Improving Outlook with a custom dashboard

Contributor Icon Contributed by katy8439 Date Icon November 9, 2005  
Tag Icon Tagged: Microsoft Outlook  

Update the Outlook Today Screen with your own Dashboard set up how you want, with the view that you want


One of the features of Outlook I have just discovered is the ability to use a custom dashboard page in the Outlook Today screen.

As I’m only running the pants Outlook 2002 at work there was no way of decently viewing tasks, inbox, calendar etc. in a nice format within the program or the supplied Outlook Today styles. That’s where the dashboard comes in.

With the dashboard you can run ActiveX objects to pull in various components into the Today screen, in any order you want as it’s based on a simple HTML file. Below is a screenshot showing my current Today Screen:

The above view is showing the Inbox (left) and Tasks (right) listed together which was (to my knowledge) not possible with the supplied styles.

To add components to the page drop the following code into your HTML template:

id=ViewCtlFolder
width="100%"
height="565">

You then change the “Folder” attribute to point to whatever folder you wish. You you wish to point to subfolders, change the “Folder” Parameter to:

And Bob’s your Uncle!

Note that the Preview Pane isn’t available for use on the Today Dashboard (not that I’ve found anyway) because of security issues.

You can view my version of the dashboard here (save the webpage to be able to use it on your machine).

Alternatively, download the dashboard with all the components I’ve found from here.

Obviously you will need to be using a machine with Outlook installed to view anything.

Also note that I’ve only checked this with Outlook 2002, if anyone’s got any other versions I’d love to know if it works.

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  • AlexTheBeast

    Thank you for the information!

    Good to see another guru around here.

    Peace.

  • AlexTheBeast

    Thank you for the information!

    Good to see another guru around here.

    Peace.

  • Anonymous

    Ive been dying to figure out a way to make outlook today more user friendly. Ive wanted to be able to see an email list and a to-do list with a small calendar on the same page, but the customize options from MS are downright pathetic. It’s as if they dont want you to even use the page.

    Of course, the only problem now is, Im scared to death to try to follow the instructions youve got here. Is there any way to do this for someone who is generally pretty tech savvy, but cant afford to screw up his outlook mail?

    Perhaps just more detailed instructions would do it. Any other sites I should look at to figure this out?

  • Ive been dying to figure out a way to make outlook today more user friendly. Ive wanted to be able to see an email list and a to-do list with a small calendar on the same page, but the customize options from MS are downright pathetic. It’s as if they dont want you to even use the page.

    Of course, the only problem now is, Im scared to death to try to follow the instructions youve got here. Is there any way to do this for someone who is generally pretty tech savvy, but cant afford to screw up his outlook mail?

    Perhaps just more detailed instructions would do it. Any other sites I should look at to figure this out?

  • Anonymous

    Years ago I already created a dashboard that has (nearly) all information in one screen. Works allright on 1024, but better at higher resolutions. They both work in Outlook and IE (not in other browsers):
    http://www.opm.ctw.utwente.nl/staff/G.M._Bonnema/CustomToday/AllinOne.htm (with Verse of the Day)
    or
    http://www.opm.ctw.utwente.nl/staff/G.M._Bonnema/CustomToday/AllinOne_nu.htm (with Dutch news, may not work for you)

    To have everything working, you need to define in outlook calendar the following views: Day Month Week WorkWeek.

    Greetings and have fun.
    MaBo (just signed up)

  • Years ago I already created a dashboard that has (nearly) all information in one screen. Works allright on 1024, but better at higher resolutions. They both work in Outlook and IE (not in other browsers):
    http://www.opm.ctw.utwente.nl/staff/G.M._Bonnema/CustomToday/AllinOne.htm (with Verse of the Day)
    or
    http://www.opm.ctw.utwente.nl/staff/G.M._Bonnema/CustomToday/AllinOne_nu.htm (with Dutch news, may not work for you)

    To have everything working, you need to define in outlook calendar the following views: Day Month Week WorkWeek.

    Greetings and have fun.
    MaBo (just signed up)

  • ibe98765

    Good tip. Unfortunately, the external links to the dashboard examples in the recipe don’t work.

    Images in recipe’s need to be stored on site here so they don’t get lost.

  • ibe98765

    Good tip. Unfortunately, the external links to the dashboard examples in the recipe don’t work.

    Images in recipe’s need to be stored on site here so they don’t get lost.

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