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Setting up a global hotkey to add tasks to Outlook

One thing I missed since I moved from a Mac (using The Hit List for GTD) to Outlook (using Jello Dashboard for GTD) was the availability of a global hot key that I could use to bring up a text entry box which I could use to quickly add things into my electronic Inbox, for later processing.

I have found a way to achieve this, and here is the setup I am using now:

The first component is this PowerShell script written by Lee Holmes, which takes as arguments the title of the task to add, and adds it to Outlook. I saved it as Documents/Add-OutlookTask.ps1 in my home directory.

The second component is the ever-useful and amazing AutoHotkey. I added the following lines to my Documents/AutoHotKey.ahk file:

;----------------------------------------------------------------------
; Add a task to Outlook using powershell.
; InputBox reference: http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/InputBox.htm
; PowerShell script from http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/2007/03/01/getting-things-done-%E2%80%93-outlook-task-automation-with-powershell/
#Space::
InputBox, description, Add task,,,,100
If (ErrorLevel == 0) {
; Running it through %comspec% and with the Hide option prevents a
; command windows from briefly opening when the command is
; executed.
Run, %comspec% /c "powershell -file %HOME%\Documents\Add-OutlookTask.ps1 "%description%"",,Hide
}
view raw add-outlook-task.ahk hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This snippet assigns Win-space to open an input box, and uses whatever is typed in it as the task title to the Add-OutlookTask script. The task will be placed without any categories in the task list, so it appears automatically the next time I open my Jello Dashboard inbox. Here it is in action:

Addtask

I find this extremely useful, since I can press Win-space to add new tasks from any application, without having to switch to Outlook first. At some point I would like to explore the idea of making it smarter, like the quick-add keys in Things or THL for the Mac. This would include, for example, using some information from the currently-active application to prefill the task information. Examples would include using the subject line if an Outlook email is selected or the title of the current web page if a browser is open. Also nice would be to include any selected text automatically in the notes for the task, and maybe a link to the original item.