How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[M]

I'm using Emacs org-mode for task and information management in a business
environment dominated by Microsoft products (Windows, Office, ...).

I wonder how to create a set-up for maximum productivity and I'd like to
know how you integrate org-mode in your work on MS Windows.

Creating hyperlinks in my org-mode files/tasks, which let me jump directly
to E-Mail in MS Outlook (Exchange-based), open Word-, Excel- or Powerpoint
documents, etc. is a very helpful feature for integrating org-mode.

Are there other techniques, tools or add-ons which are helpful for that
purpose?


Kind regards

Martin 

Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[John Hendy]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 4:06 PM, M <Elwood151@web.de> wrote:
>
>
> I'm using Emacs org-mode for task and information management in a business
> environment dominated by Microsoft products (Windows, Office, ...).
>
> I wonder how to create a set-up for maximum productivity and I'd like to
> know how you integrate org-mode in your work on MS Windows.
>
> Creating hyperlinks in my org-mode files/tasks, which let me jump directly
> to E-Mail in MS Outlook (Exchange-based), open Word-, Excel- or Powerpoint
> documents, etc. is a very helpful feature for integrating org-mode.
>
> Are there other techniques, tools or add-ons which are helpful for that
> purpose?

My personal technique is to let everyone /else/ use MS and to use
org-mode as exclusively as I can. My management is fully used to me
providing PDF Beamer presentations at project update meetings while
everyone else has submitted PowerPoints. I can submit reports as a
file upload to our central research document center, so I compose in
org-mode, and then tweak/final-export in LaTeX.

I made a project poster using beamerposter.sty once as well and it
turned out well, though I think it took more time than if I had just
used PowerPoint.

I only use MS where I have to -- editing a team member's ppt slide for
a larger presentation that multiple folks are contributing to. I have
issues every once in a while with someone wanting to re-use my
presentation material and obviously an org-file or the raw PDF wont'
do them much good. Sometimes I've tried to re-package in ppt or
sometimes I just say, "I'll send you my presentation, but the format I
have it in won't do you much good. I use a program that works awesome
for me, but no one really uses it."

In essence... I can share my data and information quite well without
having to use MS Office. I happen to work in an environment where
folks are usually interested in raw data (I can provide the same .csv
or .xls export from LibreOffice that I use myself) or read only
reference material. There's not a ton of collaborative document
editing going on.

Anyway, I was worried about this as well. I found that making it known
I prefer to use fringe software because it's awesome and makes me more
efficient has helped people just get used to that fact ;)


John


>
>
> Kind regards
>
> Martin
>
>
>

Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[M]

> Von: John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com>
> Datum: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:16:34 -0500
> An: M <Elwood151@web.de>
> Cc: "emacs-orgmode@gnu.org" <emacs-orgmode@gnu.org>
> Betreff: Re: [O] How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based
> environment?
> 
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 4:06 PM, M <Elwood151@web.de> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> I'm using Emacs org-mode for task and information management in a business
>> environment dominated by Microsoft products (Windows, Office, ...).
>> 
>> I wonder how to create a set-up for maximum productivity and I'd like to
>> know how you integrate org-mode in your work on MS Windows.
>> 
>> Creating hyperlinks in my org-mode files/tasks, which let me jump directly
>> to E-Mail in MS Outlook (Exchange-based), open Word-, Excel- or Powerpoint
>> documents, etc. is a very helpful feature for integrating org-mode.
>> 
>> Are there other techniques, tools or add-ons which are helpful for that
>> purpose?
> 
> My personal technique is to let everyone /else/ use MS and to use
> org-mode as exclusively as I can. My management is fully used to me
> providing PDF Beamer presentations at project update meetings while
> everyone else has submitted PowerPoints. I can submit reports as a
> file upload to our central research document center, so I compose in
> org-mode, and then tweak/final-export in LaTeX.

Hi John,

thanks for your detailed answer!
Well, a large part of my work is sharing and editing Office documents
together with other people and as meetings are planned with MS Outlook/MS
Exchange etc, I can not avoid using MS Outlook and MS Office and it is not
sufficient to distribute PDF documents.

