Inspector Behind Windows Taskbar Causes Taskbar Button Flicker

[Jim]

Hello,

I have written an Outlook Add-In using VB6.

At one point, I iterate through the Inbox (using the Outlook Object
Model, not CDO):

For Each objItem In colInboxItems
If objItem.Class = olMail Then
: <do stuff>
End If
DoEvents
Next objItem

It works. But if I have an open Inspector, and part of the Inspector
is positioned behind the Win98 taskbar along the bottom of the screen,
the buttons on the Win98 taskbar flicker as the loop above executes.

All the buttons don't flicker. The only taskbar buttons that flicker
are the particular ones that the Inspector is positioned behind. If I
move the Inspector to the left or right, the button flicker follows
the Inspector. If I move the Inspector up so it is no longer behind
the Win98 taskbar, the button flicker no longer occurs.

The flicker is very noticable when iterating through a large Inbox
containing hundreds or thousands of items. I can't just remove
DoEvents from my loop, because that causes other problems.

Has anyone run into this? Any suggestions for how to eliminate the
flicker?

All I can think of is to abandon using the Outlook Object Model and
use Extended MAPI in a separate thread that runs independently of the
Outlook execution context. But I'd rather not go down that road
unless there is no other way.

Thanks.

Jim