MS Outlook macro to strikeout selected text

calendar_today Asked Nov 19, 2009
thumb_up 13 upvotes
history Updated April 16, 2026

Question posted 2009 · +10 upvotes

The task is to apply strikeout to current font in selected text area. The difficulty is that Outlook doesn’t support recording macros on the fly – it wants code to be written by hand.

For example, the following simple code:

Selection.Font.Strikethrough = True

works for Word, but gives an error for Outlook:

Run-time error '424':
Object required

Accepted answer +13 upvotes

This assumes that you also have Word installed on your box. If so, you can access most of the Word OM from the Outlook VBE without referencing Word by using the ActiveInspector.WordEditor object.

Sub StrikeThroughinMailItem()
    Dim objOL As Application
    Dim objDoc As Object
    Dim objSel As Object
    Set objOL = Application
    Set objDoc = objOL.ActiveInspector.WordEditor
    Set objSel = objDoc.Windows(1).Selection
    objSel.Font.Strikethrough = True
End Sub

Outlook VBA objects referenced (3)

outlook-vba