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How To Export Your Outlook Tasks To Excel With VBA

Ryan Dube — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:01:28 +0000

Whether or not you are a fan of Microsoft, one good thing that can be said about MS Office products, at least, is how easy it is to integrate each of them with one another.

Just think of the power that comes from having incoming emails automatically generating new tasks or new calendar appointments, or having a completed task automatically email your boss with the updated status report from the task description.

If you do it right, you can cut your entire day’s workload by a boatload just by automating things in an intelligent and efficient way.

If you follow my writing here, then you know that in the past I’ve covered things like integrating web browser features into Excel, automatically maximizing application windows, or automating chart updates in Excel.

Well, in this article I’m going to cover another automation task – actually one that I’ve used often more recently – to automatically update an Excel spreadsheet with all of your remaining active Outlook tasks at the end of the day.

Feeding Outlook Tasks To An Excel Spreadsheet

There are a lot of reasons you may want to do this. Maybe you want to track your unfinished tasks on a daily basis in a format that you can quickly mail off to someone (not so easy to do with Outlook tasks). Or maybe it’ll become part of a larger report that you’ll be typing up in Word.

Whatever the case may be, the ability to capture and output uncompleted Outlook task information is a useful thing.

For this example, here’s my sample Outlook task list with 5 remaining tasks that I still haven’t completed yet.

Everything we’re going to do here, is in VBA. In Outlook, you get to the VBA editor by clicking on “Tools“, then “Macro” and then choosing the “Visual Basic Editor“.

The code that you’re going to use to capture your task list and export it to Excel is actually not quite as complicated as you might think. The first step is to plug into both Outlook objects and Excel objects by creating the necessary variable definitions. Then, using the workbook object you’ve created, start off by creating the header in your spreadsheet.

Dim strReport As String
  Dim olnameSpace As Outlook.NameSpace
  Dim taskFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
  Dim tasks As Outlook.Items
  Dim tsk As Outlook.TaskItem
  Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
  Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
  Dim sht As Excel.Worksheet
 
  Dim strMyName As String
  Dim x As Integer
  Dim y As Integer
 
  Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\MyActiveTasks.xls")
 
'  exWb.Sheets(strMyName).Delete
'  exWb.Sheets.Add (strMyName)

  Set olnameSpace = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
  Set taskFolder = olnameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderTasks)
 
  Set tasks = taskFolder.Items
 
  strReport = ""
 
  'Create Header
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 1) = "Subject"
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 2) = "Due Date"
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 3) = "Percent Complete"
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 4) = "Status"

So, here’s what the new spreadsheet looks like. Your Outlook app just created a new Excel file called “MyActiveTasks.xls” in the C:\temp directory, and created a header for the tasks that you’re about to insert.

So, now it’s time to extract your tasks and insert them into the Excel file. I use a “y” variable starting at two in order to make sure the first row that’s used isn’t the first, because I don’t want to overwrite the header.

y = 2
 
  For x = 1 To tasks.Count
 
       Set tsk = tasks.Item(x)
 
       'strReport = strReport + tsk.Subject + "; "

       'Fill in Data
       If Not tsk.Complete Then
 
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 1) = tsk.Subject
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 2) = tsk.DueDate
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 3) = tsk.PercentComplete
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 4) = tsk.Status
        y = y + 1
 
       End If
 
  Next x

What this script does is searches through your entire list of task items in Outlook, checks to see whether the item is completed yet, and if it isn’t, then it inserts that task information into 4 cells of the spreadsheet. If you wanted to, you could insert more information. Just explore what task information is available by typing “tsk.” and then browsing through the list of properties that pop up.

Now here’s what the sheet looks like.

Being a bit of a perfectionist, there’s still a problem. Notice how column A clipped the last task subject?” I don’t like that. So let’s add a little bit more code to autofit all columns in the Excel table.

'Autofit all column widths

For Each sht In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets
    sht.Columns("A").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    sht.Columns("B").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    sht.Columns("C").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    sht.Columns("D").EntireColumn.AutoFit
Next sht
 
exWb.Save
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing

The Save and Close methods in those last few lines will save the sheet and close it so that it doesn’t remain locked by the application, otherwise it would be difficult to open the Excel file until you closed Outlook.

So, now here’s what the finished spreadsheet looks like.

When do you set the script to run? Well, I set it up to run on the “Application.Close()” event, which runs when you exit Outlook at the end of the day. This will make outlook produce the Excel spreadsheet report at the end of the day, all on its own.

