Creating a link to a specific message in Outlook (Excel 2003)

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We have a large Excel file that we use to track certain inventories. Part of the activity that is tracked are emails that are sent to various vendors to resolve different issues. While we can indicate readily enough in the Excel database the fact that an email was sent, the following question arose: is it possible to create a link in a particular record that will take the user to the specific email that was sent?

It doesn’t seem possible on the face of it, but I wanted to check all bases.

Thanks in advance for any information on this at all.

Regards…

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Note the subject of the e-mail.

Select the cell in the worksheet where you want the link.
Select Insert | Hyperlink or press Ctrl+K.
In the address box, type

outlook: inbox/~subject

where subject must be replaced with the actual subject of the e-mail
Click OK.

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Hi Hans,

Let me begin by thanking you for your response.

I tried what you suggested, but I get an error back that says “The messaging interface has returned an unkown error. If the problem persists, restart Outlook.”

What I did was create a new message with “Test Message” as the subject and then I sent it to one of my colleagues. Then I followed your instructions. I tried using the subject with quotes and without, but I got the same error either way.

I should also say that the messages will be in the Sent Items folder, not the Inbox. I did specify Sent Items as the folder.

Any other ideas?

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I performed the same test, and created a hyperlink with address

outlook: sent items/~test message

Worked OK for me. I’ll see if I can find anything about the error message you mention.

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Although there are lots of newsgroup posts about “The messaging interface has returned an unkown error.”, I couldn’t find anything relevant to this situation. Does the problem persist oif you restart your PC?

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Hi Hans,

My apologies. The error was mine entirely. I had neglected to insert the tilde in the string. Once I inserted it, voila!, the problem was resolved. D-u-u-h…

However, there is another twist on this. Now what they want to do is create a folder on a shared drive and drop a copy of the email into that folder, which creates a .msg file there, which, I believe, is nothing more than a link pointing to the original email. Now the question becomes, is there a way to add a hyperlink in Excel to the particular file in that folder. I already know I can link to the folder itself, but I’ve been unable to get any farther than that. It seems what they want to do is to have shared users be able to see the original email.

As always, I would very much appreciate any insights you have on this.

Let me thank you for your efforts, which never fail to impress.

Regards,

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You can use the Insert Hyperlink dialog to create a link to any file. Just navigate to the appropriate folder, then select the .msg file and click OK.

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