Outlook VBA Get Contacts on Public Folders

How to get contacts on Outlook Public Folders using VBA?

Getting the contacts on the default folder is quite straight forward.

The GetDefaultFolder command on VBA can simply do the task.

Below is a screen shot of Outlook contact folder:

Above screen shot show the structure of Outlook contact folder, as a developer it's also good to know that the text or the string after the "-" sign is actually the default folder path.

And the string before the "-" sign is the sub folder name.

This is assuming that the Outlook settings has never been changed or customized by the user.

If ever the Contact folder has been changed by the user.
The settings can be verified also by right clicking on the contact folder and selecting properties.

See screen shot below:

Outlook Contacts in Public Folders has also the same structure with the default folder contacts but accessing the data or the items via VBA is not the same.

Public Contact Folder screen shot:

To make life easier, just copy and paste the code below to Outlook VBA and run the code.
Tweak the code to customize or to get whatever data you want.

Just change the parameters, if folder names are different from your environment.

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Sub Get_Contacts_Outlook_PublicFolders()

Dim objOutlook As Outlook.Application
        Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace
        Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
        Dim olItems As Outlook.Items
        Dim olContact As Outlook.ContactItem
        
        Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")

'my own
'Set objFolder = objNS.folders.Item("Public Folders").folders("Contacts")
'Public Folder - is the main or parent folder
'.folders "contacts" - "contacts" name of the sub folder on the parent folder which is the public folder on this case

        Set objFolder = objNS.folders.Item("Public Folders").folders("Contacts")

        MsgBox objFolder.name


Set olItems = objFolder.Items
For Each olContact In olItems

    'Do what you want here with olContact
    'MsgBox olItems.Count -- will display the total number of contacts on the folder specified
    'MsgBox objFolder.FolderPath -- will displathe public folder path
     MsgBox olContact + olContact.Email1Address ' -- will display Name and Email Address

Next

Set objNS = Nothing
Set objFolder = Nothing
Set olItems = Nothing
Set olContact = Nothing


End Sub

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Sub GetContacts_Default_Folder()

Dim olNS As Outlook.NameSpace
Dim xolContactFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim olContact As Outlook.ContactItem
Dim olItems As Outlook.Items


Set olNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI") 

Set xolContactFolder = olNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts).Parent.folders("contacts")

Set olItems = xolContactFolder.Items

For Each olContact In olItems

   'Do what you want here with olContact
    MsgBox olItems.Count '--will display the number of contacts
    MsgBox xolContactFolder.FolderPath '-- will display the default folder path
    MsgBox olContact + olContact.Email1Address '--will display the name and the email address

Next

Set olItems = Nothing
Set olNS = Nothing
Set olContactFolder = Nothing
Set olContact = Nothing

End Sub

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Cheers! Hope it helps...