Print Outlook attachments without saving on hard drive

Question

I have a VBA script which cycles through selected emails and prints all PDF attachments in said emails.

Currently, the script saves the PDF files to the hard drive and then opens and prints them.

Sub BatchPrintAllAttachmentsinMultipleEmails()
   Dim objFileSystem As Object
   Dim strTempFolder As String
   Dim objSelection As Outlook.Selection
   Dim objItem As Object
   Dim objMail As Outlook.MailItem
   Dim objAttachments As Outlook.Attachments
   Dim objAttachment As Outlook.Attachment
   Dim objShell As Object
   Dim objTempFolder As Object
   Dim objTempFolderItem As Object
   Dim strFilePath As String




   Set objFileSystem = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
   strTempFolder = objFileSystem.GetSpecialFolder(2).Path & "\Temp for Attachments " & Format(Now, "YYYY-MM-DD_hh-mm-ss")
   strTempFolder = "W:\my documents\test"

   MkDir (strTempFolder)

   Set objSelection = Outlook.Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection

   For Each objItem In objSelection
       If TypeOf objItem Is MailItem Then
          Set objMail = objItem
          Set objAttachments = objMail.Attachments

          'Save all the attachments in the temp folder
          For Each objAttachment In objAttachments
               strFilePath = strTempFolder & "\" & objAttachment.FileName
               If InStr(strFilePath, ".pdf") <> 0 Or InStr(strFilePath, ".PDF") <> 0 Then
                   objAttachment.SaveAsFile (strFilePath)
                   Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
                   Set objTempFolder = objShell.NameSpace(0)
                   Set objTempFolderItem = objTempFolder.ParseName(strFilePath)
                   objTempFolderItem.InvokeVerbEx ("print") 'try now
               End If



          Next objAttachment
       End If
   Next

End Sub

I am wondering if it is possible to execute this code without saving the files to the hard drive, i.e. just opening them from memory in VBA, print them, and have no trace of them on the hard drive?

Answer 1

Even "big" softwares, for example Outlook, are saving PDF-files to a local drive (temp-Folder) to open them in another program.
The problem here is that the PDF-reader needs a reference/path to the file you want to open.

I would suggest to delete the file from the drive after it is printed.