Todoist For Outlook Mac

Posted : admin | On 17-08-2021

Todoist For Outlook 365
Todoist Outlook Mac
Integrate Todoist With Outlook
Todoist For Outlook Mac
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Todoist is a great multi-platform task manager, and it provides facilities to integrate with many other tools including e-mail apps. Email integration is typically via forwarding your e-email to a todoist inbox email. This, however, sends the actual content of the email to Todoist, which might not be desirable all the time. In this post, we integrate Outlook with Todoist (or any other tool, actually) by creating links back to Outlook e-mails.

Powerful and simple to use tool with a clean design. Alternatively, clicking a message's flagged icon marks the task as complete without having even to navigate to Outlook's Tasks view. Download Todoist: To-Do List & Tasks for macOS 10.11 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. ‎Ranked as “the best to-do list right now” by The Verge, Todoist is used by 25 million people to organize, plan and collaborate on projects, both big and small.

I use Outlook for my work email, and Todoist for managing my tasks. However, every time an email results in creating a task in Todoist, I struggle finding a way to refer back to the original email. I want to do this for many reasons. Sometimes the details of the task is defined in the email, sometimes I have reference documents attached to the email, or I just need to reply back to the email when I am done with the task. Sending emails directly to Todoist is not an option for me, as my workplace policies doesn’t allow that. So, what do I do now?

After some googling around, I noticed that it is possible to interact with Outlook using Mac Automation Scripting. What I want to have is some capability to copy link to an outlook message and use it in Todoist. So, I decided to give it a go…

Before we dive into the scripting details, let’s clarify what I am trying to achieve here. I would like to be able to copy links to selected Outlook emails to clipboard, and then paste them to Todoist or any other app. The links will be something in the form of outlook://<message id>. And I want to be able to click on the links and jump back to the Outlook message.

Let’s move to the scripting details…

Mac Automation Scripting

First, we need to gather some basic understanding of how this scripting mechanism works. Mac Automation Scripting allows interacting with applications to automate tasks. AppleScript is the language that Apple provides for this purpose, but it is also possible to use JavaScript for automation as well. The built-in Script Editor application provides a very basic IDE for editing scripts. There is built-in documentation on the available libraries via File > Open Dictionay... menu on Script Editor application.

First script: Getting selected Outlook messages

Now that we have some understanding of how Automation scripting works, it is time to get our hands dirty. Let’s first try to get some information on a selected message in Outlook.

The above script shows the subject of the selected message as a notification. You can copy and try this script in Script Editor. You can also try this with ob-applescript.el if you live in Org Mode.

As I said before, you can actually use JavaScript instead of AppleScript if you don’t feel like learning the quite uncommon syntax of AppleScript. So, here is the same functionality as above in JavaScript for comparison.

JavaScript version is more verbose, especially because it needs two additional lines to access the Standard Additions library, which provides various functions including one for displaying a notification. I would probably still use JavaScript instead of AppleScript for anything somewhat complicated, since I feel better with the more familiar syntax.

Copying the link to selected message with a shortcut

Now that we know how to get selected messages, we need to create a link to that message.

As you can see above, in addition to just creating a URI for the selected message, we now have some error handling and user interaction built into the script to make it more user-friendly.

To try the script, just run in it Script Editor as usual. When you select a message in Outlook and then run the script, it will copy the URI to the system clipboard ready to paste into Todoist (or wherever else you might want to).

Opening outlook links: a custom protocol handler

Now that we are able to copy links to outlook messages, we need a way to handle those links to go back to the Outlook message. The way to do this, is to develop a custom protocol handler. This way our newly introduced outlook://<message id> urls will be recognized by macOS.

In order to implement a custom protocol handler with AppleScript, we simply implement an open location handler as follows.

Then we need to turn this into an app package and edit its Info.plist to define our new URL scheme. Basically we need to go through the following steps:

Save the script as an app package in Script Editor. (Save... > Format: Application)
Open Finder and locate the saved file. Right click and select Show Package Contents.
Under the Contents folder, open Info.plist with your favorite text editor, and add the following content before the last two lines.
Save the file. Go back to your app and double click to execute it.

Todoist For Outlook 365

Now we are basically done. If you want to see it working, copy an Outlook message link and paste it to Todoist. Then, you should be able to just click on the link and get back to your e-mail in Outlook. You can use this link in many other places, including the command line (just run open <your outlook link>).

Putting it all together

At this point, we have script that can copy links to Outlook to clipboard, so that we can paste the link to another application. And we can also click on that link (in most apps, including Todoist) to get back to Outlook. We are almost done, but not quite yet. Copying the links is very tedious…

We need to go to Outlook to select a message, and then open our script in Script Editor and run it to copy links to clipboard. This process is not efficient at all. Let’s see what we can do to make this more streamlined.

We have a few options here. One option is to use Automator app to define a service with our script, and then add a keyboard shortcut to our new service. For me this didn’t work reliably unfortunately.