Can you think of any other cool uses for this technique? Maybe automatically firing off an email with the list of tasks, or outputting them to an HTML file and FTPing it to your web server?

With a little creativity, it’s amazing what you can pull off with a bit of scripting automation. Share your own thoughts and ideas in the comments section below!

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Use Tone Check To Keep Your Emails Friendly & Free of Rudeness

Dave LeClair — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:30:56 +0000

In the heat of the moment anything can happen. Maybe your boss just emailed you to let you know that you have to come in and work on Saturday. Or maybe your girlfriend just dropped you a line to tell you that the dog had an accident all over your side of the bed. You just never know what you might open up your email to find, and you need make sure you prepare your responses accordingly.

Fortunately for all of us short tempered hot heads, there is Tone Check. Think of Tone Check as a spell check for your anger. Maybe you are smart enough to know on your own that telling your boss he has a stupid face is not the best career decision, but if you are not, Tone Check will remind you.

Platforms

Tone Check is available for Microsoft Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010, as well as IBM Lotus Notes. The version I am using is their Chrome extension with Gmail. As of publication it is only available as an extension for Chrome, but it is in development for Firefox and Safari as well, so keep your eyes peeled for that. The developers have also said they are looking into Apple Mail, and Windows Live Mail as possible platforms for the program in the future.

Installation

Head over to Tone Check’s official website and choose which version you would like to download. If you choose the Chrome extension you will be taken to the extension download page, click install, restart your browser and go to your Gmail account. Tone Check will alert you that you need to authenticate your account. Simply click the link on the top of your browser window and you will be sent to their site to do so.

If you opt for Outlook or Lotus Notes, go to their website, choose whether you want to log in with a Google Account or create a new one. Follow the installer step by step, and make sure to close Outlook or Notes during the installation process.

Once the installer is finished re-open Outlook and log in, either with your Google Account, or with your newly created Tone Check account.

Using the Program

Tone Check works automatically in the background once you have logged in and set up the program. On the bottom of your email there is a little meter that rates the tone. The higher the meter is filled, the worse the program feels about your current tone.

There are a number of settings in the program to decide exactly how you want Tone Check to handle your emails. You can decide if you want Tone Check to start automatically when you start your email, and once the program is running, whether you want it to check only when you prompt it to, or automatically. My favorite option is the “show more emotions” one, which breaks down the tone even further. For example, in response to a friend, I typed “That is ill” and it told me it was depressing. You can also decide if you want it to alert you before you send a message that it is over the tone tolerance.

There is also a nice slider that allows you to tell the program how sensitive it should be. This would be something you want to adjust depending on the intended audience of the email. They also feature dynamic tolerance, which allows the program to learn how you tend to write over time, and then flag anything that sounds like something you wouldn’t normally say.

Conclusion

Tone Check is a really an awesome program. If you send a lot of emails I think it is a must have. Sometimes you don’t think about how your emails may come across, and having a program tell you can save a lot of headaches later.

Has Tone Check saved you from calling your boss all kinds of insulting names? Are you such a bad person that the program exploded at your harsh tones? Let us know in the comments! While you are at it, you can also calibrate your responses with the help of 7 Netiquette Guidelines For Writing Emails & Forum Posts.

TwInbox – Tweet Directly From Within Microsoft Outlook

Saikat Basu — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:30:31 +0000

There are a lot of us who still use desktop email clients. If it’s Windows, there’s a high chance that it’s Outlook. Now, Outlook users have a peculiarity. They hate to leave Outlook and go elsewhere for their other communication needs. And sometimes, Twitter begs you to tweet. The damn thing is so addictive.

I may be atypical, but sometimes I hate to leave Outlook and switch on something like the excellent TweetDeck or any other dedicated Twitter clients. I have nothing against these excellent Twitter clients but maybe it’s just my laziness rearing its ugly head. For me, the idea is to keep every communication in a central place as far as possible.

A Twitter add-in that allows us to tweet from within Outlook is the need of the day. OutTwit answered that need and then it changed its name to TwInbox. The free TwInbox comes with better features and usability. From the looks of it, TwInbox is a perfect marriage of Twitter and Outlook. But is it harmonious enough? That’s what we aim to find out with a few test tweets.

TwInbox (ver. 2.1.0.115) at just under 1MB is a small enough install for Outlook 2003 and 2007. It takes its place on the Outlook toolbar. Now, you can update your Twitter status directly from Outlook.

