How To Make a Custom Today Screen for Outlook
Ever since Microsoft introduced the Today screen in Outlook, I’ve been intrigued by it. Sadly, release after release, it has been basically completely ignored. When introduced, it was heralded by Bill Gates as a way to offer a “Dashboard” with a view into everything relevant to a knowledge worker. Aside from the occasional heavily branded 3rd party Today screen add-in, there hasn’t been much to get excited about in this area for awhile. However, a self-described “angry web developer” has pulled together a bunch of ActiveX components that can be used in a custom Today screen to make it a heck of a lot more useful. The components include an inbox, tasks, calendar and others, which show the actual views that you would see, rather than the simplified standard Outlook Today version. This means you can have your inbox beside your task list or calendar, something Outlook can’t do by default. Something that’s even cooler about using one of Katy’s today screens is that since they are plain HTML, you can be free to add to or modify them in any way you choose. To use these today screens, make sure to right-click and use Save As to save them to your computer locally. They are html files, and as such will simply try to open if you just click on them. Once you’ve saved one to a known location, go into Outlook and right-click on your Exchange mailbox or Personal Folders folder, depending on which you have - it should be the one that shows your Today screen when you click on it. Choose Properties from the right-click menu, then click on the Home Page tab. Simply point to your downloaded file, and you’re set. If you decide you don’t like it, and want to revert back, click on the Restore Defaults button in the same dialog.
