Tag: vbs

Updating Outlook Appointments gadget for Outlook 2010

Outlook appointments gadget for Windows 7
Outlook appointments gadget for Windows 7

One of my favourite Windows 7 gadgets is the Outlook Appointments gadget. As gadgets go it’s pretty simple: it shows me  upcoming appointments. From Outlook.

But oddly, only when Outlook is open.

Anyhow, when I upgraded Microsoft Office from 2007 to 2010 a couple of weeks ago I discovered that it no longer worked … it just complained that it didn’t have the correct version of Outlook installed.

The hack

But there is a simple hack:

  1. Make sure that you can view hidden and system files (Control Panel > Folder Options > under View tab select “Show hidden files, folders, or drives”).
  2. Close the Outlook upcoming appointments gadget.
  3. In Windows Explorer navigate to C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\OutlookAppointmentsGadget.gadget\en-US\js\” where YOURNAME is the name of your user account.
  4. Open the file “outlook.vbs” with Notepad (or other text editor; personally I wouldn’t use WordPad).
  5. On lines 22 and 42 change the two occurrences of the number “12” to “14”.
  6. Save the file.
  7. Open the Outlook  Appointments gadget again.

Outlook Tasks gadget

The same hack also works for the “Outlook Tasks” gadget.

Update

It looks like someone has released pre-hacked versions of Appointments and Tasks called iOutlook which work with Outlook 2010.  The iOutlook Appointments one now offers 3, 5 or 10 appointments.