Outlook based multi-month calendar v2

The following script is version 2 of a macro that I have published in an earlier article.

Yearly Calendar version 2

What it does:
It displays all your Outlook appointments (longer than 0 minutes) for a number of months (you choose which) on one page.

What is new?
1) It is now a vbs script and no longer a Macro. Scripts are easier to run than macros - just double click the file "Yearly Calendar v2.vbs" (after downloading, rename the "Yearly Calendar v2.txt" file into "Yearly Calendar v2.vbs" first).
2) There are 3 output formats now (instead of one):
- one month per row
- one month per column
- 7 columns (Monday through Friday)
3) The restitution of Outlook appointment label colors is improved. They now also work for the non default calendars.

For the other features please refer to my previous article.

Using MS Word as an outliner

You don't need OneNote, Omni Outliner, Ecco outliner or any other outliner software. You already have the outliner and note taking tool you need - MS Word. Discover it. Download an open-source outliner template for Word to add the functionalities that Word lacks.

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What is an Outliner?
To me it's a Text Editor that allows you to organize ideas in a tree structure. You can use Notepad to create outlines: simply write up the main ideas, one on each line. If you have additional information for one main idea, then insert a new line beneath, press tab to indent the text in this line, and write up the sub-idea. And so forth. The picture shows an example.
Not all ideas can be organized in a tree structure, but you will be astonished how often it works, once you get warmed up.
At times, you might want to hide all the sub ideas and only see the main ideas. You cannot do that in Notepad, but you can do it in Word (I'll describe later how to do that).
When and idea belongs to more than one main idea, then you should organize the information in a table. That's the good thing about Word - you can insert tables in your outline, and you already know how to do it.
Computer scientists use a different variant of outlines to have computer systems communicate with each other, they use XML files. The rss feed of my blog is one example. If you open an xml file in Internet Explorer it will get displayed as an outline. So outlines are quite a modern concept.
A special case of outlines are mindmaps. When the whole Mind Mapping wave broke loose I was one of the first on board. I created lots of mindmaps until I realized that a PC screen was always too small for my mindmaps, let alone the screen of my Palm. That's when I became interested in outlines - the little brother of mindmaps. There are lots of special programs out there, but the easiest one is to use MS Word. (How to use Word's outline view - check this or this).
There are only some disadvantages:

• The font sizes decrease rapidly the more you indent an item.
• There is no feature to collapse or expand all items at once
  

To amend these drawbacks I created this template. I have adapted the font sizes of the styles "Heading 1", "Heading 2" etc. so that the Outline looks nice. It also contains macros for collapse and expand.

I've already placed some example items in the template as an illustration.

Use the following keys:
TAB to demote an item
SHIFT TAB to promote an item
+ to expand an item
- to collapse an item
These key functions are already "built in" in MS Word.

The template recognizes the following additional key combinations (those are macros I added):
CTRL + to expand all items one more level
CTRL SHIFT + to expand all completely
CTRL - to collapse all one more level
CTRL SHIFT + to collapse all items completely

You can assign other key combinations to these macros if you want to:

• In Word go to Tools/Customize
• Press the "Keyboard" button
• Under "Categories" choose "Macros"
• Under "Macros" choose the "CollapseAll" Macro
• Place the cursor in the field "Press new shortcut key"
• Simultaneously press the keys Ctrl, Shift and - (Minus)
• Press the "Assign" button

From now on, whenever you press the key combination Ctrl, Shift and -, the CollapseAll Macro will be called.

If you use the "Getting Things Done" methodology, then there's a little extra for you: the macro called "List Next Actions" extracts all subitems of items called "Next Actions". They are displayed in a Internet Explorer window, with buttons that allow you to create an Outlook appointment or task immediately.

For those who can't download Word templates here's the source code for the
Word Macros.