Getting to Know TwInbox

TwInbox has a configuration wizard that helps you take the first steps with this Twitter client for Outlook. You have to give it your Twitter account information of course. Select a folder where your tweets will be kept.

After you have given TwInbox the basic info (TwInbox supports multiple accounts), here’s how the Options box looks:

You might want to personalize the tweet update frequency (Automatic Updates) and a setting like ““ Preview Shortened URL. The other setting which really helps me is assigning a shortcut key via the UI tab. That allows me to speedily bring up a new tweet window and retweets too.

TwiInbox Calls On the Power of Outlook

TwInbox creates folders to store the tweets. You can specify how the folders are to be created. For example, you can create separate folders for different types of tweets (direct messages, mentions, etc) or you can put it all in one folder. With TwInbox you can also create individual folders for each sender.

Just like Outlook, you can create Search Folders to filter and display tweets from specific senders, or only tweets that contain a particular word, or match any other criteria using Outlook filters.

The Search/Track/Group feature of TwInbox is a tool to get familiar with if you want to organize all your tweets. The powerful feature can be used to direct incoming tweets to specific folders. Also, if you want to keep a record of your sent or received tweet then the feature can be used thanks to the search operators that are used by Twitter. See the Twitter list of search operators.

Work Your Tweets Just Like Outlook Messages

Just like Outlook messages, you can click on the column header and rearrange your tweets alphabetically. Just like email messages, you can sort tweets according to various criteria.

You can search through your entire sea of tweets with the same Outlook search or any other Inbox search you use.

You can go in for Outlook’s Mailbox Cleanup and Auto-archive items which are older than a set number of days. (Right click on the TwInbox folder ““ Properties ““ Auto Archive).

Just Tweeting

TwInbox supports all the usual Twitter commands like d username, @username, follow username, and leave username. You can also use Outlook’s Reply or Reply All buttons to send forth your tweets. It’s much faster if you use the shortcut keys.

When it comes to picture attachments, you need to just highlight any email in Outlook and upload the picture that’s attached to the highlighted email. You can also browse your computer and pick up a picture from there. The attached picture is tweeted via TwitPic, Posterous, or Twitgoo.

TinyURL support comes with Twinbox. Paste any URL into a Tweet, click a button, and it’s shortened. You can use your own Bit.ly account by giving the log-in details in the Preferences dialog.

If you are the statistician, or just want to see who the top Tweeter in your inbox is, use the Stats button to display the column graph. You get it for the day and the month.

For me, TwInbox is a productivity tool more than a simple Twitter app. It nearly makes Outlook a single window console for all net chatter. What’s great is that TwInbox design is in sync with the way we use Outlook, so old habits don’t have to die hard. It might lack some advanced features like scheduling for future tweets or manage Twitter lists, but for day to day uses it just suffices.

What’s your impression? Comment or tweet to let us know.

Also, don’t miss our free guide: Twitter: Best Practices and Tips .

How to Harmoniously Work With Google Docs from Microsoft Outlook

Saikat Basu — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:30:39 +0000

There are some of us who still prefer a desktop email client like Microsoft Outlook, but also rely on the flexibility of the cloud via Google Docs. If you want the twain to meet i.e. a way to work with Google Docs from Microsoft Outlook, a new app called Harmon.ie seems to be the answer.

Harmon.ie is a free add-on to Microsoft Outlook (2007 & 2010) that removes the need to send across email attachments from MS Outlook to Google Docs. You can work with your Google documents, spreadsheets and presentations from the Harmon.ie sidebar within MS Outlook.

But just how harmonious is this handshake between a desktop app from Microsoft and an online cloud application from its long standing rival? Let’s find out by downloading the 500KB sized installer that proceeds to download the rest of the sidebar.

The one worry with add-ons and sidebars within an application is that load times may increase. Doesn’t seem so with Harmon.ie, as it loads up quite smoothly and takes up a bit of Outlook’s real estate. You can hide it from view with a click. You can straightaway login with your Google account (or register a new one).

Work with Existing Google Docs

Harmon.ie displays all the Google Docs you have on the account. If you have a large number of documents, you can use the search bar at the top or the View Bar at the bottom. The View Bar gives you a few view options to selectively pick and display the type of document.

Each file also has a small Actions link with document functions like renaming, hiding, staring, sharing and more. Some of the properties like a shared document, or a document that’s part of folder have small icons against their names. You can use the commands under Actions to reorganize the docs from within Outlook.

