I use Outlook as my email client at work, but I don't want to use it to manage my tasks and todos. (Instead I use plain text files and Emacs org-mode.) Since many todo items start out as mails in my inbox, I often need to reference these mails.
Is there some clever way to create a link (a URL) that opens a specific email in Outlook when clicked?
Best Answer
You can do this with a little bit of code in Outlook and a little bit of code in Emacs.
First, if you're using Outlook 2007 you'll need to enable Outlook URLs with a registry addition. Instructions and the registry file can be found here courtesy of David Tan.
Next, this macro can be added to Outlook and will get the GUID of the current email message, create a Org-Mode link and deposit it into the clipboard.
As koushik noted in the comments, the
doClipboard.SetText
part can be expanded to differentiate between different item types:Almost there, add this little bit of lisp to your emacs lisp directory to enable Outlook links.
And lastly, update your .emacs file to include the Outlook link code. Just add this somewhere after org-mode is setup.
Now you can call the macro (I added it to my toolbar in Outlook for quick access) and you can quickly create a link to the email in Emacs.
One gotcha, GUID's change when you move a message between document stores, so if you get the GUID to the message while it's on your Exchange server and then move it to your local PST file the link will change. Move the message before you get the GUID.