Keep your Outlook calendar clean and tidy

A Reminder is a Zero-Duration appointment

2 years ago I had a "Calendar Collapse". Let me explain. I have a memory
like Swiss cheese, so I use my Outlook calendar a lot. I put all my meetings
in there, but also little reminders like "Call pharmacy and order vitamins",
"Post letter for Charles" or "Buy eggplants on the way home". This works so
well, that my calendar became cluttered with reminders. One day my boss
called and asked me if I had 1 hour or so for him. I opened my Outlook
calendar and ... I was lost in the jungle of reminders.
In order to avoid such embarrassing situations I came up with the "clean and
tidy calendar". It's easy:
1) Assign 0 minutes duration to all appointments that are nothing more than
reminders. Therefore I created a special button in Outlook that calls the
following Macro.
2) Create a new view on your Outlook calendar called "Duration > 0" that
displays only appointments with a duration > 0. This view will show you all
your important meetings and hide the little reminders.

How to create a Zero Duration filter?

• Go to Outlook Calendar
• Go to View/Arrange by/Current View/Define Views
• Click on "New"
• Name it "Duration > 0"
• choose Type of View "Day/Week/Month", press OK
• Click on "Filter"
• Go to the Advanced Tab
• Click on "Field"
• Choose "Date/Time Fields/Duration"
• Under "Condition" select "is more than"
• Under "Value" type "0"
• Click on "Add to List"
• press OK twice
• press "Apply view"

How to create a custom button for your reminders?

Show all open reminders

Show open Reminders

Lists all your open reminders in one Window (also recurring reminders). Useful, if like me sometimes, you have a lot of open reminders. This script calls snoozeall.vbs that makes all open reminders snooze (for a timespan of your choice).

Advantages over the Outlook Open Reminders Window:

• you can resize the reminders window to show them all.
• You can copy and paste the list of pending reminders or print it out

An E-mail "Reply" button that does more ...

Reply and Forward

A reply button that automatically figures out the first name of your correspondent and fills in "Hi [first name]" and your signature. All you have to do is write your reply text. As I am working in a multilingual company, I went a bit further: it places the greeting and the signature in the language of my correspondent.

Trouble finding a time slot that suits all participants?

fuzzy auto pick next

In Outlook, when you schedule a meeting, you have the handy "auto pick next" button that finds a time slot that suits all participants. However, if you are planning a big meeting with tens of participants, this button will often propose a date far in the future, when the everybody's calendar is still empty. The featured Outlook macro will "auto pick next" dates under the condition that only 85% (or any other percentage) of the participants are available. So you can still hold your meeting soon, with the trade off that not everybody will be available to assist.
What do you think?

Yearly Calendar view for Outlook

A year view of your Outlook calendar

YearlyCalendar - download the code (free)

*** NOTE: new version available here ****

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You want to display, print or share more than one month of your Outlook Calendar? You want to view an entire year in the Calendar?
You'll love this macro, then. I couldn't find any free tool like this on the Internet, so I made one.


You can specify to view 1, 2, 3, .... 12 months at a time.
Your calendar will be displayed in an Internet Explorer window (but you can also open it in any other browser, as it is a simple html file).

Tips:

• If you want to print out your calendar, you can use the view options of IE (view/text size/smallest) to squeeze a maximum of info on a page.
• You can easily adapt the code to filter out certain categories of appointments (contact me if you have trouble).
• You can decide to not display private appointments.
  
• Print out an empty calendar and use it for handwritten scheduling.

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outlook-tips.net says
July 11th, 2007

"The following blog lists a VB Code sample for a yearly planner style calendar. It reads your default Outlook calendar and creates a HTML calendar. Supports up to 12 months. Code can be adapted to filter out categories. [...]
I tested it with Outlook 2007 and it works great. You can create a 1 -12 month calendar and print it, email it, or publish it to the web."

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Other interesting articles

• "Ciao Graziella," - A Reply button for your Outlook that fills in the recipients first name and greets them in their language.
• Scheduling a big meeting? The only date where all participants are available is next year? How about a date where 9 out of 10 invitees are free?
• Is your calendar so full of little reminders that you can't find your meetings anymore? How to hide the forest so you can see the big trees.
  
• Print out your open reminders.
  
• Getting Things Done - with Word and Outlook. Write up your projects in Word Outline mode, extract Outlook appointments and tasks for you Next Actions automatically.