Outlook integration

[ldangelo]

Hi All,

I've been looking for a solution for my PIM/Knowledge Management needs for quite some time. Most of my needs have been met with Ultra Recall. One feature that Ultra Recall does not support out of the box is integration with outlook.

To make a long story short I've been fooling around with interesting ways to integrate ultra recall with outlook and came up with something I thought was really useful (I hope someone else does as well). Essentially I have embedded my outlook inbox, calendar and tasks inside of ultra recall. I have attached a screen shot and the files...

All you need to do is open the html files in explorer. Drag them to ultra recall, name them something appropriate, give them the outlook icon(s) and that's it...

This is a very early idea that I'm still working on improving, but thought someone else might be interested...

[ldangelo]

Enjoy!

[igoldsmid]

That is totally awesome fellow UR'er !!!

Thank you very much.... it totally works great....

IJG

[ldangelo]

I'm working on adding some buttons to control outlook. Like:

new message
send/recieve
copy
delete
etc...

I'll post an update when I get it done.

-LeoD

[igoldsmid]

That's fantastic - you are doing a really valuable service here....

do you think there might be a way, in due course, to get the full Outlook application interface - i.e. with all the tool bars (even third party add-ins) to load inside UR - like it does with pdf's, and other Office Documents?

Or at least a way to be able to have the email reading window seen inside UR to be able to read the body of the email or other outlook items?

Thanks again....

[ldangelo]

I'm working on the preview pane feature. It can be done, however there is not support for it in the outlook view control. Essentially, I would add a script to the file that would provide that functionality.

As far as a "full" outlook ui... I'd really have to think hard about this one... it would be difficult to accomplish with the little "parlor trick" I'm using here.... I'll fool around with some ideas and post any progress... Essentially it may be possible to create a custom web control that "hosts" the outlook ui...

[rewing]

This rocks. Thanks so much. Truly makes UR function as my dashboard.

I wonder if there is a way to create a shortcut for different views of the folder. I noticed when I open OL and change the view, the corresponding view in UR changes as well. If there was a way to point to a specific view, then I could create seperate shortcuts in UR for each view that was of interest. Possibilities abound!

Thanks again for your contribution here.

[wmson]

This is great! Thank you so much.

[lsebba]

This is great. Is there any way to do it for the "Sent Items" folder as well?

[alx]

Yes there is; you can actually edit the .html files that ldangelo has contributed to show whichever Outlook folder you want.

Just open the file in a text editor like notepad and change the VALUE parameter to "Sent Items" or whatever folder you want; then import the file to UR.

Just make sure that you provide the names exactly as used by Outlook itself or else you'll get a blank page.

The English Outlook folder names seem to work in international versions of Outlook as well, i.e. my own version is in Greek but I didn't need to change the folder names to their Greek equivalent.

Thanks ldangelo; this is a brilliant piece of work and it definitely highlights the hidden UR power!

alx

[alx]

It is interesting to note that UR plus the Outlook module needed for ldangelo's trick consume significantly less memory than a full Outlook instance.

So if you maintain UR open all the time like I do, this is a great way to maintain low memory overhead.

alx

[maynard]

Originally posted by alx
Yes there is; you can actually edit the .html files that ldangelo has contributed to show whichever Outlook folder you want. Just open the file in a text editor like notepad and change the VALUE parameter to "Sent Items" or whatever folder you want; then import the file to UR.

I tried this on a different Contacts folder and it didn't work. Came up blank. (I don't use the main Contacts folder. My contacts are partitioned into several other parallel folders by category.)

Where can I get documentation on this Outlook voodoo??

This is quite cool.

Thanks
Maynard

[alx]

Maynard,

I have no idea about documentation, I just played around a bit because I've got a few non-standard Outlook folders I want to use through UR.

My guess would be that the blank page means that the address for the specific folder you want to view is not recognised by Outlook.

If your specific contacts folder is subsidiary to another folder, say MyFolder, try setting the VALUE parameter to "MyFolder\Contacts", i.e. describing the specific hierarchical position of the folder you want to view.

Another thing you can do is to download Outlook Linker; this handy utility runs in the systray and copies the specific Outlook folder/item address to the clipboard; set it to "Oulook Format" and you'll be able to see the name that Outlook itself uses to refer to a folder.

