announce email sender and subject when new email arrives...

[Sdecker]

I need a macro or script that will announce (speak) the sender and subject of new email when it arrives. Could be a general macro that could then be applied by rules. I saw that this is possible with mac so I am sure that it can be created for Windows as well. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I don't know if you can use a macro to call up the text to speech service - but if you can, the rest should be easy.

 

[Michael Bauer]

You can pass the text to Excel: Speech.Speak Method (Excel)

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Thanks Michael, you know that now I need to try it....

This is so cool. (Yes, I'm easily amused this morning and this beats working.)

Sub readsubject()
Dim objItem As MailItem
Dim xlApp As Object
Set objItem = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)
Set xlApp = CreateObject("Excel.application")
xlApp.Speech.Speak objItem.SenderName & objItem.Subject
Set xlApp = Nothing
End Sub

I think it might be too slow, especially if you get more than one or two messages at a time - here it takes (what feels like) a couple of seconds to load - it's probably not that long, it just feels slow.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I set this up in a rule (with early binding) and while it's (still) cool, Outlook basically hangs during the few seconds that it takes to load excel and read the sender & subject. i think i got it working a little faster by opening excel on my desktop, but outlook will hang when its reading - not bad for short subjects but long display names and/or long subjects are a problem. if you aren't working in Outlook, then its not a problem.

I'm going to try this for reminders - I'm constantly missing meetings because the reminder dialog is not in my face.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Thank you SDecker for the idea and Michael for the solution... I needed something fun to write about today and this is it - a talking reminder.

Now i just gotta remember to keep the sound turned up enough to hear it.

Private Sub Application_Reminder(ByVal Item As Object)
If Item.MessageClass <> "IPM.Appointment" Then
  Exit Sub
End If
Dim xlApp As Excel.Application
Set xlApp = Excel.Application
    xlApp.Speech.Speak Item.Subject & "Starts at " & Format(Item.Start, "hh:mm")
Set xlApp = Nothing

End Sub

 

[Michael Bauer]

yep, it's really cool

This shoud be faster as it keeps the ref on xl:

private xlApp as excel.application
private sub application_startup()
  set xlApp=new excel.application
end sub

The variable is set to Nothing automatically when you close Outlook.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

adding the async parameter to the code helps a lot - if only because it doesn't cause outlook to hang once it starts talking.
xlApp.Speech.Speak Item.Subject & "Starts at " & Format(Item.Start, "hh:mm"), true