Outlook Reports

by Jan Verhoeven, 15 August 2002

This article describes how you can create custom reports from Outlook data (versions 2000 and up).

Required Software

The following is required when you want to create Outlook reports in the  way described here:

• Outlook 2000 or higher
• Windows Scripting Host (normally present)
• Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher (supporting XML/XSLT)

Transforming data

We will run a visual basic script that will generate an XML document based on selected Outlook items. The XML document refers to a special XSLT stylesheet. The script will load the XML document in Internet Explorer which will transform the XML to HTML using the .xsl stylesheet.

A shortcut to the script can be placed on the Outlook bar. This allows you to select items in Outlook and click the shortcut to the script. A few moments later you will see the formatted data in a HTML report in Internet Explorer.

The reports

I created 2 scripts: one for reportings selected tasks and one for reporting the Calendar.

The Calendar script will report all appointments from a month before to a month after the current date.

The selected tasks script will report only those tasks that you have selected. You can use filtering to get a selection of what you want.

The Source code

You can download the vbscript file and the XSLT stylesheet.

Instructions for use:

• unzip the outlook-reports-source.zip into any convenient location
• from windows explorer you drag outlook_report_selected_tasks.vbs and  outlook-report-calendar.vbs on the Outlook bar.