Outlook Programming: How to retrieve unread messages from any Outlook folder?

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Recently one of my customer updated that he got a requirement to programmatically retrieve unread messages from any Outlook folder to be implemented part of his application. We tried the following steps -  Will show you how you can programmatically retrieve unread messages from any Outlook folder using Outlook Object Model (OOM) API.

Let we first have a look at the following code snippet (C#.Net):

 Outlook.MAPIFolder Fldr = this.Application.ActiveExplorer().Session.GetDefaultFolder

        _(Outlook.OlDefaultFolders.olFolderInbox);

Outlook.Items UnReads = Fldr.Items.Restrict("[Unread]=true");

MessageBox.Show(string.Format("Unread items in Inbox = {0}", UnReads.Items.Count));

Line # 1, we need to specify target Outlook folder that we need to read messages. Here I used Inbox.

Line # 2, we need to filter target folder items using Restrict filter as Unread]=true to get unread items

Line # 3, displaying the number of unread items.

Please note: In order to retrieve unread messages from any Outlook folder, just point out the target folder in the Line # 1, instead of Inbox.

Pretty simple isn’t it Winking smile