I want to send booking information through mail in an attachment to add in MS Outlook.
Which format is better? Especially for MS Outlook 2003?
iCalendar was based on a vCalendar and Outlook 2007 handles both formats well so it doesn't really matters which one you choose.
I'm not sure if this stands for Outlook 2003. I guess you should give it a try.
Outlook's default calendar format is iCalendar (*.ics)
Both .ics and .vcs files are in ASCII. If you use "Save As" option to save a calendar entry
(Appt, Meeting Request/Response/Postpone/Cancel and etc) in both .ics and .vcs format and
use vimdiff, you can easily see the difference.
Both .vcs (vCal) and .ics (iCal) belongs to the same VCALENDAR camp, but .vcs file shows
"VERSION:1.0" whereas .ics file uses "VERSION:2.0".
The spec for vCalendar v1.0 can be found at http://www.imc.org/pdi/pdiproddev.html. The spec for iCalendar (vCalendar v2.0) is in RFC5545. In general, the newer is better, and
that is true for Outlook 2007 and onward, but not for Outlook 2003.
For Outlook 2003, the behavior is peculiar. It can save the same calendar entry in both
.ics and .vcs format, but it only read & display .vcs file correctly. It can read
.ics file but it omits some fields and does not display it in calendar mode. My guess is
that back then Microsoft wanted to provide .ics to be compatible with Mac's iCal but
not quite committed to v2.0 yet.
So I would say for Outlook 2003, .vcs is the native format.
You can try VCS to ICS file converter (Java, works with Windows, Mac, Linux etc.). It has the feature of parsing events and todos.
You can convert the VCS generated by your Nokia phone, with bluetooth export or via nbuexplorer.
Complete support for UTF-8
Quoted-printable encoded strings
Completely open source code (GPLv3 and Apache 2.0)
Standard iCalendar v2.0 output
Encodes multiple files at once (only one event per file)
Compatible with Android, iOS, Mozilla Lightning/Sunbird, Google Calendar and others
Multiplatform
The VCS files can have its information coded in Quoted printable which is a nightmare. The above solution recommending "VCS to ICS Calendar Converter" is the way to go.
The newer iCalendar format, with more data attached, includes information about the person who created the event, so that when it is imported into Outlook (for example), changes to that event are communicated via email to the creator. This can be helpful when you need to inform others of any changes.
However, when I am just exporting an event from one of my calendars to another, I prefer to use vCalendar, since this does not require sending an email message to the creator (usually myself) if I make a change or delete something.
Related
I need to ask you about the possibility of saving LotusNotes documents (with the attachments) as separated files in EML format on a hard disc.
Of course it's not important to keep the original document's look but it's very important to input into the file the content of the notes document including all the attached files.
The reason is to be able to open the exported file in an email client.
Is it possible?
Do you have any experience with resolving a problem like this?
The easiest way to do this for a small number of documents is to use #MailSend to forward the documents to a Notes user account or to mail-in database, and then go into that mailbox, select the message, and drag it to your desktop. Recent versions of the Notes client will save the document as .eml file that can be opened in Outlook or other standard mail clients. Or instead of sending to something in Notes, you could send to a non-Domino email system, connect with Outlook and do the same drag-to-desktop there, which I believe results in a .msg file instead of a .eml file, but they're essentially the same.
To automate it for a large number of documents that I need to do in one batch, I might still use the #Mailsend approach, but I'd do this on a dedicated Domino server. I'd address the email to an external address, and I'd set up SMTPSaveOutboundToFile=1 in the notes.ini file of that dedicated Domino server.
I think the Notes-client drag to desktop operation results in somewhat higher fidelity in the .eml file than either of the other approaches, but it's been about ten years and three major Notes/Domino versions since I played around with any of these.
Yes this can definitely be done programmatically. To do this, convert the doc to MIME via convertToMIME() using the DxlExporter to do the rest of the work. It creates XML output that contains a <mime> tag in which the output of the fully converted MIME format document resides. See this for a full description: How to Programmatically Convert Lotus Notes email Document to MIME Format
My university deletes students' Outlook email account after they graduate and so I am exporting my inbox at a .olm file.
I figured this would be sufficient to save my meaningful emails that I want to save, but I wonder how I will ever open the .olm file if the account itself will be deleted...
Any ideas/info?
Cheers
OLM files are used only by Mac as Database file by Microsoft Outlook and can't be opened by the Windows version of Outlook because the Windows version uses .PST files rather than the OLM format.
assuming you have mac if not then To open OLM files in Windows, you can first convert the OLM file to the PST.
But there are other ways to save Outlook emails
Text only format
Outlook Message Format .msg – the older version of .msg
does not support the full range of Unicode characters.
Outlook Message Format – Unicode the newer of .msg that
includes Unicode characters.
I will use this .msg format. These days ‘plain’ can have Unicode for emoji etc.
Save to Word
Outlook Template .oft to make a template for new emails.
HTML – a web page version of the message
MHT – also a web page but with images etc embedded into a single
file.
making the subject line of the message the file name.
Remember all the above formats are indexed by OS, You will be able to find a saved message by searching words in the message.
Save to PDF
PDF is another way to store ‘permanent’ or archival documents.
look into examples like python or VBA code that can help you save emails to the format you need.
I added DIR attribute in my ics file for an event with the ORGANIZER property. My code is like
ORGANIZER;DIR="ldap://example.com:6666/o=ABC%20Industries,c=US???(cn=Jim%20Dolittle)":mailto:jimdo#example.com
But i don't know where it is actually used or how it will be shown to my invitee.
iCalendar has LOTS of features. Clients that use iCalendar don't need to implement or use all the features. So if it's shown to an invitee is completely dependent on the client which you are using.
I'm trying to sync calendar appointments between two different calendar systems (Outlook 2007 and Lotus Notes) for a shared office with shared meeting rooms, and my current idea is to have something scheduled that exports the calendar from a shared folder in outlook to an iCalendar file (.ics) which is then mailed to the notes server and imported.
I'm having trouble finding an answer to the first half of the equation though - how to schedule a powershell script or similar that will export the shared folder's calendar and send by email.
Has anybody done this, or would anybody suggest an alternative? It needs to be automated, so that the calendars can sync regularly throughout the day.
-Brendan
You can use the CalendarSharing object to export a specified calendar to an .ics file: https://msdn.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/ff863593.aspx
However, automating this can be tricky. You cannot use the Outlook Object Model in the Task Scheduler or in a Windows Service: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/237913
So you'd have to use Extended MAPI with C++, or use a third-party library like Redemption - both of which can be run in a service.
I would like to create a .docx file within an iPad application. The file would be created within the app (the user would create/edit it like in Word--preferably with the same "feel" of Word) and then it would be saved as a .docx file.
So, is it possible to do this? If so, how? What other alternative file formats are there?
Thanks,
John
You can easily generate RTF corresponding to most typical features of a word processor. It will not cover the vastness of available DOCX features, but I'm not certain a complete port of Microsoft Word to the iPhone would be practical, so most of these features would be unavailable anyway.
RTF is fully (read-write) supported by Microsoft Office and several other editors.