kunkel321

For the outlook thing, make sure you check out "command line switches" in Outlook. THis is an advanced feature Outlook has where you can create a new email *without* having to wait for the entire OL application to load. In Window this can only be used in a Run command (?), but MacExp can use it too. I'll try to paste a script I made... (Note: this is the Outlook 2007 version of a 2003 "make to do" macro that I emailed to the site, i.e. "user-contrbuted") <REM2:Get Date and set to T2><TEXTTYPE:<SHIFTD><ARROW UP><SHIFTU>><CLIPT><TVAR2:02:03:><REM2:Get To Do and set to T1><TEXTTYPE:<SHIFTD><ARROW UP><SHIFTU>><CLIPT><TVAR2:01:03:><REM2:Make a new Outlook Task><LAUNCHDEL2:0:01C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE<PARAM>/c ipm.task><REM2:Go to and paste to Subject.><TEXTTYPE:<ALTD>u<ALTU>%T1%><REM2:Go to and paste to Date.><TEXTTYPE:<ALTD>d<ALTU><DELETE>%T2%><REM2:Save and close Task><TEXTTYPE:<ALTD>hav<ALTU>> I recomend making it "global" triggered by a hotkey. The directions are thus: BEGIN Directions must be followed exactly: 1. Type into some text field a task item and hit Enter (carriage return). 2. Type a due date (in a format that Outlook will recognized) and hit enter. 3. Activate the macro. What you have should look like this: ===================================== Blah blah some writing I'm doing or taking notes at a meeting yadda yadda. Then I suddenly remember I need to buy milk tomorrow... Buy milk 2-6-08 X ===================================== Where "X" is the position of the cursor when the Macro is activated. Note: This uses an Outlook Command-Line Switch. It's been tested on Outlook 2007. Also note: A previous version of this was made for Outlook 2003. THe command switches of 03 vs. 07 are the same, but the shortcut letters are different. Please treat this script as "open source." -kunkel321 END PS: For making an email, change the switch to from "ipm.task" to "ipm.note" Hope this helps -steve

Hi Everyone. Thanks for the replies! I also found that Google Books has a nice sample/preview of the book. I learned a couple things by just reading the preview!! I bought the .pdf version. I'll aggree, it does seem to be a good investment... steve

Hi All, I don't think this is possible, but thought I'd ask anyway... Is there a way to have a macro "process" a sring of text and extract any dates? My thought is that I would use some token such as **/**/** or maybe a regular expression like [0-9][0-9]/[0-9][0-9]/[0-9][0-9]. Macro Express would then recognize this pattern in the string of text and extract it as a substring. I could then use the date in other macro commands. === An example of how this could be used is that I might get an email that says: "Hey Steve we're all meeting at Site B on 2-17-08 to go over this and that. Please try to attend." I could run this entire bit of text through a macro and ME would be able to pick out the date from the rest of it... See what I mean? === Thoughts? Thanks -steve

Hi Folks, I'm thinking about getting the Mac Exp Book. It's a bit of an investment at $50 though... I'm pretty good at scouring the help file to find answers, but I've found that the true functionality of this powerful app is more than can be covered in a standard help file. Of the forum members who have purchased the book, how many feel that it contains information that cannot be obtained via the helpfile and general tinkering? Can anyone identify some cool thing they were able to to after reading the book?? Many thanks. -steveK

I don't think this is possible, but it would be a useful feature in my opinion: The ability to calculate the number of days between two dates. Some applications (such as MS Excel) reference dates by a serial number, thus allowing things such as [TARGET DATE ] - [TODAY] = number of days until target date. Just a thought for a new feature -steve

Presumably the location of the cursor, prior to the 10 clicks, is irrelevant? Also note you could do: Click Wait Loop 10 times. -steve

You've ensured that your 'keyboard hooks' are last hooked by ME -- yes? (R-click > Tools > Respore Keyboard Hooks)

Maybe this person could use Conditional Formatting in Excel to flag when the calculations are complete... ME would then detect this change (use fill color for this). (??) -steve

I find that my MacEx short keys don't work when the suffix method is used. More specifically, I'll be in an active text field of another program and try to activate one of my MacEx goodies and (most of the time) it doesn't work. I find that if I open the MacEx explorer, open the actual macro, then play the macro with the green "test run" button, then go back to my text field, the macro will work one time via the shortkey, then it stops working again. I've tried "reset keyboard hooks" which sometimes helps, but only for one or two more uses. Is there a 'trick' to getting the keyboard hooks to 'stick?' Thanks, steve

Welp, still no replies other than me... In case anyone is interested though... here is the work around for the above problem. It does work in MSWord. (put on separate lines for readability.) <IVAR2:01:01:0> <REP3:08:000007:000001:0001:0:01:[endall]> <TEXTTYPE:<SHIFT><END>> <CLIPC> <TVAR2:01:03:> <IFVAR2:1:01:7:[start]> <IVAR2:01:01:1> <ENDIF> <IFVAR2:1:01:7:[end]> <IVAR2:01:01:0> <ENDIF> <IFVAR2:2:01:1:1> <TMVAR2:08:02:01:000:000:> <ENDIF> <TEXTTYPE:<HOME><ARROWDOWN>> <ENDREP> <TEXTTYPE:<END><ENTER>Variable T1 holds "%T1%".<ENTER>Variable T2 holds "%T2%"!<ENTER>Variable N1 holds the value "%N1%".>

Welp I think I figured out a way to 'trick' macEx into evaluating one character at a time (see above post). It involved Text Type: Shift right arrow (to select) then Ctrl-C (to copy) then set to T1 and compare against "[" or "]" and REPEAT. My thought was to send the variable to two different places. One place would keep comparing each character with [ or ] and the other would APPEND to a third variable. THis thrid variable would collect the string of chars. When the mac got to the "]" it would trigger a BREAK REPEAT so that the appending part would stop. THe collected STRING could then be sent back to the clipboard and used. I tried different parts of this but gave up. It seems that getting stuff in and out of the clipboard takes time. My mac could only evaluate and collect about 4 chars per second, which is way too slow :-( Does anyone else have ideas of how to automate this? ALso note: I didn't try it in WOrd, only in a txt file.... -steveK

Hi folks. I am pretty new but have done some cool things with macEx so far.. I have been working with processing ASCII- and comma-delimited files. I have not been able to get this to work with standard MSWord ".doc" files. Is there something intrinsic to doc files that causes them to not play nicely with macEx? IT seems like Word docs would be among the most used in the macEx community. Most of my work templates are in word. I know very little about text types or programming, but shouldn't an ASCII character family behave the same in any document or document type? The question: is it possible to process text in .doc files? If not: the request: please add this. Another request: Please consider adding the ability to process one-"word"-at-a-time or even better, one-CHARACTER-at-a-time. And to do so for simple evaluative purposes rather than allocating variables. An example of what I'd like to do: Given this text: "===Header one=== [body of text one] ===header two=== [body of text two]" apply this script: 1. GO to My Documents/this text.doc and open it. 2. Start evaluating character by character. 3. when you're one character past "[" start highlighting text. 4. stop highlighting when you get to "]" 5. save the highlighted text to T1. 6. repeat with the next 'body of text' and the next variable. Hense macEx just ignores any header or other directory-type information and only copies what I want it to. Please note that this particular example also assumes that I can assign MY OWN ASCII deliminators, in this case open bracket and closed bracket. Thanks for considering this and thanks for a great product, it was well worth the $$ !!! -steveK

I too, would use regular expressions.

For those who use palmOS devices, there is pToolSet, which is very simmilar to MacroEx.