Setting up Microsoft Outlook on the Mac for Mission Control
1. Make sure you have the latest version of Outlook for the Mac. a. Open Outlook, and from the “Outlook” menu, select “About Outlook” b. These instructions are written for version 15 and higher. If you have a different version, there may be some differences. If you encounter any difficulty or have questions, please get in touch with us via [email protected]
Overview:
Many years ago, we started customizing certain components of Outlook (on the PC platform) to better reflect the language and usage of the Mission Control tools and work practices. To this day, the PC platform version allows this detailed level of customization, while the Mac counterpart does not.
This does not mean that the Mac version is not a viable option. However – it will require some understanding that it’s not a perfect tool, but certainly a workable one.
The Not Doing Now and Never Doing Now lists, as well as Agendas, will all reside in the Tasks section of Outlook. We can’t change the name “Tasks”, unfortunately, but we ask that if you are using task lists, to migrate that content into either of the lists, an Agenda item, your Calendar, or delete those items out of existence.
Step 1: Setting up the Categories
Our first step involves creating categories for the Lists and Agendas.
1. Near the bottom-left corner of Outlook, click on the clipboard icon to switch to the Tasks view.
2. In the top ribbon, click the Categorize button, and select “Edit Categories”
3. Using the “+” button on the right section, create three new categories named “Agendas” “Not Doing Now” and “Never Doing Now”. It should look like this when complete (you can assign any color you like to them):
NOTE: You may not end up using the “Agendas” category. Some may find it useful to tag an item as an Agenda. Alternately, you may prefer to have separate categories for each Agenda you manage. For example, if you managed five Agendas with separate people, you could have categories for each. “Agenda: Sal” “Agenda: Kathy” “Agenda: Mark” etc.
4. You are now ready to add items to your Not and Never Doing Now lists. To do so, click “New Task” in the upper right corner, and fill in all of the information related to that Not or Never Doing Now item. Before saving, select an appropriate category for the item:
5. To view all of your Not Doing Now items, click on the main “Tasks” folder in the left sidebar, and un-check all of the categories EXCEPT the one you want to view (in this example, “Not Doing Now”. This is one of the easiest ways to manage all of your Not or Never Doing Nows. To move an item from one list to the next, simply change the category of the item.
Step 2: Setting up the Agenda folders
1. This step is relatively straightforward. When you create a new agenda for a person or group, simply create a new task folder in Outlook by clicking the “New Items” button in the upper left, and selecting “Folder”:
2. Rename the folder to “Agenda: Name” (replacing “Name” with the name of the person or group you are creating the Agenda for).
3. You are now ready to add items to this folder (by clicking “New Task”). NOTE: If you move a Not Doing Now or Never Doing Now item to an Agenda, be sure you remove or change the “Category” you’ve assigned it, otherwise, it will still show up in your Not or Never Doing Now list!
Step 3: Setting up the scripts
This last step is the most complex, but, adds a great deal of power to using Outlook on the Mac with the Mission Control system.
As you manage your Calendar, Email, Lists, and Agendas, it’s useful to create an Occasion directly from an Email message, or to move an Occasion to one of the Not or Never Doing Now lists.
We’ll be adding four scripts to your Mac, and enabling the scripts menu, to bring this functionality to Outlook:
To enable the AppleScript menu on the Mac OS X menu bar, follow these steps:
1. Go to the Finder view on your Mac 2. Click the “Go” menu and select “Applications” 3. Scroll down and double-click (or open) the “Utilities” folder 4. Double click the Script Editor application 5. Click the “Script Editor” menu item, then click “Preferences...” 6. On the Preferences dialog click “Show Script menu in menu bar” 7. If it isn’t selected, you’ll want to enable the “Show Computer scripts” option 8. You can close the window, and quit the Script Editor application
You should now have a small icon at the top of your Mac that looks like a small scroll.
The next step is to add the four Outlook scripts to that menu.
Download the custom Mission Control scripts here: http://missioncontrol.com/resrcs/MC-OutlookScriptsMac-v15.zip
Once downloaded, double-click on the file (MC-OutlookScripts-v15.zip) to expand the contents. Once expanded, you should now have a folder called “ Outlook” in your Downloads folder.
Now, we’re going to add these files to the scripts menu. Click on the Script icon in the top bar of your computer, select “Open Scripts Folder” and then “Open Computer Scripts Folder”
Selecting this will open a Finder window, with a folder called “Scripts” selected. Double click that folder to open it, and drag the “ Outlook” folder from your downloads, into this folder. When complete, it should look something like this:
You are now ready to use these scripts in Outlook to move items from one area to another.
Step 4: Using the scripts
There are four scripts contained in this folder: Create N/NvDN from Email Create N/NvDN from Occasion Create Occasion from Email Create Occasion from N/NvDN
Here’s how they are used:
Create N/NvDN from Email 1. Click on an Email you want to create a Not or Never Doing Now item from. 2. Go to the script menu and select “Create N/NvDN from Email” 3. A window will pop up with the contents of the Email in a New Task view. Be sure to select which category you are moving the email to 4. Save and close will add that item to your Not or Never Doing Now list. You may still need to delete or archive the Email itself (and the list item will remain intact)
The remaining scripts work similarly.
It will take some practice to become fluent with the Mission Control System. If you have any questions, or encounter anything you have questions about, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected]
Thank you!