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Quicksilver: AppleScript to quickly add Entourage Tasks

Entourage - Fast Task.scpt

A hacker who wishes to remain anonymous has answered my prayers by creating a modest one-line AppleScript that lets you pipe input from Quicksilver into a new Entourage Task with zero cruft—no Category, no Project, no date, and no reminder. Perfect for fast capture any place, and something I’ve craved for over a year.

To install:

Entourage-Fast-Task

  1. Download the script, “Entourage - Fast Task.scpt
  2. Copy it to ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions/
  3. Restart Quicksilver (CTRL-CMD-Q)

To use (just one example):

  1. Invoke Quicksilver (usu. CTRL-space)
  2. Type “.” to get the variable input field
  3. Type “Test task
  4. TAB to the second pane
  5. Type until “Entourage - Fast Task” shows up
  6. Hit Return

Jump over to Entourage and you should have a nice new task sitting in your list. Note that the Quicksilver input, as ever, can come from practically anyplace; you can select text in Safari and “Send to Quicksilver” (CMD-Esc in most locations), etc.

Like I say, if you want all the “trimmings,” you should enter Tasks in Entourage as usual, but this is just terrific for capturing stuff quickly without changing modes. A minor godsend as far as I’m concerned.

(As ever with all my Quicksilver tips, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some critical element that makes this work on your end; if the Setup guide doesn’t answer your question, post a comment)

Jon Swartz's picture

Anyone have a link to...

Anyone have a link to a reference guide for Entourage Applescript? It looks like Microsoft used to make one available - see http://www.webmastermac.com/article.php/20040117014023822, "Microsoft Entourage AppleScript Reference" - but the link no longer works and I can't find the guide anywhere.

Or are people just guessing field names, and copying/pasting from other scripts, when they write scripts against Entourage? :)

My particular problem right now is that I can't seem to populate the "notes" field for a task from an entourage script. I tried the obvious

{name:theName,notes:theNotes}

but notes ends up blank.

TIA for any help you can provide!

 
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