Creating Quicksilver shortcuts for Outlook 2007 folders running on Parallels v4

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by pendolino, Jan 18, 2009.

  1. pendolino

    pendolino Member

    Messages:
    75
    i thought this experience may be relevant to others that are looking for the same thing. i also am still looking for a much simpler way to do this.

    objective: was to use quicksilver (or an OSX icon or link) to open directly a folder within MS outlook 2007 running on parallels v4

    how i did this was as follows:
    * i found that there are command line switches for outlook to launch with a specific folder. if outlook is running at the time then they will open a new window with that folder. here's an example to open contacts: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\outlook.exe /select outlook:contacts. running this from the command line in windows works fine.
    * i put the code into a batch file that i saved in a new windows directory on the virtual machine.
    * i then copied one of the parallels links to the windows applications (outlook in this case because it had the right icon) and went into the resources and edited according to this post from the forums http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=11285&highlight=run+windows+batch

    here's the post text for reference:
    "just fyi: i was able to get this to work.
    first i made a copy of the 'Windows Command Processor' application in my 'Windows Applications' folder under Parallels.
    then i did a show package contents on the copied application and navigated to Contents:Resources. i edited AppParams.pva in TextEdit and changed the App Path to c:\mybatchfile.bat. it worked, although the batch file didn't exit completely. i had to manually quit it from my dock.
    hope this helps someone...
    -lyle"

    * i inserted the path to the batch file that i had saved in windows within the AppParams file and bingo it worked as soon as I clicked the app in OSX but this was an annoying workaround.
    * i was presented with another problem whereby quicksilver, when used to launch those OSX applets, would display them all as 'microsoft office outlook' even though i had renamed the packages to 'outlook inbox', 'outlook calendar', etc. i could not yet find a way to fix this by delving into the package contents but what i then did was create yet more links to these OSX files and then used those to launch from quicksilver.

    phew. quite a hassle. im not sure why quicksilver does not just get the name as shown in finder.

    im hoping someone has a better way of launching command line actions in windows from OSX and then making desktop or finder links to those for easy launching.
     

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