Sharing documents or changing the sharing options you might have set in Google Docs is easy with the Share command under Actions. Just type in the first few letters of the contact and Harmon.ie picks up the email address from the contacts database of both Outlook and Gmail. Specify the role and you are done.

Google Docs allows you convenient download in multiple formats (depending on the file type) like PDF, RTF, Text, Word, Zip, and OpenOffice etc. Harmon.ie gives the very same flexibility with its Save As command under Actions.

Creating New Google Docs

This is where Harmon.ie really comes to the fore. Uploading or creating new Google Docs files is as easy as a drag and drop or a click on the New button.

Pick up a document from the desktop and just drag and drop it into the Harmon.ie sidebar. The document gets automatically converted and uploaded. If you have any folders setup, you can drop the file on top of it and it’s included in the folder.

Just as you can email a Google Doc as an attachment or as a link to share it with others, Harmon.ie works with Outlook to provide the same functionality. Open a new email window (the sidebar appears in all Outlook windows) and simply drag the file from the sidebar into the email body. The file is shared with all recipients of that email automatically. Your contacts can view the document as they would normally in a browser. Just before the dispatch, you can further set permissions as view only or edit.

When you send attachments via Outlook, Harmon.ie pops up a box and asks you if you want to save the attachment in Google Docs and send the link instead. The benefit of sending a link is that you can keep the online Google Doc updated without needing to email across copies after each update. Recipients always get to view the latest version via the link.

Also get under the hood of Harmon.ie by going to its Options. You can enable or disable a few functions there.

Harmon.ie does the same things that Google Docs does when you go to the cloud. But the sidebar brings along MS Outlook and that’s handy when you working on document sharing and document backups. Harmon.ie makes the synergy between both Google and Microsoft somehow”¦ harmonious. Would you agree?

SenderOK – A Better Email Productivity For Outlook Users

Saikat Basu — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 19:31:44 +0000

For those of us who live in the inbox, email management is a 24×7 job. The email inbox becomes not only the historian, who faithfully records our online social trips, but the inbox becomes the clearing house for all information that pours in. Wouldn’t it be great if it could behave like a secretary we always wished we could have?

With a slew of free tools and add-ons, the email is heading that way. Maybe it won’t flash a charming smile just yet, but there are some email assistants that can help us live a more charmed life and enjoy greater personal productivity. One such free email software is SenderOK.

SenderOK comes with a quiver full of features but the basic idea of the software is that it focuses on the more important emails. SenderOK tries to distinguish between the good emails and the not so good ones. Picking the good ones and putting them ahead in the queue speeds up email productivity.

Email productivity (or any other) is about prioritizing. SenderOK is that, but on auto-pilot. How? Let’s see”¦

Taking A First Look At Our Email Assistant

SenderOK is a 9.52MB download and it is an add-in for Outlook (2003, 2007) and the browser (IE6+, FF2+). It is supported on Windows XP, Vista, and 7. After installation, a SenderOK user account has to be created. The SenderOK account is your calling card into the network of trusted senders.

On installation, the SenderOK Account Manager takes you through screens of a few configurations. One of the most important ones is where you give SenderOK the specific email accounts to handle:

The last step in the installation step-by-step is where SenderOK indexes all the emails. The nice touch is, SenderOK gives a tour of the features while the indexing is on.

Taking a Second, Deeper Look At Our Email Assistant

The first look was really slick, nice and fast. The indexing can carry on in the background and if you don’t want to view the introductory video, open up your Outlook. Here’s how the layout changes to reflect the work of SenderOK’s filtering.

SenderOK filters the emails into three priority rated folders: VIP, Important, and Routine. Also, taking each single email, the priority can be changed on a case by case basic if you feel that SenderOK has got it wrong on the first try. This action re-sorts the individual email into the matching folder.

SenderOK also helps you quickly identify senders thanks to the virtual business card displayed within the email message. The photo is plucked from Facebook and you can click the Facebook icon to take a look at the person’s profile. Obviously, not all senders will have a Facebook profile and this social information available for display.

The little info panel can be extended to a more detailed view with a click. What you get are all the emails you have exchanged with the sender and listed attachments if any. Mouseover any of the conversations and you can catch the email in a pop-out.

SenderOK also “˜rescues’ email wrongly captured by spam filters and moves them from the spam folder back into the right folders. The accounts to act on can be specified during the installation.

