Remove the signature when opening an Outlook template in Excel - excel

Question

I'm trying to open an Outlook template (.oft) file from Excel but without appending the user's signature. I can't get this to work.
I know I need to delete the hidden bookmark "_MailAutoSig" but I can't figure out how. I've tried to follow this guide but it's out of date and doesn't work with Outlook / Excel 2016: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/developer/office-2007/dd492012(v=office.12)#176-working-with-outlook-signatures
Here is my code
Option Explicit
Sub openEmail()
Dim cfgFromEmail As String
Dim cfgNotice As String
Dim cfgTemplate As String
Dim appOutlook As Outlook.Application
Dim newEmail As Outlook.MailItem
Dim rownum As Integer
Dim colnum As Integer
rownum = 6
cfgFromEmail = Sheets("Email").Range("O5").Value
cfgNotice = Sheets("Email").Cells(rownum, 10) '10 = column J
cfgTemplate = Sheets("Email").Cells(rownum, 11) '11 = column K
Set appOutlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set newEmail = appOutlook.CreateItemFromTemplate("\\location\to\template\" & cfgTemplate & ".oft")
'Set template = mailApp.CreateItem(olMailItem) 'Creates a blank email
If cfgNotice <> "null" Then 'If is not blank
MsgBox cfgNotice, vbInformation, "Before you send the email"
End If
With newEmail
.SentOnBehalfOfName = cfgFromEmail
.Display 'Show the email
End With
Set newEmail = Nothing
Set appOutlook = Nothing
End Sub
Any help is greatly appreciated. I have spent several hours searching Google and Stack Overflow to no luck.

Answer 1

If the email template is not too complicated, you may be able to just create a new email and create the template without signature using HTML:
Sub emailgenerator
Dim appOutlook As Outlook.Application
Dim newEmail As Outlook.MailItem
Dim emailBody As String
Set appOutlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set newEmail = olApp.CreateItem(olMailItem)
emailBody = "<p>Header</p><br><p>body area or something</p>"
emailBody = emailBody & "<table></table>" ' maybe add tables and whatever is needed
With newEmail
.To = "abc#abc.com"
.CC = "def#def.com"
.Subject = "Test"
.SentOnBehalfOfName = "youremail#youremail.com" ' could disregard this
.HTMLBody = emailBody
.Save
.Close olPromptForSave
End With
End Sub
This will take some looking into HTML but you can probably recreate the template with enough effort.
I believe when I tried this method for another project my signature wasn't getting appended automatically as it would with a template but not sure... best of luck

Answer 2

I have found a solution thanks to this stack overflow post
We need to save our template as HTML, then manually create a new email using the HTML code.
I'm yet to add images to the code but I think this will be easy using a find and replace method.
Final code without images:
Option Explicit
Sub openEmail(rownum As Integer)
Dim cfgFromEmail As String
Dim cfgNotice As String
Dim cfgTemplate As String
Dim appOutlook As Outlook.Application
Dim newEmail As Outlook.MailItem
Dim htmlPath As String
'Dim rownum As Integer
'Dim colnum As Integer
'rownum = 6
cfgFromEmail = Sheets("Email").Range("O5").Value
cfgNotice = Sheets("Email").Cells(rownum, 10) '10 = column J
cfgTemplate = Sheets("Email").Cells(rownum, 11) '11 = column K
htmlPath = "\\shared\drive\path\to\template\goes\here\" & cfgTemplate & ".htm"
Set appOutlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set newEmail = appOutlook.CreateItem(olMailItem) 'Creates a blank email
If cfgNotice <> "null" Then 'If is not blank
MsgBox cfgNotice, vbInformation, "Before you send the email"
End If
With newEmail
.SentOnBehalfOfName = cfgFromEmail
.HTMLBody = HTMLtoString(htmlPath)
'Refer to and fill in variable items in template
'.Body = Replace(.Body, "<< clientname >>", Worksheets("Clients").Range(1, 2))
'.HTMLBody = Replace(.HTMLBody, "<< clientname >>", Worksheets("Clients").Range(1, 2))
.Display 'Show the email
End With
Set newEmail = Nothing
Set appOutlook = Nothing
End Sub
Function HTMLtoString(htmlPath As String)
'Returns a string after reading the contents of a given file
HTMLtoString = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject").OpenTextFile(htmlPath).ReadAll()
End Function

Answer 3

In case anyone's looking for solutions not involving parsing HTML tags, here's a relatively simple one. Make sure to have the Microsoft Word library referenced.
Dim myItem As Outlook.MailItem
Dim myInspector As Outlook.Inspector
Dim myDoc As Word.Document
Set myItem = _
Outlook.Application.CreateItemFromTemplate(TemplateName & ".oft")
.Display
Set myInspector = Application.ActiveInspector
Set myDoc = myInspector.WordEditor
myDoc.Bookmarks("_MailAutoSig").Range.Delete