Although I'm presently doing a lot more managing than actual programming, I've dabbled in it quite a bit. I've "touched" Pascal, C++, C, Visual Basic for Applications, Miva, Vbscript, and Javascript. I'm probably and expert in Perl programming.

Anything I give on this page is free for your use, with the caveats:

• All risk is on your part. I don't guarantee them in any way. If this makes you feel uncomfortable, please don't use them.
• You can't charge someone else for them (freely received, freely give). Consider them all covered by GNU General Public License.
• If you run into trouble or just have questions, feel free to e-mail me. However, I can't promise I'll be able to respond quickly (perhaps not at all).

Right now I've only thrown up some Microsoft Outlook stuff...more in the future...

Outlook

Installation

To install one of these Outlook Forms:

• Save it to your PC.
• Double-click on it.
• Use "Tools|Forms|Publish Form"
• Save it with the name you want under your "Personal Forms Library."
• If it asks you if you want to "Save Form Definition with Item" say no.
• Close the form. Say no if it asks you if you want to save it.
• You should now be able to access it by "File|New|Choose Form".

Some general notes:

• For ones that look up addresses from Outlook contacts, it will try the three e-mails Outlook implicitly supports (in numeric order) to find and e-mail address. It does not check to make sure an e-mail address is valid (just that some value exists in it).
• If you have installed the latest security patches for Outlook 98 and 2000, or you have Outlook 2002 (there is no Outlook XP), you will have an annoying "Yes" button to press before any e-mail is automatically sent. You can use the free Express ClickYes program from ExpressSoft to press yes for you (I have not yet been able to locate another work-around for folks who do not access e-mail via Microsoft's Exchange Server).
• Don't embed images into your HTML unless they point to a web server. If you embed images directly in the message, the programs below will not be able to copy them.

Dear Firstname

These allow you to personalize an e-mailing with the first names of contacts. To use:

• Choose the contact folder to work with. Everyone in that folder will get a copy of the e-mail (if the contact has an e-mail address).
• Use "File|New|Choose Form" to open up the form.
• Compose your message.
• Press "Split E-mail"

Notes:

• Dear FirstName.oft is for text e-mails (although I suspect it will do Rich Text too if that is your default e-mail sending type).
• HTML Dear FirstName.oft is for folks who want to use HTML formatting.
• The text one with insert "Dear <<FirstName>>," followed by a blank line at the top of the e-mail before sending it (<<FirstName>> will actually be the contact's first name).
• The HTML one will replace any occurrence of the string REPLACEFIRSTNAME with the first name from the contact record. Any formatting of REPLACEFIRSTNAME will have to surround the whole string for the program to work.

Mail Splitter

Some outgoing mail hosts will only allow you to send to a specific number of e-mail addresses at a time. These programs will split at a number you select. To use:

• Choose the contact folder to work with.
• Use "File|New|Choose Form" to open up the form.
• Compose your message.
• Put the value you want in the "Max E-mails" field. The program will put that many people in one group in the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) field of the outgoing message.
• Press the "Split E-mail" button.

Notes:

• E-mail Splitter II.oft is for text e-mails.
• HTML E-mail Splitter II.oft is for HTML e-mails.

Recipients to Contacts

This was written to take the recipients of a message and automatically create Outlook contacts for each. To use:

• Create a blank contact folder.
• Highlight it in Outlook.
• Use "File|New|Choose Form" to open up the form.
• Paste the recipients into the single field on the form.
• Press the "Create Contacts" Button

Notes:

• The Outlook form is Recipients to Contacts.oft.
• If your recipients only have e-mail addresses (no names), your contacts will be created the same way.

Mailing List

This was created to automatically compile a digest-type e-mail based on incoming notes. After following the installation procedures above, you will need to do the following:

• Create a uniquely named folder to hold the incoming e-mail messages
• Create a folder under your Outlook notes with the same name. In it create the following notes:
  -- Bcc (put what you want the BCC to be in this).
  -- To (put what you want in the To field to be in this).
  -- Signature File (put the complete path name to the signature file in this)
  -- Issue (put the starting issue number in this).
  -- Volume (put the starting volume number in this).

Now you can use it...

• Place all e-mails you want to have in the mailing into the folder you created.
• Use "File|New|Choose Form" to open up the form.
• Press the "Subject" button.

Notes:

• The Outlook form is Mailing List.oft.
• This program only compiles the e-mail, it does not actually send it (so you can edit it first)
• It uses the From and Subject field to produce a topic list and headers above items.
• It sorts the shortest e-mails to the top, longest to the bottom (within 200 bytes of each other)
• It only does text e-mails (it will convert all others, somewhat successfully, to text).
• There is a decent amount of documentation in the Vbscript code.
• If you are interested in the results, please visit the mailing list archives at http://www.pineknoll.org/cag/.
• The signature file feature doesn't appear to work with Outlook 2002. I've checked, and the Vbscript seems fine...for now, it's easier for me to just paste the signature than to "fix" it .