SenderOK notifies you of new email and its priority status with a little taskbar icon. This icon is on display even if Outlook or webmail is closed. The type of notification display (tray icon, ticker, or sound alert) can be changed by clicking the tray icon and choosing Configure SenderOK Settings. Click the tray icon to get a more detailed display of your mail status.

SenderOK lets you exchange virtual business cards with your contacts. SenderOK’s Card Box is where you can create and manage your own cards as well as those of your contacts. It’s also a searchable database of all your contacts with filter sets and tags.

Is SenderOK A Good Email Assistant?

SenderOK does a good job of sorting through the mail and arranging them according to priority. Though the brain behind the sorting is not mentioned, SenderOK also takes into account global classification of the emails. If users classify a particular sender as high priority, then it apparently helps to fine tune the email classification. What’s helpful definitely is the grouping of the emails from a single sender in the info panel. Along with the photo, it speeds up email productivity.

The cons? I am not sure if webmail accounts also display virtual folders with sorted mails as in Outlook’s Inbox. I couldn’t get it to work and in all probability, there is this single distinction between webmail and Outlook. Though, webmail accounts display the priority for individual emails and any change in one gets reflected in all emails from that sender.

SenderOK can only get better at its job as we use it more. Just like a real assistant.

Will this software have your stamp of okay? Use it with Outlook and webmail and let us know.

6 Ways To Search For Emails In Outlook 2007

Saikat Basu — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:31:20 +0000

For me personally, my Outlook 2007 is a massive sink. It is where a tonnage of emails pours in and Outlook embraces them without complaint. But with so many emails sinking into a fathomless pit, sometimes Outlook turns out to be very like The Bermuda Triangle . Sometimes what goes in doesn’t come out quite so easily and I have to fish for it with some effort.

Although most of us have our folders and rules to arrange all incoming emails and some of us are pretty disciplined about email organization, none of us can escape the use of the search feature for emails once in a while. We had given the search capabilities of Microsoft Outlook a brief going over in 10 Powerful Productivity Tips & Tricks For Outlook 2007.

Mastering any search how-to has almost become the thing for surviving in the digital jungle. So I guess it wouldn’t do anyone any harm if we took a more searching look at how to get to a lost email in the clutter of our inbox.

Our search tool will be the Instant Search feature of Outlook 2007. Please note that it might not be installed by default in your client.

In that case, it’s just a 5.8MB free download from the Microsoft website. It is a part of Windows Search.

Search for Emails With Instant Search

The Instant Search box is the console from where you can launch all your searches. Type in your search terms and the results get instantly displayed and highlighted in the results pane. To clear away the results click on the little cross adjacent to the box.

To expand your search for emails, you can click on All Mail Items. This includes all folders (personal and archived) in the search.

Search Using Keywords

The search box accepts the use of keywords with specific syntaxes. The syntax, keyword: your search criteria value is usually followed where the keyword can be anything like to, from, subject, cc, bcc etc. For example, a search using to: Saikat, will bring up all emails sent to Saikat.

Searches can be further narrowed using operators like AND, OR, <, > etc. in a way similar to web search. But here, all the operators must be in the uppercase.

The official Outlook 2007 Help and How-to post describes the different keywords you can use for quick searching.

Search With The Query Builder

If all this sounds against Windows’ known user-friendliness, rest assured, this is where the handy Query Builder comes in. Click on Expand the Query Builder arrow just next to the Instant Search box. By default, the four more common ways to search through emails are displayed. For instance, you can search through the content of all emails using an expression called the Body field.

More keyword options are opened up with a click on Add Criteria. For instance, it’s very easy to filter all emails with attachments by selecting Attachments and then choosing Yes from the dropdown.

The Query Builder criteria fields can be combined in a search to narrow down your results. The values and the criteria used in the Query Builder also get displayed as a search query syntax, exactly the arrangement you were trying to achieve with a keyword search for emails.

Search Inside A Message

Searching inside a message works in the most obvious way. Open an email and click on F4 or select Find from the Ribbon.

As in other Office documents, the Find/Replace dialog box comes up for an intra-document search.

Search For Related Messages

Open the email for which you want to find all the related messages. From the Ribbon, click on the dropdown that says Related and then choose Related Messages. If you choose the option that reads ““ Messages from Sender, all emails from that particular sender gets sorted.

You can also right click on a selected message and choose the option from the context menu.

