Installing and Running Office Scripts

Whether you choose to write your own scripts or not, you can always run scripts that others have written. Scripts come in two basic forms—applets (script programs, also called droplets), or as scripts (script documents). Developers create their scripts in either of these two forms when they save them.

Installing Applets and Droplets

If the icon is an applet, you can store it, and its folder, anywhere at all on your computer. You can move it to your Applications folder, or to a subfolder for scripts within it; or to your Microsoft User Data folder (even though it’s not data), or to a subfolder you create within it for Office script applets. You can also drag the applet icon to your Dock, as with any program, so you can launch it from there. If it’s a script you’ll be using often, dock it.

Run the applet by double-clicking it, like any program, or by clicking it in the Dock (if it’s there). Or if it’s a droplet (with the down-arrow icon), drag one or more files of the appropriate type—usually a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document—onto it. You can even store droplets in the Dock and drop files onto it there.

If the icon is a script document (it may or may not bear an .scpt extension), then you have to put it in a specific place depending on whether it’s a script for Entourage or for one of the other Office programs. Read on.

Installing Script Menu Scripts

When you’re in any Office 2008 program, you’ll notice a dark, scroll-shaped icon just to the right of the Help menu in the menu bar. That’s the Office Script menu, and Entourage’s comes preloaded with a few AppleScripts that automate multi-step Entourage processes, like turning the selected email message into an Entourage note. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint don’t come with any AppleScripts.

Note

All four Office programs come with a handful of Automator workflows, listed in the Script menu. With Mac OS X Tiger (10.4), Apple introduced Automator, a simple way to automate repetitive tasks with a basic drag-and-drop workflow creation. Automator comes with its own library of actions (such as file renaming, folder copying, creating a new mail message, and so on) that you can put together one after the other to create a workflow. You can also add AppleScripts to an Automator workflow, as you would any other action.

To learn more about Automator, check the Mac Help, Sal Soghoian’s Automator site (www.automator.us), or Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual.

Here’s how to add to this menu any AppleScripts you’ve downloaded from the Web or written yourself:

  1. If the script is a script document for Entourage, drag the icon into your Home → Documents → Microsoft User Data → Entourage Script Menu Items folder. (You’ll find similar folders for the three other office programs in the Microsoft User Data folder.)

    You now see a menu item with the name of the script in Entourage’s Script menu.

  2. Select the menu item to run the script.

    You can also set up an Entourage rule to run the script when messages are downloaded or sent (see Setting up message rules), or an Entourage schedule to run the script automatically at startup, when you quit, or on a repeating regular schedule (see Advanced Mail-Getting Features).

  3. If you wish, you can create a keyboard shortcut for the script if it doesn’t already have one. See Resetting everything back to normal.

Running the Scripts

Once you’ve installed a script, it’s ready to run. Here’s a quick review of the many ways you can run an AppleScript script:

  • To run an applet, just double-click its icon in the Finder or click it once in the Dock

  • To run a droplet, drag and drop files onto it.

  • To run a Script menu script, just select it in the menu.

  • To run an Entourage script automatically, set up a Rule (Setting up message rules) or Schedule (Advanced Mail-Getting Features) to Run AppleScript.

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