Implementing GTD on Outlook–Part 1

This post is updated. Click here to see updated code.

 

Last few weeks I have been reading and trying to implement GTD by David Allen in my every day activities. Since Microsoft Outlook is a inseparable part of my office life, first thing I did was to install GTD addin for outlook. And I can confirm that it works. At least for me who gets at least 100-120 emails daily.

But there is a drawback with the addin. It’s a free for 30 days. Now buying this software is out of my option list, yet I had to device a way to implement the functionality in my outlook.

My requirements are-

 

1. One click creation of task from email

2. Task should contain text from email

3. Task should also have the original email as attachment

4. When I want to differ the email for later date on one click the a calendar event is created with email text in calendar event body

5. File the document as project/ Reference

 

Major activity in GTD is categorized in --

1. Action

Office

Errand

Home

Computer

2. Waiting For

3. Differed

4. Filing reference

 

Most optimum option seem to me is to create Macros for outlook. I will start with the Office Macro. Below is the code for it.

 

What it does -

1. You can create a button on outlook so that you can select a message and create a task from it by clicking the button. This will create task with text from the email and also attach email to it.

2. While sending the email to any user you can add a text as “/Office”. Later you can create an outlook rule to invoke this macro after sending email. This Macro will scan the content of email for the tags and then create a task from it with all the details as point # 1.

Tip : You can create multiple signatures with one tag in each so that while send the email you can choose one of the signature as per the requirement. Make the text with font 1 and color as white so that only Macro can read it and recipients will not come to know about it.

   1:   

   2:  Option Compare Text

   3:   

   4:   

   5:  Sub MakeOfficeTaskWithAttachmentFromCurrentMessage(MyMail As Outlook.MailItem)

   6:      Dim strID As String

   7:      Dim olNS As Outlook.NameSpace

   8:      Dim olMail As Outlook.MailItem

   9:      Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem

  10:      Dim categories As String

  11:      Dim addRecipient As Boolean

  12:      Dim regex

  13:      Dim matches, customSubject, subject

  14:      

  15:     

  16:      categories = "@Office"

  17:      addRecipient = True

  18:      

  19:      strID = MyMail.EntryID

  20:      Set olNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")

  21:      Set olMail = olNS.GetItemFromID(strID)

  22:      Set objTask = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)

  23:      objTask.Attachments.Add MyMail

  24:      Set regex = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")

  25:      regex.Pattern = "/Office (.*)"

  26:      regex.IgnoreCase = True

  27:      regex.Global = True

  28:      Set matches = regex.Execute(olMail.Body)

  29:      If matches.Count <> 0 Then

  30:          customSubject = matches(0).submatches(0)

  31:      Else

  32:          customSubject = ""

  33:      End If

  34:      If customSubject <> "" Then

  35:          subject = customSubject

  36:      Else

  37:          subject = olMail.subject

  38:      End If

  39:      

  40:      With objTask

  41:          If addRecipient Then

  42:              .subject = olMail.Recipients.Item(1) & ": " & subject

  43:          Else

  44:              .subject = subject

  45:          End If

  46:          .categories = categories

  47:          .Body = olMail.Body

  48:      End With

  49:      objTask.Save

  50:       

  51:      Set objTask = Nothing

  52:      Set olMail = Nothing

  53:      Set olNS = Nothing

  54:  End Sub

  55:   

  56:   

  57:  Sub MakeOfficeTaskWithAttachmentFromCurrentMessageMacro()

  58:      Dim curMail As Outlook.MailItem

  59:      Set curMail = GetCurrentItem()

  60:      Call MakeOfficeTaskWithAttachmentFromCurrentMessage(curMail)

  61:  End Sub

  62:   

  63:      

  64:   

  65:  Function GetCurrentItem() As Object

  66:      Dim objApp As Outlook.Application

  67:           

  68:      Set objApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")

  69:      On Error Resume Next

  70:      Select Case TypeName(objApp.ActiveWindow)

  71:          Case "Explorer"

  72:              Set GetCurrentItem = objApp.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)

  73:          Case "Inspector"

  74:              Set GetCurrentItem = objApp.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem

  75:          Case Else

  76:             

  77:      End Select

  78:       

  79:      Set objApp = Nothing

  80:  End Function

Copy code from above and paste it on notepad. Then save the file in .bas format. Make sure to create a category “@Office” in outlook before proceeding further, else you category will not have any color.

Now go to outlook and press Alt+F11. It will open the Visual Basic editor. Now right click on left pane and click on import.

 

Now browse the the above file and select and then click ok. Once the file is imported, go to tools  --> Macro. Then select the Macro you have created and then click on run. This will run the Macro first time.

 

How to add button for the added Macro

 

Right click on top of the outlook and click on Customize

 

 

Under categories select Macros and from right hand side select the Macro you have created. Now you have to drag and drop this Macro from the window below shown to the top of the Outlook. At the same time you can rename the Macro.

 

 

This will complete the task of creation of Macro for 1 action. You can follow above steps to create Macro and their respective button. You just need to change value from the above given script at line number 5, 16, 25, 57 and 60

After adding all buttons your outlook will look like this--

 

 

The post will continue…..