Reply to e-mail highlighted in inbox, add a BCC to a specific e-mail, and direct replies to a certain e-mail

Question

At work, when we send out an e-mail we have to type in the BCC field a certain address as well as click on the "message options" and type in "direct replies to:" another address.

I want to add a button to the ribbon that will: Open up a reply based on the e-mail I have highlighted in the "inbox" pane, automatically add the e-mail to the BCC field AND automatically set the message to "direct replies to:"

So far I have come up with this:

Sub ReplyUW()
Dim mail As MailItem
Set mail = ActiveInspector.CurrentItem

mail.ReplyRecipients.Add ("XXXX@email.com")
mail.ReplyRecipients.Add ("XXXX@email.com")
mail.Recipients.ResolveAll
End Sub

This sets it up to "direct replies to:" but only if I have the message opened.

Answer 1

Let's start with something like this. As I mentioned in the comments, you can use the ActiveExplorer instead of the ActiveInspector. This macro is set up to run on all selected items, so you could select more than one email, and "reply" to all of them automatically.

Sub test()

Dim m As MailItem 'object/mail item iterator
Dim recip As Recipient 'object to represent recipient(s)
Dim reply As MailItem 'object which will represent the reply email

'Loop over each SELECTED item:
For Each m In Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection
    If m.Class = olMail Then
    Set reply = m.reply

    'Adds a "direct replies to" address:
    reply.ReplyRecipients.Add "XXXX@email.com"

    'Adds BCC recipient to the reply:
    Set recip = reply.Recipients.Add("someone_else@email.com")
    recip.Type = olBCC '3

    reply.Save 'saves a draft copy to your SENT folder
    reply.Send

    End If
Next

End Sub

Credit where it's due, I did not know how to add a BCC recipient, but I found out how to do that here:

Add BCC to email with VBA in Outlook 2013

Adding a button to the ribbon is probably more involved and is certainly more complicated than maybe necessary, and if you do desire to do that, I would recommend it should be a new question. Ribbon/XML customization is not "simple" VBA anymore.

For the time being, if you simply enable the Developer ribbon, then you can access this macro from the Macros menu: