Skip to main content

A Dozen Things Outlook Doesn't Do�but Should

David Coursey makes some gripes about what he thinks Outlook should do. His first one is Address Correction. Obviously, he's never entered a foreign address into Outlook. Everytime I sent a Canadian address, Outlook's address correction goes nutty on me and tries to ensure that all my contacts are actually in the US. Why? Must be the US Regional settings I'm using.

Anyways, some of this points are pretty good and he makes note of tools like NewsGator for RSS feeds (I was pretty sure MS would buy this company but now they have VC funding, maybe not).

One of his more interesting ones was the removal of duplicate messages. I actually have this problem regularly and here's the program I wrote to get around it. The logic is such that if there are two identical messages, it will delete the unread one or the second one if both are unread. I use it regularly because I'm on multiple email lists (sales, support, dev) for some of my clients and therefore get LOTS of dup messages. Works great for me.

LOCAL loSpace
LOCAL loApp,loFolder,loMsg,lnmsgs,loMsg2

loApp = GETOBJECT("","Outlook.application")
loSpace = loApp.GetNameSpace("MAPI")
** Change this to go to whatever folder you want to get to.
loFolder = loSpace.Folders("MailBox").Folders("Inbox")
lnMsgs =loFolder.Items.Count

FOR lni = lnMsgs TO 2 STEP -1
loMsg = loFolder.Items(lni)
loMsg2 = loFolder.Items(lni-1)
IF loMsg.Subject = loMsg2.Subject ;
AND loMsg.SenderName = loMsg2.SenderName ;
AND loMsg.Body = loMsg2.Body
DO CASE
CASE loMsg2.Unread
loMsg2.Delete()
CASE loMsg.Unread
loMsg.Delete()
OTHERWISE
loMsg2.Delete()
ENDCASE
ENDIF
ENDFOR
A Dozen Things Outlook Doesn't Do�but Should

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .
4 comments
Read more

Programmers vs. Developers vs. Architects

I received an email this morning from Brandon Savage 's newsletter. Brandon's a PHP guru (works at Mozilla) but his newsletter and books have some great overall perspectives for developers of all languages. However, this last one (What's the difference between developers and architects?) kind of rubs me the wrong way. Either that, or I've just missed the natural inflation of job descriptions. (maybe, it's like the change in terminology between Garbage man and Waste Engineer or Secretary and Office Administrator) So maybe it's just me - but I think there's still a big difference between Programmer, Developer and then of course, architect. The key thing here is that every role has a different perspective and every one of those perspectives has value. The original MSF create roles like Product Manager, Program Manager, Developer, Tester, etc - so every concept may pigeon hole people into different roles. But the statements Brandon makes are often distinction...
11 comments
Read more

From Writing to AI: the pattern repeats itself

When I was ten years old, my dad bought a computer and, thanks to an advertising supplement in a Superman comic I read, it was a TRS-80. A month later, he dragged the entire family (my mom and brother were not the most enthusiastic) to a class at Radio Shack teaching how to use microcomputers. At the time, I understood why my mom wasn’t that excited: the computer was yet another gadget in the house. But today I find it fascinating. My mother went to Vassar in the 50s. She learned how to type — not a common skill at the time — but it opened doors. Her ability to communicate effectively led her to a career in adult education and later communications work with the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). This isn’t a nostalgia post. Today, the ability to use artificial intelligence, be it through Copilot or simply writing the right prompt, is becoming a critical skill. But is it really that novel? In the 1500s and 1600s, the printing press gradually made reading accessible beyond cler...
Post a Comment
Read more