Messages

51

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 22, 2008, 12:30 AM »

here's a link to a description on how (maybe) to fix this.

http://www.add-in-ex...ok-security/?mapilab

thanks
steve

-sttrebo (August 21, 2008, 09:46 AM)

This appears to be a $149 Outlook addin - so 

52

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 21, 2008, 12:36 AM »

I haven't tried this myself, but this could be an option for the Outlook Security prompts (and it says it's free): http://www.contextma...om/express-clickyes/

FYI... I'm running Outlook 2007 and don't get any security prompts when using this plugin.

-anishpat (August 21, 2008, 12:07 AM)

Thanks for the input, anishpat. I know about this ClickYes thing, but it means the user needs to install it, and I feel it goes against the grain of a "Quick"Outlook utility. The reason you haven't seen this box so far is probably because you haven't done anything to access an existing Outlook item body. The only command in QuickOutlookTask so far that does this is the /sa (save as appointment) command, where you save an existing task as an appointment. Create a dummy task: "do test" and then try to save it as an apointment: "do /sa test". This will probably produce the message box.

By the way, nice to hear you also use the utility 

53

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 20, 2008, 11:15 PM »

Bummer. Whenever I try to programmatically touch the existing body of an Outlook item, be it task, appointment or note, I run into the Outlook security warning message box. This completely defeats the idea of quick access to your "sticky pad", Steve, and there does not seem to be a way around this.

Any ideas?

54

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 20, 2008, 01:27 PM »

I just found this and I can't believe how much I use it now.  I have 1 request.  I use a single Outlook note as my "Inbox" for memos to myself.  Would it be possible to add the function to be able to append lines to this note?  Kind of like a running sticky pad so I don't have to move out of what I am doing to record an idea.

thanks
steve

-sttrebo (August 20, 2008, 09:32 AM)

Thanks Steve! It's nice to know that someone is really using this. Please keep me informed of any problems or wishes that you run into.

As for your request, I have put it on my todo list. It's funny, with everything I do with Outlook, I've never used the Notes feature! Please don't hold your breath - I'm pretty busy right now with my regular work, so I'm not making any promises.

55

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 20, 2008, 01:19 AM »

Version 1.5.2 fixes a couple of annoying bugs with start and end dates of appointments

56

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 11, 2008, 10:39 AM »

Version 1.5.0 is now available.

This version adds full support for creating, updating and deleting appointments as well as tasks.

To create a new appointment, add a start time and/or an end time, as follows:

do Meet with Bob /starttime 14:00 /endtime 15:00, or
do Meet with Bob /st 14:00 /et 15:00.

If you give only a start time or an and time, a duration of one hour is assumed.

Updating and deleting work the same as before, but now also for appointments:

do Meet /del, or
do Meet /update /tomorrow

will give you a list with all tasks and appointments containing the string "Meet" or "meet".
You can then use the arrow and Enter keys to navigate the grid and select the item you want.

There are various other minor changes:
<ul>
<li>New date string "nextweek". Example: do test /due nextweek</li>
<li>Time strings are more flexible: 16:00 or 1600 or even 16 are all OK.</li>
<li>/displaycontacts or /dc</li>
<li>/version or /ver</li>
<li>/settings or /set</li>
<li>The /task has been renamed to /file.</li>
<li>There is now a setting that makes the use of slashes to indicated command-line switches optional.
You may like this, but use with care. Example: "do Meeting with Bob tomorrow st 1400"
</li>
</ul>

57

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 06, 2008, 11:12 PM »

Also to elaborate on my feature request above as i am re-reading it now and it seems a little vague. My idea was to add a switch like /email where you could enter in the name(s) of ppl in your contact list that you wanted to email and this would open up a new email msg with the person(s) email address already filled in. You could also potentially add a /subject and /body switch so that you could do something like:

do /email "john doe" "nancy smith" /subject painting /body when are we going to paint the house

which would pop a new email msg with the email addresses, subject and body filled in and you could just hit send. Another cool idea would be to add a /send switch so if you wanted to shoot off a quick email you could use "do /email jane /subject see you at dinner /send" which would send out the email instead of popping up the new email dialog.

-s.newave (August 06, 2008, 01:07 PM)

I'll think about this. Meanwhile, do you know about the core "email" aliases? You can already do something like "email [email protected] subject". That comes really close.

