How to Automate Your Weekly Review Process

In my last post, I wrote about The Importance of the Weekly Review. Now I want to show you how to automate this process by entering a series of tasks into Outlook using a simple VBA program. This will enable you to enter the list with a single mouseclick. (If you read my blog regularly, this is an adaptation of my post on Automating Your !Daily Disciplines Task List in Outlook.)

First, make sure that you have Outlook loaded. If you are new to VBA programming or “macros,” as they are sometimes called, start by selecting Tools | Macro | Macros … or just press Alt-F8. Either way, you’ll get a dialog box that looks similar to this:

Type in the phrase “WeeklyReview” (without the quotes). This will open up the VBA editor with the cursor positioned between the Sub and End Sub statements like this: o

Delete everything from the word Sub on the first line to the word Sub on the last line.

Now click here to open a  new browser window with the code. Select all of the text (using Ctrl-A), copy it to the Windows clipboard (Ctrl-C), and then go back to the VBA Editor. Now paste the code you copied to the clipboard into the editor window (Ctrl-V).

Your should now be looking at the code in the VBA editor. I have highlighted each of the tasks below in yellow. (You can click on the graphic to enlarge it.) You can modify these if you wish. If you have more Weekly Review tasks than I do, just copy one of the code blocks and paste it into the code. If you have fewer tasks, just delete the code block or comment it out by preceding the line with an apostrophe (actually, the foot mark: ').

Okay, you're almost done. Now close the VBA code window by pressing Alt-F4. Make sure you are now looking at Outlook. To run the basic macro, press Alt-F8, select the WeeklyReview macro and press Enter. All of your WeeklyReview tasks should be instantly entered into Outlook. If you have your tasks grouped by categories, you should have a task pad that looks similar to this:

If you want to really get fancy, you can assign this to an icon on the toolbar. My icon, for example, looks like this:

It took me about 10 minutes to create using the built-in icon editor that ships with Outlook. To get there, right-click on the Toolbar and select Customize. You will get a dialog box that looks similar to this:

Now follow these steps:

1. Select the word Macros in the Categories list box. All your macros will then appear in the Commands list box.
   
   
2. Select the WeeklyReview macro. (Note: It may be preceded by “Project1,” or some other project name, depending on how many other macros you have and how they are organized.)
   
   
3. With the left mouse button still depressed, drag the macro onto the tool bar where you want it.
   
   
4. Now right-click on the macro name on the tool bar.
   
   
5. If you don’t want to create an icon, just give the button a new name. If you want to create an icon, select Edit Button Image…

Now whenever you click on the button, the program will create the Weekly Review tasks.