Outlook: Creating Your Own Outlook Today Page
April 15th, 2008
The Outlook Today page is meant to be a summary of your email, appointments, and tasks. While you could make any web page your Outlook Today page (which would defeat the purpose) or customize the existing pages that came with Outlook (which can be rather painful), I recommend creating your own summary page. A simple page will require some basic HTML to create the layout, while an advanced page will require additional coding experience. Here’s some good starting info to create a basic page.
To begin with, you need to decide which parts of Outlook you wish to include on your new summary page. Do you want your Inbox, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, and/or Notes all on the same page? Along with this, you need a rough idea of how much available room you have to display the page. This will be decided by what resolution you are running, whether you run the application maximized or not, whether you use the Navigation Bar and To-Do Bar (Outlook 2007) and if you want to utilize scrolling or have everything easily viewable.
To include Outlook elements, you will need to use the following code:
Inbox
|
<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width="600" height="650"> <param name="Folder" value="Inbox"> <param name="Namespace" value="MAPI"> <param name="Restriction" value><param name="DeferUpdate" value="0"></OBJECT> |
Calendar
|
<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width="550" height="162"> <param name="Folder" value="Calendar"> <param name="Namespace" value="MAPI"> <param name="Restriction" value> <param name="DeferUpdate" value="0"></OBJECT> |
Tasks
|
<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width="550" height="162"> <param name="Folder" value="Tasks"> <param name="Namespace" value="MAPI"> <param name="Restriction" value> <param name="DeferUpdate" value="0"></OBJECT> |
Contacts
|
<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width="550" height="450"> <param name="Folder" value="Contacts"> <param name="Namespace" value="MAPI"> <param name="Restriction" value> <param name="DeferUpdate" value="0"></OBJECT> |
Notes
|
<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width="350" height="162"> <param name="Folder" value="Notes"> <param name="Namespace" value="MAPI"> <param name="Restriction" value> <param name="DeferUpdate" value="0"></OBJECT> |
Create an empty HTML document. Copy and paste one of the above chunks of code in the BODY of the new document. Placing any of the above code in the BODY of your web page will display the desired Outlook element. Save the page. Now go to Outlook and do the following:
1. Right-click on your main Mailbox in the Navigation Bar.
2. Select Properties.
3. Select the Home Page tab in the resulting window.
4. Make sure the Show home page by default for this folder checkbox is checked.
5. Click the Browse button and browse to the location of the newly created HTML document.
6. Click OK.
7. Go back to the Navigation Bar and click on the main Mailbox so that it displays Outlook Today.
Note: Each element will be displayed the way it does in Outlook, for example, the Reading Pane will show if it is normally on when viewing the Inbox, the Calendar element will display in Day, Week, or Month mode depending on what the normal selection is, etc.
You can use simple tables or CSS positioning to place the elements in their desired location. Modify the width and height in each OBJECT tag to change the size of the elements. You can add additional items from the web, such as the weather or news, to your Outlook Today page by utilizing iframes to display the content. You can also add links to other web pages, however, I recommend that you have these links open up in your web browser (target=”_blank”) instead of using Oulook’s browser. It will take some experimenting to get the positioning the way you want it, but with a little effort, you will have an ideal starting page for your email client. If you want to go back to the original Outlook Today, just click the Restore Defaults button on the Home Page tab of the Outlook Today properties.
For more code snippets to customize your Outlook Today page, check out Part 2 of this article.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:57 am
Very nice! Bumped to the front page.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Anything similar for Mozilla Thunderbird?
April 18th, 2008 at 7:49 am
[…] around to your heart’s content, because it’s also un-doable with less than two clicks. Creating Your Own Outlook Today Page […]
April 18th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Also check out this site’s examples for adding text summaries like the default Today page.
April 18th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Very nice article. However, since you’ve obviously created these types of pages how about a sample page showing placement with outlook items and perhaps a sample with external links you suggested (weather, news, etc).
