Growl notifications with Entourage 2008
Having used Thunderbird on my Mac for a couple of years now, I grew accustomed to the Growl notifications it provided (via a plugin) when new email arrived. The time came to switch to an Exchange server, as our email host was getting worse and worse.
I’ve read different reviews on Entourage 2008, but none so bad as to totally put me off at least trying it out. I have to say it’s really good on a few aspects that Thunderbird lacks, but that’s a matter for another post. What really brought me to a spate of AppleScript and some graphics work was the so ugly default popup notifications provided by Entourage, and their position at the bottom of the screen. For a heavy Growl user, totally counter-intuitive. One thing led to another, and I ended up with a script that does the following:
- Generates a Growl notification with the default style for each new email that arrives (or those you want to – more on this later).
- Shows the email subject in the notification title, and below the sender’s name (or email address if the sender has no display name), and the first 80 characters of the email – enough to give you a feel of what’s in it.
- Shows a custom icon for high and highest priority emails, which also have their notifications made sticky.
Without further ado, here are some screenshots:
The default normal-priority notification, in Growl’s Smoke style.
A high priority notification, in AboveTheNight style.
The highest priority of them all – in bright red!
Download eGrowl.zip here, and follow the install instructions found in the Readme.
Enjoy, comments and suggestions welcome!
Seems to work just fine.
Thank you.
Works with entourage 2004 just fine!
Sweet, exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.
Hi… I’m the developer of OmniGrowl which you might know about.
I also use entourage and have been running a pretty similar script myself for quite a while.
Good job on the script — I haven’t run it yet but looking at it I’m sure it works.
Just one comment for usability sake:
why not save the script as a “script bundle” which gives you a resources folder? then put the images in the resources folder and use something like this:
set thepics to {“entourage_normal.png”, “entourage_important.png”, “entourage_urgent.png”}
set reshfs to ((path to me) as Unicode text) & “eGrowl:Contents:Resources:”
set ppath to POSIX path of reshfs
set msgIcon to ppath & item 1 of thepics
Hello,
I am sure that i’ll like your software but i obtain this message
“La règle « tous les messages » n’a pas pu être exécutée lors du traitement du message « » (ID 5782). Le script a rencontré l’erreur « Erreur dans GrowlHelperApp : ‘image from URL’ parameter – File specified does not exist. » en cours d’exécution.”
In English:
The rule “All messages” can’t be executed when processing message “none object” (ID 5782). Script error encountered “Error in GrowHelperApp: ‘image from URL’ parameter – File specified does not exist. ” when processing.
May you help to make it works fine?
Thanks in advance for your answer.
Regards
Michel Paris
I’ll answer Michel…
This is because you didn’t follow the instructions and put the picture files where they are supposed to be.
The suggestion I made above would fix that. You could (and the original script should have) handled the error with try .. on error … end try blocks). but you’d have to know some applescript for either of those solutions!
For the time being it is possible to fix in an easier way: just RTMF and put the images where they are supposed to be.
Wooden Brain Concepts: thanks for your suggestion, I’ve not made a bundle of an AppleScript before, so it will be a good way to learn something new
I’ll get started on it tonight!
Michel: As Wooden Brain Concepts metions, you need to place the images in your Pictures folder, as the instructions state.
Oh, and I will delve into error checking with the try… blocks, I always leave that for last and forget to add it doh!
was just wondering if the zip at the top was ever updated to use the bundle like wooden brain concepts said?
also wondering if this is still available. i get a 404 error when i click the download link
The file path has been fixed, thanks for letting me know – the blog move caused the /data folder to be left behind.
Works great – thank you!
Thank you for this script and ESPECIALLY for the step by step instructions. Very neat and very useful.
Made the script bundle as Wooden Brain Concepts suggested above but Entourage will not allow you to select an applescript bundle (ending in .scptd) when you setup the rule.
Works great. Than you very much!
Works a treat! Thanks a lot
it works for me, but only for pop-mail, not for imap-mail i get through an exchange server. is there any special setting to make it work for imap-mail too? i recently discovered growl and i am starting to like it a lot. if it would work for my imap/exchange server mail too, that would make my life complete… (slight exaggeration)!
You need to configure the incoming email rules for every account in Entourage, I have exchange, POP and IMAP accounts and they all work the same.
thank you! i hadn’t seen that you actually have to create the rule for each type of account (pop, imap, exchange, etc.). i had created the rule only for pop-accounts, selecting also my exchange server account as a part of that rule. that didn’t work, obviously. thanks to your comment i looked a bit better. it works very well now!
Hi, I installed this script. And I think I have put them in right folder.
But error message still pops up, not like those mentioned in previous posts:
it is:
The script encountered error “Microsoft Entourage got an error: an error of type 16002 has occurred.” during execution.
Can you give me some advice on this problem? thanks!
Thanks, working perfectly for all my accounts (Exchange, IMAP,..)
Eric, error 16002 is usually related to database corruption, Google the error number and you will find instructions on how to rebuild it. Does the problem go away if you remove the script and the rule?
Very useful, works perfectly. Thank you for your time!
I found if Entourage was receiving a large number of messages my system got absolutely spammed by growl notifications and i couldn’t do anything. i fixed this by adding a sleep timer of half the length of my growl notification duration – this limits the number of open notifications to 3 max.
My change is in the section below:
if msgPri is greater than -1 then
tell application “GrowlHelperApp”
– Register ourselves
register as application “Entourage Growl Notifier” all notifications allNotificationsList default notifications enabledNotificationsList icon of application “Microsoft Entourage”
– Notifiy Growl
notify with name “New Email” title (msgSubj) description (“From:” & msgFrom & return & “Message:” & msgText) application name “Entourage Growl Notifier” priority msgPri sticky msgStick image from location msgIcon
end tell
end if
– ARC wait so we don’t spam the growl
– delay 2 apparently that’s CPU inefficient
do shell script “sleep 2″
dude, pure awesomeness!!!… big thanks, exactly what I was looking for! also good ReadMe btw….