58

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 06, 2008, 06:43 AM »

Version 1.4.2 is now available.

This version finds email containing the string given.

/mf or /mailfrom looks in the from field.
/ms or /mailsubject looks in the subject.
/mb or /mailbody looks in the subject and the body.

Enjoy 

59

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 05, 2008, 02:25 PM »

Version 1.4.1 is now available.

This version finds subjects containing the string given, not just the one starting with it. Thus "do /up paint" would find "Paint the house", "Buy new paint", "Hang up painting", etc. See the previous post for the reason (I don't know how to link).

Also, do /help now lists all possible switches. Not very elegantly perhaps, but that is for another version

60

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 05, 2008, 12:59 PM »

I was thinking about something like:

do /display - would show all tasks (maybe you could have an option to limit the number of results?)
do /display /c work projectx - display all tasks in work and projectx category
do /display /p high - display all the high priority tasks
do /display /d today - display all tasks due today
....

So bascially each command would list the tasks inside FARR just like any other results. You could then simply go down to the task you wanted in the results list hit <tab> which could insert that task into the edit box with the alias in front of it (i.e. "do paint the house") and then you could simply enter the action you wanted to perform on that task (i.e. /up /complete or /p low, etc..).

-s.newave (August 05, 2008, 11:25 AM)

Well, I have to admit that this sounds like a great idea. But I have to be realistic: this would be a non-trivial undertaking and I just don't have the time for this right now. As it is, this Do thing, which started out as just an alias using an existing tiny do.exe that I found somewhere, has grown beyond anything I imagined. Sort of law of nature in software development, I suppose. Don't mistake me, it's great fun and I find the result really useful for myself as well. Later, perhaps ...

This would help out a great deal as well with not having to remember or look up the exact name of the task when you want to update it. I find a lot of times that i have to first look up the name of the task in outlook so that i can use the same name when i go to update it which kind of defeats the whole purpose .

-s.newave (August 05, 2008, 11:25 AM)

I agree that if you work with tasks extensively the calls on your memory may become a serious issue. To relieve at least some of this problem, I will shortly release another version, which will look for subjects containing the string given, not just the one starting with it. Thus "do /up paint" would find "Paint the house", "Buy new paint", "Hang up painting", etc. This should just about remove the need to look up task names in Outlook, I think.

61

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 05, 2008, 08:47 AM »

do /settings doesnt work for me, says "unrecognized command switch"
sorry, my bad -- works perfectly -- i was just running older version.

-mouser (August 05, 2008, 08:32 AM)

You scared me there! I was already looking when you were striking through

another idea, how about having do /help have an optional button to launch the readme.txt?

-mouser (August 05, 2008, 08:32 AM)

I like it - I'll make something like that.

By the way, I don't have a <CloseAfter> line in my .dcupdate file, so where should the <SignalForUpdate> line come?

62

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 05, 2008, 07:41 AM »

Version 1.4 of the FARR alias QuickOutlookTask has been released, and from now on updating should be automatic, thanks to mouser's dcupdater program. Here is the link:
http://jpijper.dcmem...uickOutlookTask.html.

Please note that folder information has been removed from the zip-file (since I couldn't get this to work with dcupdater). This means that if you download and install by hand you must extract to FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\Installed\QuickOutlookTask\.

Apart from dcupdater integration, the main change is that the feedback the program gives through beeps and message boxes can now be controlled using the new /settings switch.

63

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 05, 2008, 01:06 AM »

I found out that if you put your category names (and any data for any field, actually) between quotes, it allows spaces.

-Armando (August 04, 2008, 11:14 PM)

do test /cat "c1 c2 c3" -  creates a task "test" and assigns it to category "c1 c2 c3".
do test /cat c1 c2 c3 - creates a task "test" and assigns it to 3 categories: "c1", "c2" and "c3".

64

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 05, 2008, 12:57 AM »

How cool would it be to be able to display your current tasks within FARR itself and then be able to perform actions on them.

-s.newave (August 04, 2008, 11:59 PM)

Can you give me a sample scenario of the the sort of actions you are thinking of?

65

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 04, 2008, 11:28 PM »

Working great .

