My employers required us to switch to Outlook for email a couple of years ago. I’m OK with that. The security reasoning is sound and it’s not my responsibility to have opinions about how they run their IT.
However, I had gotten used to popping email message URLs into whatever task manager I use at the moment – I tend to switch between Things and OmniFocus. And Outlook has no good way to let me do that. Been driving me crazy.
And now I can do it with Hook! It isn’t cross-platform, which means I can’t access the email on my iPhone and iPad from the link. But realistically I don’t ever need to do that.
Until Microsoft gets off its butt and fixes this missing capability in Outlook, Hook fills an essential need for me.
I downloaded the hook trial copy precisely for the reason. My organisation, too, has moved completely to Outlook. However, i have faced the issue of links not working between two different macs i use at work and home. The links, either donot open if created on another machine, or open in another message, unrelated to the one i hooked. i am trying to modify my workflow to use hook links with Things app.
Welcome to the Hook Productivity Forum , @vishalvermalt, and thanks for asking about Microsoft Outlook email linking. Hook’s Outlook support is listed as just “so so”, , on Linkable Mac Apps – Hook. The links aren’t useful across machines because unfortunately, unlike several other email apps, Outlook does not provide RFC-compliant IDs or URLs. Their IDs are local. (Every email does have a unique ID but Microsoft and Readdle’s Spark email clients choose not to expose that information to their users.) I’ve now put the text about the limitation in bold on that web page and added to not shareable, not usable across different Macs. (We had meant not shareable to cover the single user different Mac case. One can share with oneself.)
I am dependent on Outlook too. There’s also an issue fo hook not working with the new Mac version. The old links are still clickable but new links cannot be created. This becomes a dealbreaker for me.
Outlook latest version works in our tests (macOS 10.15.x) . Are you seing a message that says
No linkable item found in
?
If so, the issue might be something in here: No Linkable Item in … – Hook. (that will be updated this week-end with additional troubleshooting tips).
Meanwhile, if anyone is having trouble with Outlook they may wish to try running this in Apple’s Script Editor while Outlook is running, with a message selected, and let us know the result (here or via PM or email):
tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
set messageList to current messages
if current messages is not missing value and current messages is not {} then
set myObj to item 1 of messageList
else
set objs to selected objects
if objs is not missing value then
set myObj to item 1 of objs
end if
end if
set objId to id of myObj
set myClass to ""
if class of myObj is calendar event then
set objName to subject of myObj
set myClass to "calendar"
else if class of myObj is incoming message then
set objName to subject of myObj
else if class of myObj is outgoing message then
set objName to subject of myObj
else if class of myObj is task then
set objName to name of myObj
set myClass to "task"
else if class of myObj is note then
set objName to name of myObj
set myClass to "note"
end if
end tell
if objId is not missing value and objId is not equal to "" then
if myClass is not missing value and myClass is not equal to "" then
return "[" & objName & "](outlook://" & myClass & "/" & objId & ")"
else
return "[" & objName & "](outlook://" & objId & ")"
end if
end if
I am also having the same issue with the new Outlook for Mac (16.42). When I run the script in Script Editor, I get the following error: error “Can’t get item 1 of {}.” number -1728 from item 1 of {}
Also, I have noticed that turning off the “New Outlook” which is still available as an option, does not resolve the issue. Perhaps it’s the result of some update that occurred with the initial install of the new Outlook that remains even when turning off New Outlook via the toggle.
Can Hook support the new Outlook for Mac integration without the use of AppleScript? My guess is it will take MS a while before we might see the App updated with script support…
On a mac, with Office 365, I’m lucky that the hook integration seems to work fine after reverting to the old Outlook…
Fingers crossed it’ll stay that way.
I doubt it - the core of hook working with most application is via AppleScript, publicly available API or unique URI - This new Outlook does none of the above. And if you look at O365 web interface, it doesn‘t do any of them either. Sometimes I wish Microsoft would just curl up and die.
I cannot recommend enough for all Hook Users that would like MS to fix AppleScript with the New Outlook for Mac to vote on this UserVoice Thread. That is one on the only way we can be heard by Microsoft. Although this might not means it’ll get on top of their priority list, it can at least remind them that they need to fix this, but for this to work, we need a lot more votes…
I also opened a case with the Outlook support team to ask about this, just in case.
I just received an answer from the Outlook support Team.
They said that it was normal at this stage for Applescript not to work… and oriented me to the UserVoice Thread that as been mentioned by @timothylin and myself in this current thread.
367 votes are not nearly enough to get traction on this feature, (For example, Open/view Shared Calendars has more than 2,000 votes is being worked on…).
Please take the time to cast a vote guys ! @LucB I don’t know how to get more people involved in this, you might be in a better place than me to do that ;-).
Here is the message automatically translated in French (this is not a great translation).
, on 