PropertyName="BodyAsHTML" usage requires additional info

[butchmarshall]

Using the XML manifest from the Outlook-Add-in-Contextual-Regex example for testing, when changing the ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch Rules from BodyAsPlaintext to BodyAsHTML outlook throws an error:

These are the only change made to the XML manifest.

<Rule xsi:type="RuleCollection" Mode="And">
   <Rule xsi:type="ItemIs" ItemType="Message" FormType="Read" />
   <Rule xsi:type="ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch" RegExName="9Digits" RegExValue="\d{9}" PropertyName="BodyAsHTML"/>
 </Rule>

<Rule xsi:type="RuleCollection" Mode="And">
  <Rule xsi:type="ItemIs" ItemType="Message" />
  <Rule xsi:type="ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch" RegExName="OrderNumber" RegExValue="CO-\d{9}" PropertyName="BodyAsHTML"/>
</Rule>

What is the "highlight attribute" it is referencing? It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the docs.

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• ID: 64d9cc55-9781-d046-d612-15262d8d618e
• Version Independent ID: 8c98758c-3873-b3a4-742a-8cfbd581e56c
• Content: Use regular expression activation rules to show an Outlook Add-in
• Content Source: docs/add-ins/use-regular-expressions-to-show-an-outlook-add-in.md
• Product: outlook
• GitHub Login: @jasonjoh
• Microsoft Alias: jasonjoh

[butchmarshall]

It's probably referring to the Highlight attribute in the rule manifest mentioned here.

When changing to

- <Rule xsi:type="ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch" RegExName="9Digits" RegExValue="\d{9}" PropertyName="BodyAsHTML" Highlight="all"/>
- <Rule xsi:type="ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch" RegExName="OrderNumber" RegExValue="CO-\d{9}" PropertyName="BodyAsHTML" Highlight="all"/>

Outlook then complains

[kbrandl]

@butchmarshall thanks for reporting this issue; we'll investigate and let you know the outcome.

[kbrandl]

@exextoc upon preliminary investigation, I suspect this may be a product bug -- can you please investigate and respond here on this thread with what you find?

The question is this: how should the manifest be structured such it will validate successfully (i.e., can be successfully sideloaded into Outlook on the web) when it contains an ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch rule with PropertyName="BodyAsHtml"?

Repro steps

1. Clone the Outlook-Add-in-Contextual-Regex sample repo.

2. Follow instructions in the repo's README to deploy the add-in's files to a web server and then update the contoso-order-number-manifest.xml file (locally, within your cloned repo) to contain the proper web server URL for the deployed add-in.

3. Open the contoso-order-number-manifest.xml file, replace each instance of BodyAsPlaintext with BodyAsHTML and save the file.

4. Attempt to sideload the add-in in Outlook on the web.

   • You'll get this error message when you attempt to install the custom add-in by pointing to your manifest file:
     

5. Within the Rule element on line 76 of the contoso-order-number-manifest.xml file, add the Highlight="none" attribute and save the file:

   <Rule xsi:type="ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch" RegExName="OrderNumber" RegExValue="CO-\d{9}" PropertyName="BodyAsHTML" Highlight="none" />

6. Attempt to sideload the add-in in Outlook on the web.

   • Once again, you'll get this error message when you attempt to install the custom add-in by pointing to your manifest file:
     
     Note: I wouldn't expect to receive this error message, given that the docs state the Highlight attribute is only relevant to Rule elements within ExtensionPoint elements and the manifest is indeed specifying the Highlight attribute for one of the Rule elements within the And RuleCollection (in a Rule element within a ExtensionPoint element) .

7. Within the Rule element on line 76 of the contoso-order-number-manifest.xml file, change the value of the Highlight attribute to "all" and save the file:

   <Rule xsi:type="ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch" RegExName="OrderNumber" RegExValue="CO-\d{9}" PropertyName="BodyAsHTML" Highlight="all" />

8. Attempt to sideload the add-in in Outlook on the web.

   • You'll get this error message when you attempt to install the custom add-in by pointing to your manifest file:
     

It's not clear how to fix this dilemma: Outlook seems to require the Highlight attribute in this location, but does not seem to acknowledge Highlight="none" and does not allow setting Highlight="all" when PropertyName="BodyAsHTML".

[exextoc]

BodyAsHTML does not support Highlight = all, due to the fact that parts of the HTML body may not be able to be highlighted by the e-mail. For example, the <A HREF> tag or <DIV> etc. So that gets rejected. If you leave off highlight = all, it will default to highlight = none, and then the rules won't have a highlight so the manifest will be rejected.

BodyAsPlaintext should be used as the highlight rule to get around this.

[kbrandl]

@exextoc thanks for the clarification about this behavior.

@butchmarshall -- as @exextoc describes, you must set PropertyName="BodyAsPlaintext" if you want to use the Highlight attribute. We'll update the docs soon to reflect this info:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/add-ins/use-regular-expressions-to-show-an-outlook-add-in#using-regular-expression-results-in-code
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/reference/manifest/rule#itemhasregularexpressionmatch-rule

[kbrandl]

Tracking doc update internally with: https://office.visualstudio.com/OC/_workitems/edit/2716227.