IMPORTANT: Support for accessing the Pocket Outlook Object Model from ActiveX was officially dropped in Windows CE 4.0. However, it continued to to work until part way through Windows CE 5.0. The highest version of PimStore.dll that works appears to be 5.01.14847. As of this time, there is no workaround. Possibilities are to use the DECLARE statement to call the API functions directly or to create a DLL wrapper that can be called from NS Basic/CE.

Using the Pocket Outlook Object Model (POOM) from Microsoft, it's easy to read and write to the built in databases for

• Tasks
• Appointments
• Contacts
• Cities (read only)

You need to download the complete documentation and files from Microsoft's website. In this Tech Note, we'll give you a summary of what you need to know to use POOM from NS Basic/CE. The documentation provided by Microsoft is written from the viewpoint of a Visual C++ programmer. You will find that doing the same functions from NS Basic/CE is much easier!

If your device doesn't already have the files in ROM, you will need to move the appropriate version of PIMStore_xxx.dll from the release files to your device and rename it to PIMstore.dll. After that, it will need to be registered.

On HPC and HPC Pro devices, tap [start]...[run], then enter the command

You should get a message back that it has been registered successfully.

POOM is an object, much like the other objects NS Basic/CE uses. The major difference is that in addition to having properties and methods, it also has objects within it. The main object has 4 objects inside it. Each one is called a Folder Object. The Folder Objects are Tasks, Appointments, Contacts, and Cities. The getDefaultFolder method is used to get a Folder Object.

Each of the Folder Objects has properties and methods (like any object) and an object called Items within it. The Items object has a property called count, which says how many individual items there are, and an array of those items which is an collection object called Items.

These items are the actual data. Each of these items is an object. For example, each name in Contacts is an object, referenced in the Items array. The values for the item are stored as properties: for example, lastname, title and Birthday are all properties of a Contact Item Object.

To sum up, there are 4 levels of objects set up as a hierarchy:

1. POOM Object (IPOutlookApp)

2. Folder Objects: Tasks, Appointments, Contacts, Cities (IFolder)

3. Items Object: An array with each Item (IPOutlookItemCollection)

4. Item Object (ICity, IContact, ITask or IAppointment)

Hint: if you have an object and you wonder what kind it is, do typename(object). It will return its type, something like ICity or IFolder.)

You create the POOM object using the AddObject statement as follows:

addobject "pocketOutlook.application","pol"
pol.logon
set tasks=pol.getdefaultfolder(13)
'do your processing here
pol.logoff

This object is used to get the collection of items.

This object is used to access the individual items. The items are different objects, depending on the folder they come from. They are ICity, IContact, ITask and IAppointment.

4C. Item Object: ITask

Check Microsoft's docs for information on ITask specific methods.

Check Microsoft documentation for IAppointment specific methods.

Sample Code 

REM Demonstrate use of Pocket Outlook
addobject "pocketoutlook.application","pol"
pol.logon()
on error resume next
print "Poom Version:" & pol.version
print "Current City:" & pol.currentCityIndex
print "Home City:" & pol.HomeCity.name
print "Visiting City:" & pol.VisitingCity.name
print "Partnered with Outlook? " & pol.outlookCompatible

'get tasks
set tasks=pol.getdefaultfolder(13)
set taskItems=tasks.items
print "Tasks (" & taskItems.count & ")"

for i=1 to taskItems.count
  set taskItem=taskItems.item(i)
  print taskItem.subject
next

'create a new task
set newTask=taskItems.add
print typename(newtask)
newTask.subject="New task created by NS Basic/CE"
newTask.save

'get contacts
set contacts=pol.getdefaultfolder(10)
set contactItems=contacts.items
print "Contacts (" & contactItems.count & ")"

for i=1 to contactItems.count
  set contactItem=contactItems.item(i)
  print contactItem.lastname
next

'get appointments
set appointments=pol.getdefaultfolder(9)
set appointmentItems=appointments.items
print "Appointments (" & appointmentItems.count & ")"

for i=1 to appointmentItems.count
  set appointmentItem=appointmentItems.item(i)
  print appointmentItem.subject
next

'get cities
set cities=pol.getdefaultfolder(101)
set cityItems=cities.items
print "Cities (" & cityItems.count & ")"

for i=1 to 10
  set cityItem=cityItems.item(i)
  print cityItem.name
next

pol.logoff