Another option is enabling system-wide script menu. Just go to Script Editor app, and select Script Editor > Preferences menu, and enable Show Script menu in menu bar. This gives you a way to run your scripts by just clicking on the menubar icon for scripts and select your script. In order to make this work, though, we need to save our script to ~/Library/Script folder. After doing this, you can see your script in the menu.

If you are like me, and still think that a keyboard shortcut would do better. You can use a more powerful script launcher like Fast Scripts.

Now we have a neat and basic way to integrate Outlook with Todoist, or actually we have a way to link to Outlook messages, and this can be used to integrate Outlook with other applications.

I uploaded the script and ready to use macOS application to github. If you don’t want to replicate the process you can get the app and script from this link.

Here’s how you can import your to-dos from other apps into Things.

This page is about importing to-dos on the Mac. To import to-dos on your iPhone or iPad directly from Todoist, open Things and tap Settings >Import.

How to Use the AppleScripts

Some of the import options below require you to download an AppleScript. Here’s how to use it:

Download the AppleScript you’d like to use via the Download AppleScript link.
Locate the downloaded file and double-click it. This will launch the AppleScript Editor.
In the toolbar, click the ▶ Run button.

Import from Apple Reminders

This option requires macOS 10.15, iOS 13, or iPadOS 13.

Your lists are imported as projects in Things, but some of them might be better off as areas. Consider creating a new area and moving your to-dos over. Repeating to-dos are imported, but are not set to repeat, please re-create them inside Things. Apple doesn’t expose all Reminders data to us, so the following data are not imported: attachments, list groups, sub-task indentation, flagged status, priority, location-based reminders.

Mac

On your Mac, open Things.
In the menu bar at the top of your screen, click File >Import >Import From Reminders.
In the new window, click Import Now to start the migration.

If you’re looking for ways to quickly add individual to-dos to Things via Reminders check out this page instead. (requires macOS 10.14 and better)

iPad

On your iPad, open Things.
In the sidebar, tap > Reminders Inbox.
Tap Open Reminders Importer.
In the new pop-up window, tap Import Now to start the migration.

If you’re looking for ways to quickly add individual to-dos to Things via Reminders, for example by speaking them to Siri, check out this page instead (requires iOS 12.1 or later).

iPhone

On your iPhone, open Things.
In the main view, scroll to the bottom and tap Settings > Reminders Inbox.
Tap Open Reminders Importer.
In the new pop-up window, tap Import Now to start the migration.

If you’re looking for ways to quickly add individual to-dos to Things via Reminders, for example by speaking them to Siri, check out this page instead. (requires iOS 12.1 and better)

Watch

You can use Siri to speak Reminders on your Apple Watch, which will then be created in the Reminders app on your iPhone. To add individual Reminders to Things, please check out this page.

Import from OmniFocus 2 or 3 (Pro)

Imports projects and to-dos with due dates and notes, converts top-level folders to areas, and contexts to tags. Once downloaded, unzip the file and double-click the app to run it. Please note that only the Pro version of OmniFocus provides AppleScript support, so it will only work if you have that version installed.

Import from Wunderlist

As of May 6, 2020, Wunderlist has shut down and no longer offers any export option for your data. In turn, it’s no longer possible to import your data to Things. As of now, we do not offer import options for Microsoft To Do.

Import from Todoist

Imports to-dos and projects. Projects with children will become projects in Things; projects without children will become Areas in Things. Repeating to-dos are converted to normal to-dos and you have to make them repeat manually. Labels become tags.

Mac

On your Mac, open Things.
In the menu bar at the top of your screen, click File >Import From >Import From Todoist.

iPad

On your iPad, open Things.
Go to >Import >Import from Todoist.

iPhone

On your iPhone, open Things.
Go to Settings >Import >Import from Todoist.

Import from Outlook for Mac

When you run the script, you’ll be provided with some options for including projects, completed to-dos, categories, and priorities. Notes will be imported as HTML markup.

Import from Toodledo

Uses a Toodledo XML export file. Imports to-dos with due dates, notes, and contexts as tags. Creates projects from your project folders. To-dos without a project go into the Next list.

Import from a plaintext file

Creates a to-do for each line in a plaintext file. If you hit ⇥ Tab after a title, the text that follows will be imported as a note: title⇥ Tabnote

Copy and paste text

Todoist Outlook Mac

If you quickly want to convert a simple list from an app like Apple Notes, Apple Mail or any other text app into to-dos in Things, here’s how:

Mac

Copy a plain text list and hit ⌘ Cmd + V inside Things. Each line of text will be converted into a separate to-do.
Copy a plain text list and hit ⌘ Cmd + V inside an open to-do. The first line of text will be converted into the title of your to-do, the rest of the text will be added to the notes of the to-do.

iPad

Copy a plain text list and hit in the top right corner in Things. Each line of text will be converted into a separate to-do.
Copy a plain text list, tap into the title of a new to-do in Things, and hit in the top right corner. The first line of text will be converted into the title of your to-do, the rest of the text will be added to the notes of the to-do.

Integrate Todoist With Outlook

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