How To Get A Specific Folder With Getdefaultfolder And Delete Unneeded Folders That It Has Created

I was trying to figure out how to access my folders with a Python program (see this SO answer.) When I ran this: outlook = win32com.client.Dispatch('Outlook.Application') namespace

Solution 1:

GetDefaultFolder's argument is a enumeration. You can either use a numeric value that's courteously given in the doc,

or, as per Accessing enumaration constants in Excel COM using Python and win32com , access it via the symbolic value:

#need to only dothis once per machine; after that, a regular Dispatch will do
o = win32com.client.gencache.EnsureDispatch("Outlook.Application")

from win32com.clientimport constants
o.GetDefaultFolder(constants.olFolderContacts)

As you could see, accessing a default folder that didn't yet exist creates it. See e.g. How to Hide or Delete Outlook's Default Folders on how to deal with them.

Solution 2:

You need to specify a value from the OlDefaultFolders enumeration without iterating over all possible values for the GetDefaultFolder method.

You can't delete IPM folders like Inbox, Outbox and etc. using the Outlook object model.