Re: Upgrading to Entourage X

[Allen Watson]

Title: Re: Upgrading to Entourage X

You are probably referring to schedules rather than rules, right? The options on deleting there are still stated in days, not hours. If you, for instance, want a schedule to do a final delete on items in the Deleted Items folder that are a certain age, it must be counted in days: one day old, two days old, etc.

You _could_ presumably set up a schedule to run deletions on one or more folders, on the basis of "older than 1 day", and then have that schedule run every four hours, so that you would be deleting messages between 24 and 28 hours old. Would that work for you?

If what you want is to delete messages less than one day old via a schedule, you'd need an AppleScript, I believe. Let us know whether that is what you want, and probably Paul or I can whip one out for you. Here is a rule that deletes anything in "Deleted Items" that is over 12 hours old:

tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
    set hrs to (text returned of (display dialog "Delete items older than how many hours?" default answer "12")) as number
    set f to folder "Deleted Items" -- Alter for others
    set allOfEm to every message in allOfEm
    set cutOff to ((current date) - (hrs * hours))
    repeat with aMsg in allOfEm
        if time sent of aMsg is less than cutOff then delete aMsg
    end repeat
end tell

  
I have the script prompting for the number of hours. It could be enhanced to let you select a folder to operate on; you could also just hard-code the number of hours (e.g., “set hrs to 12”) so the script could run from a schedule without intervention.     

This script might be written to run more efficiently in a newer version of Entourage, but I’m not sure “set allOfEm to every message in f whose time sent is less than cutOff” would work in Entourage 2001; and almost certainly, the line “delete allOfEm” would not work. So the repeat loop is the surest way for now across versions.

If you are not familiar with scripts: copy the above script; paste it into Script Editor; save as a compiled script in your “Entourage Script Menu Items” folder.

Then, to run it on a schedule, just set up a schedule using “Tools->Schedules”. One of the Actions you can choose there is “Run AppleScript.”

On or near 4/2/2003 1:49 PM, Francine Mack at [EMAIL PROTECTED] observed:

> I am thinking about upgrading to Entourage X. I tried the demo several
> months ago so I can't try it again. I have a question about how X compares
> to 2001. I'm concerned about the degree of flexibility in the rules. In
> Entourage 2001, the timed events are in number of days. Example: delete at
> one day or delete in less than one day or delete if more than one day.  I
> would like to be able to choose in hours. This seems minor but this is what
> I want.  I have been playing around with the rules in 2001 but haven't been
> satisfied yet.
> I would appreciate comments.
> TIA,
> Francine
>

--
Microsoft MVP for Entourage/OE/Word (MVPs are volunteers)
Allen Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Entourage FAQ site: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
AppleScripts for Outlook Express and Entourage:
 <http://members.thinkaccess.net/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/Scripts/>
Entourage Help Pages: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>