Neat trick I just figured out for Entourage

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Title: Neat trick I just figured out for Entourage

I just figured out (found) a way to create a keyboard shortcut to virtually any menu option in Entourage X.

Real life example: I put an ad on Craigslist for an office helper. Got over 70 responses, which all fell into a Possible Junk folder. As I viewed each one in the Preview Panel, I wanted to categorize each one into 4 different Categories that I'd set up (basically, colors that visually represented to me "Mac skills", "DreamWeaver skills", etc.).

With this new trick, I just hovered over the F keys. When I read someone's email that had promising Mac skills, I hit F2, and the highlighted email turned Red. When I read one that had promising DreamWeaver skills, I hit F3, and the highlighted email turned Blue.

This was done through a new $10 utility I've been playing with over the last month, called Menu Master (http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/menumaster). And no, I have absolutely no affiliation with Unsanity. Menu Master comes with a 15 unrestricted demo, so you can try it out. It's interface is brilliantly easy, the kind you wish all programs had: pick a menu item in any program, including the Finder (or,  in the case of Erage's Categories, a submenu), and hit the keyboard shortcut you want (which immediately shows up next to the item). If the menu item already has a keyboard shortcut, first hit delete (which visually removes the shortcut) and then hit the shortcut that you want (which then visually shows that shortcut).

Another real life Entourage example: I'm always going to Entourage X's menu: Edit: AutoText Cleanup: Remove Quoting. Well, no more. I assigned the shortcut of Opt-Command-R. Every time I use this shortcut now, I want to stand up and applaud.

I know this doesn't have any thing to do with Apple Scripts, and I'm guessing that there are scripts that could to this trick. But for those who could not Apple script themselves out of a paper bag (like me), this could be a cool tool to add to your machines. For me, it's a real home run.

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