I don't know about you, but I often need to put a quick reminder in Outlook for tomorrow. Such things as "Phone Bill", "Feed the Guinea Pig" and "Get son to have bath" are the sort of essential things that make life slip along that little easier.

A while ago I wrote a quick VBScript to do just that.

Here it is:

' Written by Ian Watkins September 2002

' This script creates an Outlook Appointment item to act as a reminder to the user

Dim ol
Dim olns
dim olAppt

dim olAppointmentItem
 
olAppointmentItem = 1
 
' Set the Application object.
Set ol = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")

' Set the Namespace object.
Set olns = ol.GetNamespace("MAPI")

' Create an appointment item and populate it

set olAppt = ol.CreateItem(olAppointmentItem) 
olAppt.start = date + 1 & " 09:00am"
olAppt.duration = 0
olAppt.ReminderMinutesBeforeStart = 0
olAppt.subject = inputbox("Please enter a subject", "Reminder Appointment")
olAppt.BusyStatus = 0

' Display the appointment allowing user to change date and any other details

if olAppt.subject <> "" then
 olappt.display
end if

set ol = nothing
set olns = nothing
set olAppt = nothing

This script simply creates an Appointment record, populates a few fields (date, time and so on) and then asks you for a subject.

If you put something in there it displays the Appointment for you to change stuff from the default if you want.

Great for those "Phone Bert" type reminders. Just add a shortcut to your Quick Launch bar to make it nice and accessible.

Again all the usual disclaimers apply. I wouldn't expect this script to delete all your appointments, format the cat or anything else unsavoury, but it is up to you to check it before use and be sure that it does what you want in a way that you want it to. I have used this in Outlook 2003 but cannot be sure I have used it in any other version of Outlook.