Scott Hanselman

Outlook2RSS - Outlook Folders to RSS Feeds

February 13, 2003 Comment on this post [4] Posted in Web Services | XML
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So, I took Peter Drayton's slick Google2RSS and made my own Outlook2RSS.  I'm running it as part of the Task Scheduler and creating RSS feeds for Outlook Folders and Exchange Public Folders (cuz nobody looks in Public Folders, right?) ala:

Outlook2RSS.exe -folder "Public Folders\All Public Folders\For Sale" -title "Corillian - For Sale" -desc "Corillian Employee Stuff for Sale" -link "http://computername/RSSFeeds/CorillianForSale.xml" -outfile "path/CorillianForSale.xml"

The format for the -folder parameter is just a backslash delimited string with like folder1/folder2/folder3, just as Outlook displays it.  For Exchange users, you'd do something like: -folder "Mailbox - Scott Hanselman\Inbox\Spam" or "Public Folders\All Public Folders\For Sale."

I'm using it as a Very Poor Man's Outblog [regrets to Ingo :) ] to publish specific project folders and my Status Updates to my boss from my personal Outlook stash to RSS Feeds.  Any MailItems or Posts in an Outlook Folder will show up in the RSS Feed. Maybe I'll add to what little I did with support for graphics, etc...a client side "pull" model of OutBlog, or make it an Outlook Add-In.

Note #1: Make sure you have the Office XP Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs) and Outlook running on any box you use this on.  

Note #2:  The feeds it creates MAY look odd on NewsGator v0.9, but Greg has fixed this for v1.0.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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March 17, 2003 22:15
I'd like to try using Outlook2RSS, but you say it requires the Office XP Primary Interop Assemblies, and the readme file in that says you need Visual Studio .NET to to install them. I don't have that. Any idea how I can proceed?
March 17, 2003 23:34
You really only need gacutil.exe, and that comes with the .NET SDK. If you look at the Office PIA's register.bat file, it tries to call gacutil. So, get the SDK or get gacutil from a friend.
April 18, 2003 3:42
Nice tool Scott- Any chance of the reverse? RSS2Exchange? I have been hunting for something that will take a newsfeed and post the items to Exchange Public Folders. Or even just send the RSS feed contents as an SMTP message. I can let the Exchange rules do the rest.

January 25, 2005 0:22
Try this:

http://www.hexamail.com/rss2exchange/

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.