Did you actually try it?

I realise that Body may be described as an attribute in the OLE documentation for Outlook, but the error message certainly imples that it ends up being implemented as a method within Win32::OLE.

The error message is pretty indicative.

{ 
    my $s = 'the quick brown fox'; 
    sub Body{ 
        ($s) = @_ if @_; 
        $s 
   } 
}
print Body();

the quick brown fox

Body = 'fred';
Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call in scalar assignment at (eval 
+3) line 1, at EOF

Body( 'fred' );
print Body();

fred
[download]

If you did try it, what error message did you get from the attempt?

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
Hooray!

Hmm, it seems if you try it as Body($mybody) instead of {'Body'} = $mybody you get an error "Invalid number of parameters" from Win32::OLE. For what it's worth, http://perlmonks.thepen.com/185757.html seems to think the {'Body'} method is correct.

Straight from the VBA Outlook documentation:

Returns or sets the clear-text body of the mail message or post. Read/write String.

I understand that access to the body is implemented as a rw string in VBA.

But the error message issued by perl when the OP attempted to assign to it via Win32::OLE:

Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call at ...,
[download]

suggests fairly strongly that Win32::OLE implements access to the property using a subroutine -- Ie. an accessor/mutator method -- which does make a certain amount of sense.

It may not be correct, but that is the implication of the error message.

Agreed... but as I noted elsewhere, the implementation of automation for Outlook97 is Very Shoddy :-) ... I always though it had been added as an afterthought (as the rest of the Office 97 Object Model, except perhaps PowerPoint, was fairly good). Newer versions of Outlook have a better implementation.

I used to hate havin to write Outlook Forms in VBScript and having to Chop/Change when I was controlling Excel/Access or whatever from them!