There are often scenarios such as rolling backups or rolling logfiles where I create folders which have the date in the folder name.
HINT: Using the format YYYYMMDD means that an alphabetic search is also chronological!
In most cases I only want to keep a certain number of these folders and delete the older ones. The following script will implement this deletion process.
For any dos batch files that I run on a regular basis I commonly want to create a folder or a text file with the current date in the file name. I’m a purist and I like my dates formatted as YYYYMMDD so that an alphabetic sort is also chronological.
The following script will place the current date into a variable in the required format.
One of the main reasons that I use Microsoft Excel is to keep lists to share with multiple people. Microsoft Word has great versioning and colabarative editing capabilities, Excel not so much. The main problem I have is knowing when a particular row has been changed and who changed it.
The following macro implements this.
I commonly have large excel spreadsheets with many tabs or worksheets within the same workbook.
I use the following Microsoft excel macro to generate a contents page.
NOTE: I’m assuming the “Contents” worksheet will be the first and the list will be generated from A2 downwards.
Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
For i = 2 To Sheets.Count
Range("a" & i) = Sheets(i).Name
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=Range("a" & i), Address:="", SubAddress:="'" & Sheets(i).Name & "'!A1", TextToDisplay:=Sheets(i).Name
Next i
Columns("A:A").EntireColumn.AutoFit
End Sub
I have decided to start a small series of posts where I share some of my tools, tips and tricks as to how I make my work and personal life a bit “better”.
The first of these tools is AutoHotkey.
“Fast scriptable desktop automation with hotkeys. Creating your own apps and macros has never been easier”
Quite often I want to create a task immediately off the back of sending an e-mail – usually to remind me to follow up with the recipient after a period of time. I created a macro to do this rather than having to remember to go into tasks and do this manually – better to keep the flow rather than having to remember the steps.
One of my New Year resolutions was to keep in touch with more people.
I also need to clear out my contact list as there are lots of “old” and incomplete entries in my Google contacts list.
Ever the productivity geek I wanted to automate this. I ended up writing the following Google Apps Script:
photo credit: Andrew Coulter Enright
If like me your Outlook calendar can get a bit hectic and others can add meetings to your calendar sometimes you end up simply “reacting” to your schedule and jumping from one appointment to the next on “autopilot”. It’s at times like these that Outlook’s ability to create a reminder can save your dignity.
However, sometimes the meeting organiser does not set a reminder. I have created an Outlook macro that will look for incoming meeting requests, without a reminder set and give you the option to set a reminder.
I’m a huge fan of keeping my inbox empty, but not very good and keeping it that way.
I’m becoming more interested in the “Quantified Self” concept i.e. you can only fix things that you can measure.
The obvious answer is to monitor what my GMail inbox looks like on a daily basis.
One of my main productivity “sinks” is continually monitoring Outlook to see if any mails have arrived.
I have a rule set up that notifies me if an “important” email lands but for this to run, outlook needs to be running (minimised of course). I can’t resist the temptation to just “have a peek” outside my first thing in the morning, last thing at night email window.
To get around this I want to be “discouraged” from opening Outlook.
To implement this I have used Antonio Franca’s fantastic WinTrigger AutoHotkey script.