Replace text in HTML body

Question

I'm trying to replace text in the body of a template already created in Outlook 2010. The purpose of this is so that users can update the contact which the email is being sent to fairly easily.

Sub NewUserEmail()

Dim myItem As Outlook.MailItem
Dim strContact As String
Dim strCompanyName As String
Dim strHTML As String

Set myItem = Application.CreateItemFromTemplate( _
      "C:\Users\jim.reagan\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\NewUserEmail.oft")
    strHTML = myItem.HTMLBody
    strContact = InputBox("What is the Contact's name?")
    myItem.HTMLBody = Replace(myItem.HTMLBody, "%<Contact>%", strContact)

myItem.Display
End Sub

The template opens up for review but no replacements have been made to the body of the email. If I use myItem.Body the replacement works but then I lose my formatting of my email. What am I missing?

Solution

I'm not sure how to tag or flag an answer for this but here is the code that I got to work from the editing provided by Tim Williams, thank you for your help with this:

Sub NewUserEmail()

    Dim myItem As Outlook.MailItem
    Dim strContact As String
    Dim strCompanyName As String
    Dim strHTML As String


    Set myItem = Application.CreateItemFromTemplate("C:\file location\file.oft")
    strHTML = myItem.HTMLBody
    strContact = InputBox("What is the Contact's name?")
    myItem.HTMLBody = Replace(myItem.HTMLBody, "%CONTACT%", strContact)

    myItem.Display

End Sub

Comments

[Dmitry Streblechenko]

Are you sure the HTMLBody actually contains "%%"?

[user3728348]

Its part of the string that I put in body of the email. Something used from boilerplate template.

[Dmitry Streblechenko]

Ok, but can you output (MsgBox?) the contents of the HTMLBody property before and after setting the property?

[SOSidb]

@Dmitry Streblechenko - thank you very much. I ran into this same issue and your idea helped point me in the right direction (by using a write-host versus MsgBox). But I found that the process was inserting additional code into the template HTMLbody that was separating the phrase that I was trying to "replacing". I tried using % and ! and others, but HTML kept separating them from the phrase itself. The actual HTML code being produced was "</span>!<span class=SpellE>" (w/o quotes) when I used the exclamation point. So I removed all "special" characters and used letters only. Thanks again