-s.newave (August 04, 2008, 04:56 PM)

OK, thanks!

Couple of things i noticed. Generates a sound everytime the alias is executed. Not sure if this was for debugging purposes but it would be great to have an option to turn this off. Same thing with the confirmation dialogs although i do find these very usueful it might be nice to have an option that supresses them.

-s.newave (August 04, 2008, 04:56 PM)

I'll make sure to include options to turn this on and off in the next version. Yes, it has to do with debugging. When I was developing this, total lack of feedback gave me a very eery Unix-like feeling: I never knew if something had actually happened or not - I kept checking in Outlook, sort of defeating the purpose.

Another minor issue was that the first time i ran it a windows dialog popped up asking me if i wanted to run "do.exe". Not a big deal as i checked "do not ask me again..." and havent seen it since.

-s.newave (August 04, 2008, 04:56 PM)

This is a new one for me. Maybe it has to do with Outlook security? I don't know.

Also it seems that the /complete switch isnt working for me. Just says it successfully created a new task with the same name.

-s.newave (August 04, 2008, 04:56 PM)

"do test /complete" creates a new task and marks it complete.
"do test /up /complete" marks an existing task test as complete.

66

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 04, 2008, 03:43 PM »

jpijper : just wanted to say that everything works really well here (v1.3 -- can't find the other one). 

I actually modified the alias a bit to have all the switches (explained in the readme file) to appear in the farr main window (as numbered "fake options", since it's just text). I used the (?#my comments) regex to insert comments -- that is because I don't use outlook's field for the same purpose... and I need to remember what switch is for what... 

[Select]

Do $$1 | %ALIASDIR%do.exe $$1 /ICON=icons\do.ico
EXEMPLES
(?# URGENCE /p or /priority or pri or /imp or /importance - The priority of the task -- normal, high, or low )
(?# DATE /d or /duedate or /due or /date - The due date of the task - the date when the task should be finished - e.g. tomorrow)
(?# CATEGORIE /c /cat /category - - One ore more category names - spaceseparated - to which the task is assigned )
(?# PROJET /m /mile /mileage - ex -- tgsPdivt tgsPPlVa )
(?# DOMAINE /comp / ex -- tgsPsaé ) )
(?# ABCD Priorité /bill )

-Armando (August 04, 2008, 03:31 PM)

Thanks Armando! Which version of Outlook are you using?

If you like, I can easily throw in some "French" switches for you, like /domaine, /priorite, etc. That would only take a few minutes of my time. Those would be undocumented features, of course.

67

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 04, 2008, 03:33 PM »

http://jpijper.dcmem...okTask/do.exe.rename (right-click and save target as) Error 404 - link not found

-s.newave (August 04, 2008, 01:03 PM)

  Try again?

68

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 04, 2008, 06:13 AM »

you do not have to make this a plugin to take advantage of the update feature.  you can simply make an update file for your alias+do.exe combo, not a problem.  basically you would just put an update in your alias directory.
have a look at one of the .dcupdate files for plugins and see what it looks like.  i can help if you get stuck.

-mouser (August 04, 2008, 06:12 AM)

Great! I'll have a look.

69

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 04, 2008, 02:21 AM »

-WinXP SP2
-Outlook 2007

-s.newave (August 03, 2008, 10:01 PM)

OK, I'm sort of relieved that you are using Outlook 2007, since only 2003 is officially supported.
However, I would certainly like to enable 2007 as well. Unfortunately, I do not have access to a computer with Outlook 2007 installed, nor do I have a virtual pc set up at the moment.
Could  you try the following please: download http://jpijper.dcmem...okTask/do.exe.rename (right-click and save target as) and replace do.exe with this newer version (rename to do.exe). I have used a different version of the Outlook Interop DLL in building the application, so maybe it now works with Outlook 2007, but that is really too much to hope for. I have also wrapped the entire Main method in a try/catch block, so now you should at least get a more meaningful error message when the program throws an unexpected exception. Please let me know how you fare.

Fair enough however my only reason for suggesting it is because i feel it is a lot more efficient to be able to autoupdate without having to always check the thread/site for updates to your alias especialy when FARR has such a great update functionality. ...  It also wouldnt be that much additional work to create a plugin and you would still be able to keep the do.exe functionality separate as you mentioned. I would be more than happy to wrap the alias in a plugin if you want? Either way your call.

