Dear All

I have been using Outlook at work as a sort of tickler system, but I wonder if there is a more elegant way to do this.

I am a doctor and often book investigations for patients I see in the clinic. Sometimes I won't be seeing the patient again for several months, but I need a system to remind me to chase results once the test has been done, in case there is an unexpected finding and I need to see them sooner.

My current system involves sending myself an email with the word 'Chhase' in the subject heading, deliberately mis-spelt. I have a rule set up in Outlook which pulls any emails with 'chhase' into a folder. I then go through this folder regularly and look up their results.

However, many of the tests are done on a particular date. What would be useful would be to have these messages disappear until after the test has been done, and then to reappear. Ideally, they would populate a list but only after a specified date.

To complicate matters further, I don't have full access to Outlook in the clinic, but only to a Web Access version of Outlook. This is why I've been using emails until now.



So I have two questions:

If I can organise remote access to my PC (with Outlook), is there a way to use the calendar or the to-do list to achieve what I'm after (but ideally in a shortcut fashion - I've tried the to-do list but it involves quite a few mouse clicks, compared with my current one line email).

Or, if remote access is not possible, is there a way to achieve this using only emails (as you can do with Remember the Milk, for example, where I believe you can email yourself in a certain way to populate do-do lists).

Any help you can offer would be very gratefully received!

many thanks

Geoffrey

Seems like it might be easier, and infinitely more adjustable to use Excel for this. It woul dbe something that you would have to check everyday versus a new message or appointment alert. But, with simple formula's to conditionally format data based on dates, quick sorting, hiding and unhiding that are easily implemented (with a little bit of experimentation), it's hard to beat it.
Excel is available online, too, for free. And yes, it is the most inappropriately used software ever invented but hey, it's like aspirin --it just works.

Geoffrey

The premise here amused me to the extent that I filled a few hours playing around with some ideas and came up with a process that might be useful.

The code is in the form of a Word add-in template, which, with a little more polish, I may make available from my web site, however in the meantime, the fully working prototype can be downloaded from my DropBox - address below:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...Ver%201.0.dotm

The add-in requires Word, obviously, but it also requires access to Outlook.

The add-in will create new Outlook tasks from a simple userform, and will also produce a list of today's tasks in a particular category (or no category). The last used category is saved.

If you find it useful then let me know, via my web site, and if you can think of any ways to make it more useful then let me know that also.

Relevant instructions are contained in the template body. Open the template in Word to view.

__________________
Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com