If you are like me, you do not enjoy writing status reports to your manager. Fortunately, I have a manager that is not a micro-manager. Anyway, I wrote a little sample that pulls data from Outlook and dumps it into an XML file. I then run XSL’s  against the file to create nicely formatted Word documents. Over my next few blog entries, I am going to share a few lessons learned about this little project. I am pulling it all together (with complete code) into an article that I will pub in my OfficeTalk column for March. Look for my other articles here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odc_2003_ta/html/odc_landOfficeTalk_ta.asp

Anyway, so here’s how my little sample shakes out (thanks to Chris Kunicki at www.OfficeZealot.com for giving me some space for image files for this blog):

I use a simple C# application to walk the Outlook Object Model and extract all of my Task items, dumping their contents into a well-formed XML file. Here's a sample of what it produces (I changed the text from my real tasks, as they are much more boring!):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?mso-solutionextension URI="OutlookTaskExporter" manifestPath="OutlookTaskExporterSolution.xml"?>
<Tasks xmlns="OutlookTaskExporter">
  <SummaryInfo>Status Report for: John R. Durant--2/25/2004</SummaryInfo>
  <Task Subject="Write blog entry" Due="2/28/2004" PercentComplete="30">
    <category>ODC</category>
    <Notes>Check out content on my site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/office</Notes>
  </Task>
  <Task Subject="Hook up with Taiwan sales force" Due="2/27/2004" PercentComplete="75">
    <category>ODC</category>
    <Notes>Establish plan for Office development evangelism tour.</Notes>
  </Task></Tasks>

In my next entry, I will explain what these processing instructions mean, and I will share some of the C# code (it's not rocket science) that creates the XML file.

OK- so my rock thought for the day is this: I now realize that I must get serious about buying all of the Foo Fighter's albums. It's just great, loud, amped up rock and roll.

Has anyone checked out Grohl's new album Probot?

Rock on!