Hi All, Wanted to understand whether it's possible via an advanced command to open individual Outlook calendar entries specifically by colour, then move onto the next date which the same meeting colour exists -see image example - Many thanks!

  • 29 September 2020
  • 10 replies
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10 replies

Hi Alex,

 

It depends on what you need to do with those items once you select them, but in this case I think it's best if you make it easier for yourself. In Outlook, you can change the calendar to List view and group by category, which is the same as the highlights. Then you can simply press up and down the list to select and open the next highlighted item. See example below

 

I hope this helps!

 

Darren

Hi Darren,

 

That's great thanks. I half wondered whether I had to start with the calendar. I see that I have to open each entry to copy some of the content within, once I've done that, which advanced command will then move to the next colour coded category? Something like Get UI Object Text perhaps - the category name/colour has been already setup.

Hi Alex,

 

I tried this in Outlook just now and you can use the ENTER key to open the calendar item from the list to see what's inside. Once you've extracted the data and the window is closed, focus will return back to the Calendar list. From there you can simply press DOWN to progress to the next item. For this you can use the "Use Keyboard Shortcut" advanced command. To do the data extraction yes you can use the UI automation command you mentioned.

Hi Darren,

 

That's awesome -thanks again.

 

Alex.

Hi Darren,

 

Hope you might be able to shed some light on the next stage. I have the Get UI finding the right Text but I'm not able to Paste it into a single cell in Excel. The Clip is just there as a test -which is working. Thanks again.

Hi Alex,

 

How are you currently trying to paste into Excel? The usual requirement is a variable with the data in it, that separates data by column and row delimiters. After that you'll need to feed that variable into the Paste to Excel AC.

 

Thanks,

Darren

Hi Darren,

 

I'm using the Get UI Text for the title, date, time and message notes within the calendar meeting. Repeating the Get UI for each of the text areas. Ideally to then paste each into a specific cell within the spreadsheet.

Hi Alex,

 

Once you extract the data from the Outlook window you can concatenate them using the Set Variable AC. For example, $name$;$company$;$date$ and so on, using your chosen delimiter. In the Paste to Excel AC you can then paste this delimited string at the cell location you desire (e.g. A3 or 1:3 it seems from your screenshot). The Excel AC will take your supplied delimiter and separate them into the respective columns in your Excel worksheet. Important note, any field where you see a grey lightning bolt can accept variables using the $...$ notation. This way to can create a loop that will select subsequent rows and fill those in too in the Excel sheet.

 

Regards,

Darren

Hi Darren,

 

Thanks for your patience with this. I'm right at the end now, but instead of the data going across the columns, it's entering into separate cells in the same column. I did a manual excel import via a CSV file using the variable and it works just fine. What could be wrong with the Excel AC?

Thanks again.

 

Alex.

Hi Alex,

 

The normal issue with this is that you have reversed the order of the column and row delimiters you used to separate the fields. Taking a close look at your image though, it looks like you have used comma for both row and columns. These need to be different and should be aligned with the structure of the data.

 

e.g. using comma as a column delimiter and semi-colon as the row delimiter data should look something like this:

 

header1,header2,header3;data1,data2,data3

 

Regards,

Darren

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