Auto OutLinker

Sometimes when faced with an inbox full of somewhat related Microsoft Outlook messages, the easiest way to proceed is to just process them all into MindManager with OutLinker and then sort them out. Steping through the messages 1 by 1 to accomplish this can be time consuming.

The latest version of OutLinker has a new routine (AutoOutLinker) that you can place on your toolbar. If you select a set of messages and process them with this command, they will be sent to the selected topic in the active map.

autooutlinker

You can install the latest version by visiting the download page. Once you have installed the program, you can add the command to your toolbar by first running the Outlinker program (to enable macros) and then selecting “Tools, Customize, Macros” and dragging the command up to your toolbar. There are also commands for directly deleting or archiving a large set of messages.

4 Comments »

  1. Juan A. Barcia said,

    February 14, 2010 @ 7:18 am

    These macros are really useful. However, the idea of the Outlinker panel is so bright that I would include the batch processing feature into the panel. What about being able to select several messages at once and applying more features of outlinker than just send, archive or select? For example, you could select several activities at once to be done tomorrow at home during 15 min in the Home repair area.

  2. ActivityOwner said,

    February 14, 2010 @ 7:32 am

    Interesting idea. At work by far my most common OutLinker mark up is “waiting for/next week”. I send these items to the OutLook task list and then group by “Company” to confirm follow-up by others. I’ve been thinking a button for this would be handy.

    The auto outlinker modification only took a few lines of code. I’ll need to look into how much surgery would be required to implement what you are suggesting.

  3. Juan A. Barcia said,

    February 14, 2010 @ 8:32 am

    One observation.
    If you mail yourself the message:
    Hang picture [@home][tomorrow][I owe activity owner][Home repair][1h]
    autoOutlinker will process it properly as the next action.
    I only wish I could have an app in my iPhone to mail messages to myself which could add these bracketed items easily! (it is a little bit awkward with the tactile keyboard :-)

  4. ActivityOwner said,

    February 14, 2010 @ 1:01 pm

    Note that if you have a common collection of mark up, you can use the “alias” branch of mindreaderconfig.mmap to define an alias. e.g.

    ahth = @home tomorrow 1h

    Note that you can also have mindreader autodelete keywords so you can leave out the [] around them.

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