Entourage GTD: Action Scripts 4-D
March 28th, 2008 by Adam Sneller
Well, it’s a new year and a new version of Entourage is on the loose. It only seems fitting that we should update our Entourage GTD Action Scripts as well!
The second release of Action Scripts gave us the ability to create a linked Action Item (a Task or Event) from any other email, task, event or note in Entourage. This served three purposes (1) it gave us an expedient means of processing email (and the like) to our Task List, (2) it enabled the creation of Follow up Tasks (and Events), and (3) it provided us with a facility to move tasks onto the Calendar (without removing them from the Master Task List).
So, what else could we possibly want in Action Scripts 4-D…?
…Why, two additional scripts, of course!
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Introducing 4-D
Welcome to Action Scripts 4-D! This update adds two additional scripts:
- Create Note from Selection
- Create Email from Selection
(thus bringing us to 4 total). I’ll leave it up to you to figure out exactly what these do… But (suffice it to say) if you know what the 2.0 scripts are all about, you should have a pretty good idea!
Requirements
These scripts are built to run on OS 10.4 Tiger (or later) with Microsoft Entourage 2004 (or 2008).
Installation
- Download and extract the Action Scripts 4-D archive.
- Remove the scripts from their folder and copy these to “~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Script Menu Items” folder (”~” is shorthand for your “home” folder). If you are currently using Action Scripts 2.0, a finder window will appear, asking if you want to replace these. Go ahead and say Yes to All.
- Restart Entourage.
Usage
- Select a message, task, event or note in Entourage that you want to create a new Action Item from.
- Either navigate to the Scripts Menu or use the keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl-T to create at task, Ctrl-E for an Event, Ctrl-N to create a Note or Ctrl-M to create a new message.
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April 7th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Wow! This is exactly what I needed, thanks Adam you’re a genius!
April 10th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Adam, excellent scripts. Make ‘em donation ware, I would certainly send a token of gratitude.
Quick question: I (and all of my team) work on Macs in a corporate environment where Exchange Server (2003) is the standard. Receiving and sending calendar invites is a big part of our email. Entourage 2008 does NOT automatically accept these as tentative and add them to your calendar - unless you’re on Exchange Server 2007. Many many many people are not. Do you think there’s a scriptable way to make that happen, even if the user had to shortcut-trigger the script 4 or 5 times a day? I’d pay for that.
Thanks again,
Nick Wade
April 20th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Great job on the scripts! Any chance of getting the source code?
May 11th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
These scripts are not recognized by Entourage 2008 on Filevault user spaces (in case that is part of the issue).
May 12th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Adam, this looks really good! I used to be a 100% mac guy, but the last few years I went back to a PC for the sake of Outlook. I am using the GTD plug-in for Outlook, but I DESPERATELY want to go back to 100% workflow on my Mac so I can throw the PC out the window.
I’m experimenting with Entourage & your scripts to see if I could make the transition. I’m just seeing one inconvenience, but it could be a user error on my part.
Here’s the scoop…
One thing I really like about the GTD Outlook plug-in is that I don’t have to handle mail messages more than once. If I click a message in my inbox and do my keyboard shortcut to create a task from the message, the task is created, and the email is AUTOMATICALLY filed out of sight - and removed from my inbox. Which means I don’t have to touch that email again, but yet it’s linked to my task if I need to reference it.
The rest of this reply is assuming that’s NOT the way it works on these Entourage scripts. If I’m wrong, please let me know what I’m doing wrong.
Here’s my suggestion for this plug-in… suppose I create a task from a message and set it’s category to @errands. When I set the task to @errands, perhaps the mail message could automatically be set to @errands as well… then, I could create a rule in Entourage that automatically files messages in my inbox with the category @errands to go in an “@errands” sub-folder. The way it currently works - the task gets an @errands category, but the mail remains untouched, which doesn’t allow me to set any rules to move the message out of my inbox. Further, if I accidentally deleted the message from my inbox (instead of filing it) after processing it as a task, then my link to the message would be broken.
That category change and corresponding rule would move the message out of my inbox, and put it safely & cleanly out of sight, while still keeping it accessible to me if I need to reply to somebody when the task is complete.
Does this make sense? Please let me know if you think this might be doable.
Thanks for your great work… what you’ve created has *ALMOST* persuaded me to ditch the PC!
May 15th, 2008 at 3:46 am
Adam, I just wanted to say thanks for the scrips and also to let you know that I agree with Jeremy. I too use the GTD plug-in but I am in the process of moving to a 100% MAC environment and would also love to have the automatic message filing feature after an action has been created as described in the post above. If you make it donation-ware, I would gladly show my appreciation. So does something like this sound possible?
May 16th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Thanks for the comments! I’ll take another look at David Allen’s GTD plug-in. One of the things I want to be careful of is implementing custom features that are specific to only one way of doing things (e.g., filing email by context).
Not that there is anything wrong with this; but some users may have a completely other way of doing this (I’d be interested to hear how others are filing there email as well)
But maybe it’s possible to implement a feature like this that can still be customized to suit individual user preferences (sort-of like how Mail Act-On works with Apple Mail). I’ll do some brainstorming and see if I can’t come up with something.
In the meantime, if you guys have any other ideas, please keep them coming!
Best,
-Adam
June 1st, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Just chimin’ in to say that, where I would also like to see the email get automatically archived after a task or event is created from it, I wouldn’t want this action to be based on category. I file everything - that is everything - in one folder called ‘Archive’. I trust solely on Categories and Projects keeping the necessary mails organised.
What I would actually need is a script which would move selected mails into the Archive folder with a key combo. This kind of a script must exist somewhere already, right?
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Hey Adam,
Thanks for the script! I was looking for something that would convert a task to a calendar event and yours was awesome.
One question: Some of my tasks have start times in the future but when I use your script to convert them to calendar events, the date and time is the current time/date. Is there a way to get it so the dates for the events and tasks agree? In other words, a task that starts on Nov 11th is selected and “Create Event from Selection” is run, the Event would then be on Nov 11th as well.
Cheers!
June 10th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Felix - Thanks for bringing this up. I’ll add this to the list of changes for the next update.
JMTee - good idea! I’d like to to come up with a solution that can accomidate different users’ filing systems, without being cumbersome. I may just have to release the source code… but we’ll see if I can’t come up with something.
Thanks for all the ideas!
Best,
-Adam
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:38 am
Will this- or any other script strip a file from my email and save it to a folder on my desktop? I’m new to scripts but I’ll do anything to clean this mess- my profile is 8 gigs!
July 5th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Gretchen -
Thanks for the comment. I’ve received a couple of requests along these lines and am actively pursuing a solution for archiving email (and processing attachments) on Entourage.
Stripping attachments from email is a pretty straight-forward process (programming wise). If all you are looking for a a bulk operation to strip and save attachments, I think there might even be a script out there that does this already
I would check on http://scriptbuilders.net/.
If you have other features in particular (or more details about your requirements), please feel free to post them. The more input I can get from users, the quicker I can come up with something that works for everyone involved.
Best,
-Adam
August 1st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I just want to chime in here and put a vote in for the auto-filing feature. I too am looking for a 100% Mac GTD solution, and this comes pretty close.
I can see the issues though: you either need a ‘one size fits all’ approach, or come up with a complicated configuration mechanism.
Perhaps the source code is the way to go. It might scare away some folks, but then again someone might pick it up and add a simple/easy config mechanism.