn’t listed, you can browse to c:\windows\system32\fm20.dll.

Finally, you probably want to add a toolbar button to easily use:

1. Right click on the the toolbar
2. Click Customize
3. On the Command tab select Macros on the left, find Project1.ThisOutlookSession.ParseClipboard and drag it to the toolbar

Now a new contact will be created from whatever text you have copied when you click the new button