Error 287 on Reply

A VBA customization replies to a mail document stored in Lime. After the upgrade to Office 2024 the action fails with error 287 and no Outlook message window opens. The cause is a change in Outlook. The resolution is a change in the VBA customization.

The user activates a reply action on a case card. The action fails immediately. An error dialog appears and names the procedure only. No Outlook message window opens.

The error number is 287. The description is Application-defined or object-defined error.

The failure appears to occur during sending. This impression is incorrect. The procedure has one error handler for the complete body, so every failure produces the same dialog. The actual failure occurs much earlier, before Outlook is asked to display anything.

The reply procedure performs this sequence. Step 3 raises the error.

ReplyAll and Forward occupy the same position in the sequence and use the same source object.

OpenSharedItem reads a .msg file from disk. The message object it returns has no mailbox store behind it.

MailItem.Reply requires the source message to be located in a store. Earlier Outlook versions accepted a message without one. Outlook 16.0.0.17932 raises error 287 instead.

Error 287 is a generic COM failure. It does not identify the member that failed. This is the reason the problem is difficult to locate without instrumentation at the level of individual calls.

Affected. Customer VBA customizations that call Namespace.OpenSharedItem and then call Reply, ReplyAll or Forward on the result.

Not affected. The Lime Outlook integration. NewMail.MakeReplyItem saves the item into the mailbox and reads it again before it calls Reply, so the message always has a store. OpenSharedItem does not occur in the product source.

No product update is required. The correction belongs in the customer VBA, which can be deployed centrally in a few hours.

The failure occurs on every desktop client version. The client is not involved. The failing calls go from the customer VBA directly to Outlook.

The resolution is available on every desktop client version. Redemption is installed with the client under the identifier LLOutRed.LLRDOSession.

The members used by the resolution are long-standing parts of Redemption. Confirm availability on the customer installation before deployment:

? TypeName(Application.CreateObject("LLOutRed.LLRDOSession"))

Run this in the Immediate window of the Lime VBA editor. Use a .msg file saved from the affected case.

Public Sub Confirm287(ByVal sMsgPath As String)
    Dim oOutlook As Object, oNameSpace As Object, oSource As Object, oReply As Object
    Dim sStep As String
 
    On Error GoTo Failed
 
    sStep = "CreateObject"
    Set oOutlook = VBA.CreateObject("outlook.application")
    Debug.Print "Outlook.Version = " & oOutlook.Version
 
    sStep = "OpenSharedItem"
    Set oNameSpace = oOutlook.GetNameSpace("MAPI")
    Set oSource = oNameSpace.OpenSharedItem(sMsgPath)
 
    sStep = "HTMLBody read"
    Debug.Print "HtmlLen = " & VBA.Len(oSource.HTMLBody)
 
    sStep = "Reply"
    Set oReply = oSource.Reply()
 
    Debug.Print "no error"
    Exit Sub
 
Failed:
    Debug.Print "FAILED at [" & sStep & "] " & Err.Number & " - " & Err.Description
End Sub

The diagnosis is confirmed when the output reports the failure at Reply:

Outlook.Version = 16.0.0.17932
HtmlLen = 2049
FAILED at [Reply] 287 - Application-defined or object-defined error

The HTMLBody read is included deliberately. HTMLBody is protected by the Outlook Object Model Guard. A successful read demonstrates that the security configuration is not the cause, so no change to the Trust Center or to group policy is necessary.

Read the message with Redemption instead of the Outlook object model, and move it to the Drafts folder before the reply is created. The move provides the store that Reply requires.

Set oOutlook = VBA.CreateObject("outlook.application")
Set oNameSpace = oOutlook.GetNameSpace("MAPI")
Set oMailSource = oNameSpace.OpenSharedItem(sMailSourcePath)
 
Set oMailReply = oMailSource.Reply()

Const OL_FOLDER_DRAFTS As Long = 16
Const OL_MSG As Long = 3
 
Set oOutlook = VBA.CreateObject("outlook.application")
 
Set oSession = Application.CreateObject("LLOutRed.LLRDOSession")
oSession.MAPIOBJECT = oOutlook.Session.MAPIOBJECT
Set oDrafts = oSession.GetDefaultFolder(OL_FOLDER_DRAFTS)
 
Set oMailSource = oSession.GetMessageFromMsgFile(sMailSourcePath)
Set oMailSource = oMailSource.Move(oDrafts)
colDraftIds.Add oMailSource.EntryID
 
Set oMailReply = oMailSource.Reply()
oMailReply.Save
colDraftIds.Add oMailReply.EntryID

The remainder of the procedure requires one further change. Redemption requires an explicit format argument when the reply is written to disk:

Call oMailReply.SaveAs(sMailReplyPath, OL_MSG)

The move places two messages in the user's Drafts folder: the copy of the source message and the new reply. Both must be deleted on every exit path, including the error handler. Without this the folder accumulates one pair of messages for each failure.

Private Sub CleanupDrafts(ByVal oSession As Object, ByVal colEntryIds As Collection)
    Dim vEntryID As Variant
 
    On Error Resume Next
    If oSession Is Nothing Or colEntryIds Is Nothing Then
        Exit Sub
    End If
    For Each vEntryID In colEntryIds
        oSession.GetMessageFromID(VBA.CStr(vEntryID)).Delete
    Next vEntryID
End Sub

Delete moves the message to Deleted Items. It does not remove the message permanently.

• GetMessageFromMsgFile reads .msg files only. Procedures that also accept .htm or .rtf need an explicit check and a clear message for those types. OpenSharedItem is documented for .msg, .ics and .vcf, so those branches were unlikely to function previously.
• Attachments are copied by a separate loop. Delete the temporary attachment files after the reply is written to disk, not directly after each attachment is added.

Eight runs on one machine, Outlook 16.0.0.17932, one source message with HTML body, codepage 28591 and no attachments. Action reply. Two variables: the construction method, and whether the procedure performs the HTMLBody read and assignment.

• The source message contains no attachments. The attachment loop was therefore never exercised.
• Only reply was tested. replyall and forward were not.
• The runs stop before the Outlook message window is displayed. Display is an object model call and cannot be replaced by Redemption, because it requires an Outlook item.
• The length of the HTML body changes when the message passes through the file. This did not cause a failure. It is recorded here because the source codepage is 28591 rather than UTF-8.
• The description of the cause is an inference from the two construction methods. Microsoft has not published a statement about this change.
• The version table is read from source trees, not from installed builds.