April 18th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I’ve had the desktop below for years now…this is a sample of what you can do.
http://www.cabarfeidh.com/outlooktoday.png
April 18th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Great article.
dave t-
Awesome. Never thought about skinning the Outlook Today screen (probably because I had never used it). This is a good reason why to use it.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Great post. Thanks.
Question: How can you restrict tasks to only show those from a specific category? I use a modified GTD system, and rather than having specific due dates I have the items that need to get done today in a category called “!Today”.
Thanks.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Here’s a GTD-themed example of what you can do, http://www.jello-dashboard.net/wordpress/
April 18th, 2008 at 9:56 am
MSNBC used to have one that they gave away, but stopped a few years ago. Do you know how to get weather and news feeds to show up in there too?
Thanks.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Any code for search folders?
I like to check my emails by unread ones.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Hello,
For implementing GTD you might try out my application for time management and productivity,
http://www.gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
Hope you like it.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
[…] you are making your own Outlook Today page, then these additional snippets of code are sure to be of use to you. You can add the following […]
April 18th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I tried this but I get an error when setting the page in Outlook (2007) telling me that:
“Could not obtain offline settings for the address ‘c:\users\…\outlooktoday.htm’. Certain types of addresses cannot be made available offline. Generally, the address must begin with ‘http://’.”
I tried using the file:///C:/… - but it didn’t like that either. The funny thing is that Outlook did show the page with the elements, it just won’t let me leave the dialog with this set.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Simply click Cancel when you get the “Could not obtain offline settings . . . blah, blah, blah. The home page will still be changed to the local web page.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
[…] Go! And then Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
April 20th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Doing a quick Google search lead me to a MS link which provides two files:
OutExmpl.exe 108 KB
OutToday.exe 106 KBDownload
The files in the first are stated as for Outlook 2000 but are actually the basic samples of the standard Outlook Today template and the second provides a document listing instructions for modifying these templates.
These two files can be obtained here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=a8241d66-0d59-4755-bcb2-499d966f00c5&displaylang=en#filelist
April 21st, 2008 at 9:35 am
[…] around to your heart’s content, because it’s also un-doable with less than two clicks. Creating Your Own Outlook Today Page […]
April 21st, 2008 at 11:11 am
wow!! that is sweet! i’ll be using this w/my outlook 2007 for sure!! nice indeed!!
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:17 am
[…] just saw this tip on Lifehacker which points to a Tech-Recipes post on how you can customize your Outlook Today with just a bit of HTML code. Their post offers up some […]
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:42 am
[…] reader and TiddlyWiki enthusiast Fraser has written up a guide that takes the idea of cut-and-paste Outlook Today customizing to the next logical (or at least Lifehacker-friendly) conclusion—integrating a TiddlyWiki […]
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
[…] reader and TiddlyWiki enthusiast Fraser has written up a guide that takes the idea of cut-and-paste Outlook Today customizing to the next logical (or at least Lifehacker-friendly) conclusion—integrating a TiddlyWiki […]
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Do you know if it’s possible to take this technique out of Outlook? I.e. paste your html into a separate html file and then view the Outlook data in an external browser?
April 25th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
[…] reader and TiddlyWiki enthusiast Fraser has written up a guide that takes the idea of cut-and-paste Outlook Today customizing to the next logical (or at least Lifehacker-friendly) conclusion—integrating a TiddlyWiki […]
April 26th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
[…] you’ve been following my last couple of posts on making your own Outlook Today page (Part 1 and Part 2), then you know that you can add a wide range of useful tools to the page. This increases […]
April 28th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
[…] Creating Your Own Outlook Today Page. […]
May 1st, 2008 at 3:22 pm
@Fraser Smith:
It’s possible. I currently run this technique in IE8 beta and it works like a carm, but Firefox does not respond to the objects, though. It would be nice if this solution had worked via Internet.