Automating Tasks in Outlook...

June 15, 2005 6:57 AM

I have an application that generates a file a regular intervals (daily), and stores the data locally on the C drive of the PC, all I want to do is then email that to a given address. The PC is Windows XP (Pro - SP2), I have Outlook 2k3 installed...my google-fu is letting me down, but I'm really struggling to find a solution for this one. Bonus points for free - or already built in to my system!
posted by mattr to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

sounds like you need a cron daemon...

No idea on which is best, but perhaps this will give you another avenue of investigation...
posted by Chunder at 7:08 AM on June 15, 2005

Python includes packages that can be used to create and send e-mail. They're very easy to use. Once you have a script that does this, it's simple to create a scheduled task to fire off the script on a regular basis.
posted by SPrintF at 7:14 AM on June 15, 2005

You can send the email with VBScript and Windows Scripting, it looks pretty simple. Just save this in a file with a vbs extension and run it:

Set objMessage = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
objMessage.Subject = "Example Message"
objMessage.Sender = "[e-mail]"
objMessage.To = "[e-mail]"
objMessage.TextBody = "Sample message text."
objMessage.AddAttachment "c:\temp\readme.txt"
objMessage.Send

To schedule things in Windows, don't use cron. Instead, set up a Scheduled Task in Start>Accessories>System Tools.
posted by smackfu at 7:15 AM on June 15, 2005

I'd try Blat plus a simple scheduled task.
posted by Loser at 8:51 AM on June 15, 2005

I second smackfu. CDO wrapped in a vbscript (which is built into your OS) works. And you can then add any logic, etc, that you need, because it's a vbscript. Also, you have the option of letting it run all the time (maybe monitoring when the new file gets put in place) or scheduling it with the task scheduler (also built in to your OS) -- Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks. In addition, this works beautifully if you're in a domain environment, because you can run it under alternate credentials (in case, in the future, instead of emailing, you want to dump it to a sooper-sekret network share or something).
posted by chota at 10:55 AM on June 15, 2005