-s.newave (August 03, 2008, 12:36 PM)

You tell a convincing tale I will have a look at this plugin business on the site and come back to it later.

70

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 03, 2008, 04:18 PM »

Wow, great work jpijper! Having a little trouble with v1.3 though. Everytime i try and execute anything like add new task, display contact etc i get the error below: ...

-s.newave (August 03, 2008, 12:36 PM)

Well, newave, it's very nice of you to call this great work. A little trouble? It seems that you can't do anything at all. The simplest thing one can do with the program is add a task, and even that apparently won't work for you. The error reports that you include unfortunately are no help to me at all, so can you answer the following questions:

- What is your operating system and Outlook version? This has been developed only for Windows XP and Outlook 2003.
- Do you have Outlook running when you try to add a task through the alias?
- What exactly happens when you give the command "do test" ?
- You say that you are having problems with v1.3. Does that mean you also tried earlier versions and that they worked?

I promise that I will get this to work for you!

Also i think it would be very helpful to add a ? or /help switch that would display all the different switch options inside farr.

-s.newave (August 03, 2008, 12:36 PM)

Well, in fact, that switch is already there. You should already get help when you type "do /help" or "do /h" or "do /?". Only, it isn't much yet. You are right, the thing is expanding so fast, online help is important.

You should also consider making this a plugin so that you can take advantage of the auto-update feature.

-s.newave (August 03, 2008, 12:36 PM)

This I am not going to do. I strongly believe in keeping responsibilities separatated. The functionality offered by do.exe is independent of FARR. FARR is a quick-launch utility, whose task is to facilitate the quick launching of programs, such as do.exe, and it does that well. But other similar launch utilities, such as Launchy, can launch do.exe equally well. Or you can launch do.exe through Win-R, or from the command line in a DOS window. If I turn this into a FARR plugin it becomes a FARR-only thing, and it isn't. This is just how I feel about it.

71

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: August 03, 2008, 10:16 AM »

Version 1.3 of the Do alias is now available through http://jpijper.dcmem...uickOutlookTask.html.

Apart from some bug fixing and a couple of smaller improvements, it is now also possible
to do a few things that are not immediately supported in Outlook:

You can save an existing task as an appointment.
You can create tasks predefined in a file - your own frequently used tasks.

72

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: July 31, 2008, 02:53 PM »

  The latest version of QuickOutlookTast is now available at http://jpijper.dcmembers.com.

73

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: July 31, 2008, 04:13 AM »

Latest do.exe and readme.txt. Extract only if you are adventurous, will publish soon.
Update and delete now require explicit use of /update or /delete switch. Logic improved.
Added /display switch  .

From the readme:

Updating existing tasks
-----------------------
If you want to update an existing task, use the /update or /up switch. Only task properties that
you have given new values for will be changed, the other properties remain as they are.

For instance, if you want to change the priority of the "Paint house a nice bright pink" task in
the example above to "high", you type "do Paint house a nice bright pink /update /p high". The program
asks for confirmation before actually updating the task. If you answer yes, the priority is changed from
"normal" to "high", and the start and due dates remain as they are. If you answer no, nothing changes.

If you find typing "Paint house a nice bright pink" a bit too much, you could also type
"do Paint /up /p high". The program looks for all tasks that start with "paint" and lets you choose
which one you want to update.

Deleting a task
----------------
To delete a task, use the /delete or /del switch: "do /del Paint house a nice bright pink". In this case,
you must give the full subject of the task. For instance, "do /del Paint" will not work.

Displaying a task
-----------------
If you want to display (and possibly edit) a task in the standard Outlook task inspector, you can use
the /display or /disp switch:

do Get a life /display  - Creates a task "Get a life" and then displays it in the task inspector.
do Get a life /display  - Displays the existing task in the task inspector.
do Get a life /priority high /update /display - Changes the task's priority to "high" and displays the result.

Undocumented switch:
/displaycontact.

74

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: July 30, 2008, 01:02 PM »

oops

75

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task

« on: July 30, 2008, 07:45 AM »

New do.exe. The previous one did the job, but was unacceptably slow - this one is optimized. Also added /del and /display switches.