Search Using Advanced Find

The omnipresent Find box may not be very impressive, but the Advanced Find box certainly is with its array of search options. If you want to find a needle in the haystack, head for Tools ““ Instant Search ““ Advanced Find (or CTRL+SHIFT+F). The Advanced Find dialog box opens up contextually, and displays the tab that’s most relevant to you. If you are in Contacts, the Advanced Box displays the Contacts tab.

The Advanced Find box has three tabs. The name of the first tab depends on where you are in Outlook and it contains the most common search options. The second tab is about More Choices and you can use this for more targeted searches.

The third tab is for the power users and it contains a huge number of criteria that you can define to find even a pebble in the ocean.

The Advanced Find dialog box is bit of overkill for a search process and in most common cases you won’t be heading there.

Using the more basic search functions should suffice if your personal folders are organized and unneeded emails stand deleted. But if both the former and latter get ignored, Outlook has enough tools to help you overcome those bad email habits.

Do you need to search for old emails frequently? How would you rate Outlook’s search features?

How To Add Private Messages To Group Emails & On Twitter

Saikat Basu — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:31:32 +0000

When you think about the privacy quandary, it is so common that we almost overlook it. In the new web, everything is open to everyone.

To save time we send group or mass emails more frequently than single ones. Most of our tweets are public, broadcast to our legion of followers.

The flip side is that we are also on the receiving end of public tweets and multiple recipient emails.

What if I want to send a personalized email or a private tweet to a contact? The only obvious recourse to send private messages on Twitter seems to be to compose a separate email or send a direct tweet again. The less obvious solution would be to search for an alternative method which would save us all this bother. The software development community has taken it upon themselves to make us do less.

The alternative solution presents itself as an Outlook plug-in and a Firefox add-on for Twitter.

Bccthis is a free application which lets you add a personalized message (or a Tweet) to selected recipients. Think of a Bccthis enabled message as passing a private chit to someone even while chatting to a group. Or you can even think of it as a message within a message. The best thing is that the recipient does not need to have Bccthis installed either for emails or for Tweets.

The official line from the developers is this – Bccthis extends the capabilities of Outlook and Twitter by creating a richer, more contextual messaging experience.

So, let’s carry out a few conversations on the side with”¦

Bccthis For Outlook

Bccthis for Outlook is a free plug-in that installs in Outlook and gives you another way to compose your group emails. Bccthis for Outlook is a 1.45MB sized download. The installation prompts you to install an additional (free) Microsoft component if it is not there.

The Bccthis plug-in options can be accessed from the Outlook toolbar. You can choose to enable or disable this plug-in.

On a new compose window, the Bccthis task pane appears as below.

The working of Bccthis for Outlook is well explained by an instructional YouTube video.

Just for the sake of explanation, here are the simple steps -

Compose your mail as you would normally do. The Bccthis for Outlook is a full featured mail editor as well. You can write your personalized message and customize it with the formatting tools. After adding the addresses in the main email, click on the Select Bccthis Recipients box to add the contacts who will receive your private message.

Available recipients are listed automatically from the To, CC and Bcc fields of your original email.

That’s it! Send the mail as you normally do. The contacts who were not selected for the private message receive a normal email. While the selected recipient’s email looks something like this (the message in the squared box is the Bccthis private message) ““

Bccthis enabled emails are also protected from an accidental Reply-all as any forward is prompted with a private message alert.

If you think that the Bccthis task pane is intrusive, you can customize a few settings from Bccthis Options. Also, the task pane can be resized or closed by clicking the little pointer on the task pane.

Bccthis for Outlook is supported on Windows XP/Vista and 7.

Bccthis For Twitter

Bccthis for Twitter is a full featured Twitter client. You can sign into the online service with your Twitter account or download the Firefox addon. For other browsers like IE, you can drag a bookmarklet to the toolbar.

Again, the same principle applies to our Twitter habits also. Tweet as you normally do. You can now also add a private Tweet and enter the recipients to whom you want to tweet it across. The recipients receive the private message with a link back to the public tweet. All private messages remain available as a thread so you continue your conversation. Bccthis users can add other recipients to the private conversation.

A YouTube video demo is provided to bolster your understanding of how Bccthis for Twitter works.

Bccthis fulfills a fundamental need to carry on confidential conversations bang in the middle of a micro-blogging web that’s increasingly social and public.

What do you think of this web application? Do you agree that Bccthis is a simple solution for a simple but real problem?