Get it here:
https://kinook.com/Download/LinkerForWindowsSetup.exe

alx

[maynard]

Outlook Linker. That's the hot tip. :cool:

Outlook Linker generated this.
Outlook:\\Personal Folders\Contacts\Education\

Changed your html code to this and it works perfectly!
<object id=ViewCtlFolder classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046
width="100%" height="100%"><PARAM NAME="Folder" VALUE="Contacts\Education"></object>

Thanx

[Rbrux]

This is very useful - and clever.

Am I right in thinking that it is still necessary for Outlook to be running in order to send/receive mail?

For example, when I compose a message by right clicking from within the browser view and then hit 'send' it does not seem to go until Outlook has been started up.

Or is there a way to get this done from within the browser view?

[alx]

Outlook, like other MS Office programs is a modular application. The Outlook interface is like a front end to various modules handling the Outlook functions. Send/receive mail is such a module.

ldangelo's hack calls the viewing modules, providing the ability to read/write Outlook data. In theory, it could be possible to call the send/receive mail module from outside Outlook though I have no idea how to do that.

alx

To send new mail, you can do this...

1. Create a shortcut somewhere (if your UR is set to store documents, you're all set; if you're set to link to them, store this shortcut somewhere permanent). Call it "New Mail."

The Target for the shortcut should be:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE" /c ipm.email

2. Drag this shortcut to wherever you want it in UR.

There you go -- now you can send email from within UR. Well, technically it'll open a new window for the editing of the email, but even Outlook itself does that.

There are supposed to be a bunch of IPM codes for Outlook (I'm about to go look more up right now), and there might be one for Send/Receive too.

Anyway, hope that helps.

Deg

More information can be found here:
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/commandlines.htm

* /c ipm.activity creates a Journal entry
* /c ipm.appointment creates an appointment
* /c ipm.contact creates a contact
* /c ipm.note creates an e-mail message
* /c ipm.stickynote creates a note
* /c ipm.task creates a task

I saw nothing anywhere about a way to do Send/Receive (that is, not without some programming skills way beyond my level).

I should also point out that my previous post assumes a default Outlook 2003 install and some basic knowledge of Windows Shortcuts. If you need further assistance, reply here and I'll help out as I'm able to.

Deg

[peaslee]

I just downloaded my evaluation copy and, so far, I'm impressed. I'm also impressed with this thread. Not only have I successfully linked my Outlook customer base, I linked this thread, too!

[Drew1278]

This is VERY useful! Thanks!

I noticed that drag n' drop does not work for outlook emails in the inbox (when viewed within UR using this trick). Is there a work around for this, or do I still need to open Outlook in order to drag emails into other locations within UR?

Thanks again!

[baturin]

Hi!
Very interesting idea!
Here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=831f957f-3190-48da-a099-2bdbc7397623&DisplayLang=en) is the reference for Outlook View Control.
Some examples : here (http://www.samspublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=689716&seqNum=7&rl=1).
It seems that FrontPage contains some shortcut ways to do such things with outlook view control automatically without direct writing of HTML code. But I didn't have it at hand, do I can't check just now.
Originally posted by Drew1278
I noticed that drag n' drop does not work for outlook emails in the inbox (when viewed within UR using this trick). Is there a work around for this, or do I still need to open Outlook in order to drag emails into other locations within UR?

As for me, drag'n'drop from html view of inbox (linked in UR) works as well as from outlook directly.

[grahamrhind]

Can somebody confirm to me that the tricks explained in this thread do not apply to Outlook 2007? The first message spoke about "the html" files. Outlook 2007 doesn't have html files as far as I can see, and from that point I was lost.

Can anybody explain how this sort of Outlook integration can be done in Outlook 2007?

Thanks.

[grahamrhind]

I now see that the original poster was referring to the html files in the zip file in the next post (apologies - I'm one of those people who like to keep long stories long).

BUT - note: this ONLY works with Internet Explorer. If in version 3 you have the "Use Mozilla/Firefox internal browser" switched on, you only get a "Click here to open file" link in UR, which just links to an apparently empty html page. Same if you open the html files in any browser other than IE and then drag and drop them.

[dspeers]

I love this trick! Very nifty legerdemain getting Outlook integration.

I've looked over the documentation on the control and experimented a bit, but I cannot figure out how to change the calendar view from Month to Week to Day. The "View" parameter doesn't seem to control this.

Anyone have any luck with this?