Hi!

>I'm using automation to extract contact info from Outlook - (thanks to Della Martin, John Koziol and George Tasker for their help here)
>
>However - if Outlook is not already open - then when I release the object that opened Outlook and grabbed a reference to it's contacts - it is slow. (This is on a Pentium III 700 with 256MB memory - running NT4 and Outlook 2000).
>
>Is this just because closing Outlook is slow ?
>

No. Outlook by self is quite complex application that can use many resources. Some of them might cause slow downs. For example, when Personal Folders located somewhere in the network, Outlook might work slowly when closed. In my machine woithout any local network connections (just a modem connection to mail host) Outlook works very quickly. Outlook option to clean up deleted items when closed might slow down Outlook too when it closed.

>I've modified my code so that Outlook isn't closed until the app is exited to minimise the effect on the User.
>
>One thing I thought of was whether I could open Outlook in Fox, make it visible and minimised in the Taskbar and then not close it when Fox is exited.
>However - can't seem to do this because (i) CREATEOBJECT("Outlook.Application") without storing the result to a memvar or property - doesn't appear to open Outlook - presumably because there is nothing to keep a reference to it ? and (ii) there is no Visible property for Outlook !
>

You can run Outlook as separate application (for example, using ShellExecute API function call - you can find a lot of articles here at UT). Than CreateObject for Outlook will not run another instance of Outlook, but just will use existing one. Releasing of such reference will not close Outlook. this with Outlook 2000 only.

I don't know how to hide it, but you might try API functions called for Outlook main window. Or search the help on VB for Outlook for something like 'Hide' or 'Show'.

>Any thoughts gratefully received
>
>Anna