ReadPal Reader – A Tool That Helps You Focus While Reading [Windows]

Saikat Basu — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:31:39 +0000

It’s very likely you don’t have an attention deficit disorder or suffer from reading disabilities. It’s very likely that you might dismiss a reading aid software out of hand. But take ReadPal out for a run through a few blocks of text and you will be pleasantly surprised. ReadPal is about a better reading experience.

ReadPal works with a few Microsoft applications like Notepad, IE, MS Office, Outlook and Outlook Express.

It presents text in a clutter-free easy to read format that helps you focus while reading . The clearer approach is helpful for those with poor eyesight and also those who have poor concentration. With the clutter-free way of ReadPal comes a better reading experience. When there are no distractions between the words on the screen and the reader, the job of going over text is faster. As ReadPal says, reading becomes 42 percent faster.

For the normal user it might be difficult to prove that it helps you focus, but we can all try to prove (or disprove) that the free reading software makes for more focused reading at least. That starts with a 1.7 MB sized download of the free version.

Reading With ReadPal

ReadPal installs as a system tray icon and launches with a compatible Microsoft application. The programs that ReadPal supports includes :

Microsoft Word.
Microsoft Notepad.
MS Internet Explorer.
MS Outlook and MS Outlook Express.

If any of the documents are active, ReadPal is displayed in the top right-hand corner of the application. Clicking on the ReadPal button opens the reading screen and a selected format.

A user can select from any four of the reading modes. Column, Double Column, Banner and Sentence reading are all designed around a user’s reading needs.

For instance, the Column and Double Column are like a newspaper. It is designed keeping in mind the span of your eyes in order to help you focus on the text.

The Banner mode follows a user’s reading speed by scrolling words across the screen. The speed can be tweaked for reading at your own pace.

The Sentence Mode groups each sentence and presents it to the user, one at a time. Again the speed can be adjusted around one’s comfort.

The last two are modes of active reading where the text is moved across the screen according to the speed settings. The active modes also come with speed settings which can be controlled on the fly with arrow keys.

A progress bar is like the master page turner indicating your current position and also giving you the option to skip across the content.

But it is the Auto-skim feature that really speeds up the reading. This single button function removes the unimportant words and displays the core points. It’s like shorthand for the eyes. The percentage of words that will be “˜skimmed’ can be set from the settings.

The comfort factor for the eyes lies in the Format menu. Set the font styles, the color combos and the text size to customize your reading experience and help you focus. Personally, I found the use of full screen with white text against a black background the apt choice for laser sharp focus.

A Reader’s Opinion

Intuitively, I wasn’t absolutely sure about the high percentage increase in reading speed. But I am pretty sure about a more focused reading experience. Perhaps speed is a fallout of practice. ReadPal really helped me out with large blocks of text especially which have smatterings of technical words. The one problem though is that the program is limited to a few Windows applications. There’s no Firefox and no PDF.

But then sometimes, we can’t win “˜em all. ReadPal does win some of them with its easy layout and smooth reading.

What do you think? Do you really think a reading program can help you focus while reading those dull monotonous texts?

ReadPal ver. 2.2 is free for personal use only and runs on Windows XP/2000. Vista/Windows 7 support is not explicitly mentioned.

Customize Email Signature with Random Quotes [Windows]

Saikat Basu — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:31:43 +0000

There is something about random quotes that makes us pause and read them. Quotes and proverbs don’t need to condense the wisdom of the ages in a concise line. It’s not always wisdom; some adages are marked out by biting sarcasm too. But the moot truth is that it touches our thoughts or in some cases”¦a nerve.

We, who are literary or philosophically challenged often fall back on these borrowed words to decorate everything, from a conversation to a letter. It often helps to make light a dispiriting situation “¦

“It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.” – Harry S Truman

Or to see the funnier side of love”¦

“The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.” ““ G.B Shaw

That’s the whole point about quotes and sayings.

Being the attention grabber that it is, it makes sense to sprinkle it into the midst of our communication. And on the net, the most common form of chatter is email.

Quotes is a small utility which helps to us to sign off our emails with a flourish of wisdom.

The little tray application lets you customize email signatures with random quotes at the end. All the program settings can also be controlled via a right click on the tray icon.

The freeware Quotes fun tool supports Outlook and Windows Mail/Outlook Express. Online email apps like Gmail or Yahoo aren’t left out. You can easily add a quote to your compose window using a hotkey. The default is Win Key + Q (the Win Key+hotkey combo is configurable from the settings page of the program).

