Earth 2 Adam

23 Responses to “Entourage GTD: Action Scripts 4-D”

1. ALEX Says:
   April 7th, 2008 at 11:18 pm

   Wow! This is exactly what I needed, thanks Adam you’re a genius!

2. NickW Says:
   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

3. MiGrant Says:
   April 20th, 2008 at 11:21 pm

   Great job on the scripts! Any chance of getting the source code?

4. Dave Says:
   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).

5. Jeremy Says:
   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!

6. Jackky Says:
   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?

7. Adam Sneller Says:
   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

8. JMTee Says:
   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?

9. Felix Says:
   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!

10. Adam Sneller Says:
    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

11. Gretchen Says:
    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!

12. Adam Sneller Says:
    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

13. Steve Says:
    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.

14. Jeff Says:
    September 24th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    Thank you for the scripts.
    Is there a way to automatically link calendar events to contacts?
    Thanks!

15. Jeff Chapman Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 7:13 pm

    Entourage tasks to calendar events! Yeah! YEAH! YEEEEEAAAAAAGHH!!! WOO-HOO!

    Finally, a reason to quietly put away Outlook for once and for all!!!

    Excellent work on this, Adam. The Tasks to Events script absolutely hit the spot. This is really going to save me a great deal of time.

    If you post a PayPal link for donations, let me know. It’s worth paying for. Kudos to you for making my day, my week, my year, Adam. For me, not being able to turn tasks into calendar events was a real sore point, since Outlook allowed me to do it with a simple drag-’n'-drop action - presto. Your solution is ingenious.

    One minor suggestion: could you possibly create a variant of the “Create Event From Selection” script, where the category from the selected event (say, a task) gets automatically transferred to the new calendar event? That would complete my joy, Adam…

16. Adam Sneller Says:
    October 2nd, 2008 at 9:15 am

    Wow. Two in a row. Jeff… and Jeff!

    Calendar events from contacts… That sounds like a good idea. I’ll put this on my list for version 5!

    I’ve actually had a couple people ask me about copying Category and Project properties from incoming messages. I think I might just write the customization code and then take Steve’s suggestion and go open source.

    By-the-by, for those of you requesting archival solutions, persistence pays. I finally got a chance to sit down last weekend and hammer something out. To be posted… soon.

    Adam

17. Michael Thompson Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 7:19 am

    My technique is creating tasks from contacts……. over and over again.

    Can you add this ability to your scripts? I would love it.

    Great work!

    There is an addin to Outlook that my wife uses called “Send Personally”.
    It allows her to send one email to several people with each recipients copy being addressed to them as if each email were sent individually. The only way that I have been able to figure out to do anything similar is to do a mail merge from Word and then send emails from there. This ends up with a look to my emails that is not desirable for my usage.

    Do you know of a script that will accomplish the same results in Entourage?

    Thanks again!
    Michael

18. Adam Sneller Says:
    December 13th, 2008 at 4:19 am

    Michael,

    Thanks for the comment! I’ll add this to my list for my next update.

    I believe there are a couple of apps that do nothing but email list management (you might want to look on macupdate.com). I’m not sure if these are designed to work with Entourage… However, they should all work with Address Book and as of 2008, you can configure Entourage to sync its contacts with Address Book

    Hope this helps!

    Best,
    -Adam

19. Tate Says:
    December 19th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    I am only able to take an email & copy to event - when I select a task & hit cE it brings up the highlighted email to copy to event - how do I do a task to event?
    Thanks - I’m just a dummy.

20. Smarzok Says:
    January 29th, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    Hello!

    I seem to also be a dummy, as I can’t seem to create an event from a task either. I am in the Project Center View, then select a task, then hit Ctrl-E. Nothing happens, though.

    Perhaps I could do it through the :Scripts Menu” but I’m not that experienced of a user with scripts to find it.

    Any suggestions is much appreciated.

    Cheers!

21. John T. Chapman Says:
    February 5th, 2009 at 1:57 am

    Hi Adam,

    Nice scripts.

    I notice that when a message is saved as a task, the email headers are stripped. It would be handy to save a message as a task. Then later, convert the task to a message. Although the scripts permit that, the address info is lost. This requires the email to have to be linked.

    A second observation. If a message is converted to a task and linked, and then the message is moved, the link is lost. Following GTD practices, I move the email to a folder called @actions. In order to keep the link, I first have to move the file to @Actions, go there, and then run the script. It would be nicer if the script did all that for me from the Inbox (move msg to @actions, create task, link).

    Thanks,

    John

22. Jamie Page Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 10:08 pm

    I just dl’d your scripts and am trying to use them in the demo version of Entourage 2008. When I hit ctrl E when I have a task selected I get an error saying: “please select a message first then run this script”

    Help…

23. Adam Sneller Says:
    May 1st, 2009 at 9:18 pm

    Select the task (highlight it in the task list) and then run the script.

    Best,
    -Adam

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