grab files from most recently-received email in specific Outlook folder

Question

I want to search a specific Outlook folder, find the most recently-sent email, and save its attachments to a specific dir.

I wrote the following script, but it does not work. Can someone please suggest what needs to be changed in order for it to work?

Also - where can I find a list of Outlook- and Office-specific methods and properties I can use in PowerShell? I tried googling but could not find an official MSDN page for it.

#file path
$filepath = “C:\folder”
$account = "JonDoe@company.com"

#set outlook to open
$o = New-Object -comobject outlook.application
$n = $o.GetNamespace(“MAPI”)


$Account = $n.Folders | ? { $_.Name -eq $account };
    $f = $Account.Folders | ? { $_.Name -match 'FolderNameToSearch' };


$date = $f.Items| Select-Object -Property ReceivedTime | Sort-Object ReceivedTime -Descending | Select-Object -Index 0

#Write-Host $date


$f.Items | foreach 
{
   if ($_.ReceivedTime -match $date )
   {
        $_.attachments | foreach 
        {
            #Write-Host $_.filename
            $a = $_.filename
            $_.saveasfile((Join-Path $filepath $a))
        }
   }
}

Edit 3/4/14 - I stepped through the script, and I believe it is failing on $_.ReceivedTime -match $date

I added the following code to test the values of the Email ReceivedTime datestamps vs the datestamp stored by $date:

Write-Host "The date I am looking for is $date"

$f.Items | foreach {
   Write-Host $_.ReceivedTime
}

and here is part of the output:

The date I am looking for is @{ReceivedTime=03/04/2014 03:16:08}
3/4/2014 3:16:08 AM

Even though the dates are the same, the data types are different. What is the most elegant way to get $date to datetime or vice versa?

Answer 1

First, you're trying too hard. You're looping through your emails twice looking for the exact same email, and that's just redundant. Second, Get-Date <DateTime Object/DateTime String> is your friend, but you don't even need it. If you really, really, really want to sort the emails and select the date/time of the first one, then filter them for that one date/time I suppose you can, and here's what you'd want:

if ((get-date $_.ReceivedTime) -eq (get-date $date))

I think a better solution would be replacing:

$date = $f.Items| Select-Object -Property ReceivedTime | Sort-Object ReceivedTime -Descending | Select-Object -Index 0

with:

$email = $f.Items| Sort-Object ReceivedTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 1

Then you can do things like:

Write-Output "Last email received at $($email.receivedtime), attached file(s) are: (if any)
$email.attachments|%{Write-Output $_.filename}

and

$email.attachments|%{$_.saveasfile((join-path $folder $_.filename))

Personally I'd add a If($email.attachments.count -gt 0){Do Stuff}else{Write-Output "Latest email at $($email.receivedtime) has no attachments!"} bit in there.