Latest - 7/8/2003

Okay, we're calling this version 1.0. The more software development I do, the less I believe in pre-1.0 release numbering. Most software never lives at pure 1.0.0 for long, so sneaking up on 1.0 as if I'll know then that all bugs have been killed and all features tweaked is not fooling anyone. I've been using clOutMon for going on 4 years and I don't think there's much communicated in 0.1 -> 0.9 -> 0.whatever. Rant off.

One lasting issue that somehow never made it in text to this page for some reason has now been handled clearly. clOutMon needs CDO to work. If it ain't installed, it errs out, but with an awkward error message that has been increasingly emailed to me as (1) clOutMon usage increases and (2) more people use newer versions of Outlook that don't install CDO by default. Check out the Known Problems section for more details.

Overview

cLabs Outlook Monitor is a Windows (9x/Me/NT/2k/XP) tray utility that monitors the Outlook Inbox for unread email. An empty or full envelope is displayed depending on the status of unread email in the Inbox. It also removes Outlook's envelope icon from the tray. Native .exe written in Delphi. Open Source with BSD License hosted by SourceForge. Please email me with any questions or feedback.

(good gravy, could they get their logo any bigger...?)

Background

Microsoft Outlook displays an envelope in the tray whenever any new email arrives. I subscribe to a number of heavy volume mail lists and hate that. I have rules that move all my list mail to various folders. Real mail remains in my Inbox. I got tired of being distracted by the ever present envelope icon and never knowing if I had real mail in my Inbox.

While there are a ton of monitoring utilities available, I couldn't find any that could do anything about the envelope icon Outlook places in the tray. (Maybe some do, I don't claim to have researched this much). In the Microsoft newsgroups, the MVP replies I read in response to people requesting the death of the Outlook envelope mentioned there was no utility they knew of that would kill the envelope. I took up the challenge.

I was quickly vanquished. Then I ran across some code Nick Repin wrote that got me most of the way there. Thanks to his otherwise undocumented code to enumerate tray icons I was able to squash the envelope.

Features

• clOutMon runs on 95, 98, Me, NT 4, 2000 & XP.
  
  
• Monitors Inbox unread count, displays empty or full envelope icon.
  
  
• Removes Outlook's envelope icon from the tray (mostly ... see Known Problems).
  
  
• Configurable monitoring determines how often to check the Inbox, and whether or not to notify you with the default Beep .wav or PC Speaker. Notification beeps can be configured for frequency and limited to a maximum count.
  
  
• Double-click tray icon to open Outlook.
  
  

Known Problems

• You must have CDO installed.
  
  clOutMon uses CDO (Collaboration Data Objects) to communicate with your mail server. Starting with Outlook 2000, CDO is no longer installed by default with Outlook, though it is included on the installation CD. Make sure CDO is installed properly and try running clOutMon again. Versions prior to 1.0.0.10 did not clearly report this error. 0.1.0.4 would report a Class Not Registered error. 0.9.0.9 would report an Access Violation. Almost all problem reports I get on clOutMon are related to CDO not being installed.
  
  
• Outlook envelope icon removal ain't perfect.
  
  A minority of users report that this feature doesn't work at all. A larger group (myself included) reports that occasionally this feature doesn't work. This feature is a pretty rough-edged hack, so really it's amazing it works at all for anyone.
  
  My latest hunch regarding this problem is that maybe it affects users who do not have administrative privileges on their machine. If this feature doesn't work for you and you are not a machine admin, please email me.
  
  
• If connection to the server is lost, clOutMon doesn't disable the timer and keeps checking the InBox every x seconds and throwing a new error dialog. Bad. Best workaround is kill the clOutMon process from Task Manager (NT/2k/XP) or the Task List (9x/Me). If you want, you can turn this into a video game called, "Try to close the tray icon before *another* dialog box appears to thrwart your attempt." Difficulty level for this game can be set be decreasing the Check Inbox interval.
  
  If you do get stuck with a ton of dialog boxes open, you can select the top most one, then press and hold the Esc key and it'll quickly zip through all of them. Of course, killing the process will do it even faster.
  
  
• You used to have to shutdown clOutMon before you could shut down Windows, but I hope that's fixed as of 0.9.0.9
  

Fix History

1.0.0.10 - 7/8/2003

• Replaced confusing errors with clear dialog if CDO not installed.

0.9.0.9 - 2/26/2003

• Fixed(?) problem keeping Windows from shutting down.
• Outlook is no longer required to be open. Running clOutMon on its own will prompt for login.
• Double-clicking tray icon will open Outlook.

0.1.0.4 - 3/8/2000

• Added Options dialog to set the frequency with which the Inbox is checked.
• Added option to beep (either default .wav or PC Speaker) at a user-defined interval for an unlimited or limited time when unread mail exists in the Inbox.

0.1.0.3 - 3/3/2000

• Original release