Entourage GTD: Actions from Email
May 5th, 2007 by Adam Sneller
If you haven’t already explored the Entourage Scripts Menu, I highly recommend it. Microsoft Entourage 2004 (Part of Office)
- Create Task from Message
- Create Event from Message
Are we drooling yet???
Go ahead and highlight a message in your Inbox. Then open your Scripts Menu and click either one of these (you can also hit Ctrl-T or Ctrl-E). A new action (task or event) will pop-up with the same content, subject line, category and other fields as the selected message(s).
Pretty cool, yes? Unfortunately, the one thing these scripts do not do, is establish a link between your action-item and the email that created it. Now if the email’s only function is to notify you of an impending Action, this isn’t a problem. Simply create your action, process it to one or more lists, and delete (or file) the original email.
But what if the email requires a response? What if after you get done with the action, you need to follow up with the person who requested it? Wouldn’t it be handy if the action was actually linked to the original message so you could recall it when the time comes? Hello, Microsoft?? Bill???
Luckily you will never have to admit to having twisted your brain over this, for your author has done it for you. Below, you will find modified versions of these scripts which adds the following features:
- Links new task (or event) to message
- Adds subject line and date received to notes field above message content (this way you can preserve the subject line of the message, while also being able to have a separate title for your action).
- Opens all Actions created if script is run on more than one message at a time (the last thing you want is an action sent to your system before you’ve processed it).
Any comments, complaints, uncontrollable praise? Drop me a line in the comment field below. I’m happy to entertain adding/removing features if it makes for a more efficient workflow!
Installation
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July 17th, 2007 at 8:02 am
I was really stoked about these scripts but I can’t seem to get them to work. They won’t show up in the Entourage script menu & script editor can’t open them. I tried downloading the files several times thinking that they weren’t completely downloaded or something but I still couldn’t get them to work. Any suggestions?
July 17th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Paul - Sorry you are having problems. I have downloaded these fine on Safari and Firefox (I don’t know about IE).
The first thing you might try is to get the latest version of Stuff-It Expander and tell your browser not to unzip files automatically.
If this doesn’t work, you can download the scripts as text files here:
Task From Message
Event From Message
Copy and paste the code into Script Editor and compile it. It’s important that you save these as “Event From Message \cE” and “Task From Message \cT” respectively. The “\cE” and “\cT” tell Entourage to let you access these scripts from the keyboard, using the Ctrl-E (or Ctrl-T) key sequence.
Good luck!
-Adam
July 17th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Adam - After reading your reply it occurred to me that I was using The Unarchiver to unzip files & that might be the culprit. Sure enough that’s what the problem was. Thanks for the help and for making these great scripts.
Cheers,
Paul
August 17th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Hi Adam…
I like all your items…very cool.
Nice to meet someone who seems to like Entourage as much as I do.
Would you be open to adding a few more entourage scripts to your bundle?
If this is a possibility…
email me and I will share my ideas with you.
David Allen made major mistake in his ebook tha teaches people how to use GTD with Entourage but I have a few ideas as to how to make his mistake work in all our favor. Hope to hear from you…
August 28th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Aaah… a feature request. Sure, why not. I’m going to be pretty well tied up for the next 2 weeks (working on something “top secret”). But I’d be happy to take a look as a possible future project or feature.
-Adam