The random quotes are retrieved by the program from an online database. Most of the settings for the program also reside online and that’s why a free sign-up is a first step. The collection of quotes is tagged and can be viewed by right clicking the icon and clicking on Browse Quotes.

The user can subscribe to specific random quotes based on the tags. For instance, if you want to receive and use quotes only on ‘Technology’ or ‘Friendship’, the settings page is where you select the tags and subscribe to the quotes under it.

Each user can also contribute random quotes and help to increase the collection. Quotes can be uploaded as single quotes or as entire text files using the site’s interface. Apart from the tags, each quote is rated by the users and in the Quote Settings page, higher rated quotes can be selected for display in the mail programs. Quotes can also be marked as private and these go into a private collection of the contributor.

There is no detailed tutorial as such but the online video explains the whole setup from start to finish. This is where a detailed instruction set would have been helpful as configuring it to run with Outlook takes a bit of trial and error. The hotkey combo of course, runs without a hitch in all mail applications. The one thing to look out for is spelling errors in some of the user contributed quotations.

The little app may not be dramatically useful in a lot of ways except perhaps bumping up the fun quotient of your emails. In the end it’s really a fun tool that makes an email a bit more interesting.

Quotes is a 537KB free download and is supported on Windows XP and Vista.

Never Forget Your Facebook Friend’s Birthday with fbCal

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:01:04 +0000

In this digital era, every part of human life which can be digitized has been digitized. From work documents to personal conversations, everything can be transferred into bits and bytes. Even social communities are moving into the virtual territories.

Facebook is one of those e-areas. The millions of Facebook users around the world is the proof that we could never leave our basic behavior as social beings. Facebook members are meeting their old school friends, getting new friends, organizing social events, and doing things that people from ten years ago never thought possible like getting supporters for political campaigns.

Converting Facebook Events & Birthday Notifications Into A Birthday Reminder Calendar

I’m not much of a Facebook user as most of my friends are. I don’t update my status each and every minute. Sometimes there are days (or weeks) between my logins. My account is just a place for me to meet old friends and say hi once in a while.

As a person who keeps forgetting everybody’s birthday, one Facebook feature that I found really useful is the birthday notifications. But I can’t make full use of this feature because it’s only available online.

Luckily, there’s fbCal. This is a Facebook birthday reminder calendar that will turn Facebook’s events and birthday notifications into a calendar you can subscribe to, accessible from popular calendar applications like iCal, Outlook, Sunbird and GCal.

The first step to using the fbCal a birthday reminder calendar is by going to its site and clicking “Get Your Calendars Now” button.

You will be brought to your Facebook account. You have to log in before the fbCal access verification appears. Click “Allow” to give access to fbCal to access the required information from within your account.

If you feel uncomfortable having your personal information accessed by a third party application, then do not use this service.

Then comes the second confirmation step. You also have to allow fbCal to access your information even while you are not using the application, or “Offline Access“. It needs this authorization to be able to keep updating you with the data when you are not logged in to your Facebook account.

Subscribing To The Calendar

After the conversion, you can continue with the subscription process. There are two kind of calendars to subscribe to:

Events calendar

And friends’ birthday calendar.

Choose one of the applications that you want to use to import the calendar. Since I’m a Mac user, I chose iCal as the example throughout this article. The process is more or less similar for both birthday and event calendars, and under other applications.

I clicked iCal and a small window popped out asking me to choose which application I want to use to open the calendar. Duh.

After clicking “OK” iCal is launched. It asked the URL of the calendar to subscribe to. The field is already filled automatically by fbCal.

I clicked “Subscribe” and waited until the subscribing process finished.

A calendar info window appeared. There are several things that could be customized here, such as the calendar’s color and the refresh rate.

I chose “No” for the Auto-refresh option because I don’t think my friends’ birthday will change often . But if you are the kind of Facebook user whose friends list is expanding on a regular basis, or if you are subscribing to event calendars, this setting should be set to a time interval. The available options are: every 5 minutes, every 15 minutes, every hour, every day and every week.

After using fbCal to fetch the list of my friends’ birthday from Facebook, my once “quiet” iCal

has turned into a merry place full with parties.

And I will never forget my friends’ birthday again, nor will I miss my (Facebook) social events, because these calendars will be synchronized to my mobile and available anytime and anywhere.

How do you keep track of your friends’ birthday? Have you tried fbCal? Do you know alternative birthday reminders for Facebook? Please share using the comments below. Oh and don’t forget to check out other Facebook articles from MakeUseOf.