Comments on: Automating Tasks in Outlook...

Question: Automating Tasks in Outlook...

mattr — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 06:57:10 -0800

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!

By: Chunder

Chunder — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:08:29 -0800

sounds like you need a cron daemon...

No idea on which is best, but perhaps this will give you another avenue of investigation...

By: SPrintF

SPrintF — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:14:33 -0800

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.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:15:26 -0800

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 = "you@whatever.com"
objMessage.To = "whoever@whatever.com"
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.

By: Loser

Loser — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 08:51:50 -0800

I'd try Blat plus a simple scheduled task.

By: chota

chota — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 10:55:39 -0800

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).