So unfortunately I'll have to find a way to integrate as good as possible.
(I had tried to use MS Outlook 2007 for managing tasks for some weeks but I
was missing a lot of features I got used to from org-mode, so I installed
org-mode.

One example of helpful integration: if I send or get an e-mail which I want
to follow-up on later, I want to track that in org-mode and I want to have a
way to quickly find the original message in Outlook again (to reply or
forward it or whatever), which can be done with hyperlinks.

I'm sure there are a lot more useful tricks which can help in daily work, e.
g. a vba macro which copies the path to the currently open word or excel
document into the clipboard or even directly opens org-capture to add some
note or task which is linked to this document...

So I'm hoping to get in contact with people with the same problems or
solutions to them. :-)

Kind regards

Martin 

Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[Russell Adams]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 04:16:34PM -0500, John Hendy wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 4:06 PM, M <Elwood151@web.de> wrote:
> My personal technique is to let everyone /else/ use MS and to use
> org-mode as exclusively as I can. My management is fully used to me
> providing PDF Beamer presentations at project update meetings while
> everyone else has submitted PowerPoints. I can submit reports as a
> file upload to our central research document center, so I compose in
> org-mode, and then tweak/final-export in LaTeX.

I often will write technical documentation in Org, and export it to
HTML. MS Word users can import it and immediately apply a company
template, while the HTML preserves much of the formatting. Looks quite
good in the end.

Obviously it's a one way process though, I don't receive Word
documents.

Thanks.

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Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[Russell Adams]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 05:04:23PM -0500, Russell Adams wrote:
> I often will write technical documentation in Org, and export it to
> HTML. MS Word users can import it and immediately apply a company
> template, while the HTML preserves much of the formatting. Looks quite
> good in the end.
>

Another quick useful tip for Org publishing:

I do have to use Visio for making technical drawings, which are
frequently a full page. I export from Visio directly to PDF using the
built in publish method. When I compiled Org to PDF via Latex, I found
that if I include the "pdfpages" package which I believe is included
in texlive, I can insert the full Visio PDF page into the final output
without having my normal headers and footers or disrupting the
document.

#+LATEX_HEADER: \usepackage{pdfpages}

\includepdf[angle=90]{./diagram.pdf}

Good luck!

------------------------------------------------------------------
Russell Adams                            RLAdams@AdamsInfoServ.com

PGP Key ID:     0x1160DCB3           http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/

Fingerprint:    1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F  66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3

Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[Mikhail Titov]

M <Elwood151@web.de> writes:

> So unfortunately I'll have to find a way to integrate as good as possible.
> (I had tried to use MS Outlook 2007 for managing tasks for some weeks but I
> was missing a lot of features I got used to from org-mode, so I installed
> org-mode.
>
> One example of helpful integration: if I send or get an e-mail which I want
> to follow-up on later, I want to track that in org-mode and I want to have a
> way to quickly find the original message in Outlook again (to reply or
> forward it or whatever), which can be done with hyperlinks.

You can set up Gnus if Exchange server is available via IMAP otherwise
see Q 3.10 [1]. With Gnus you can easily insert links right to your
e-mail. Indeed the ability to bookmark an e-mail is something I would
miss without Org mode.

[1] http://gnus.org/manual/gnus_397.html#SEC446

> I'm sure there are a lot more useful tricks which can help in daily work, e.
> g. a vba macro which copies the path to the currently open word or excel
> document into the clipboard or even directly opens org-capture to add some
> note or task which is linked to this document...

You can use dired to navigate to your word document in the first place
and make a link using dired.

-- 
Mikhail

Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[Giovanni Ridolfi]

Da: M <Elwood151@web.de>
Inviato: Giovedì 12 Luglio 2012 23:06

> I'd like to
> know how you integrate org-mode in your work on MS Windows.

Hi Martin,

I use Org in a Windows 7 environment too.

Regarding he interaction with collegues, (as Russel have already suggested) 
I write my reports in  Org, then export to HTML with the proper stilesheet and then open in word
for the last editing.
If I had installed LibreOffice my life'd have been a lot easier (hint, hint ;)

In Org I can open dired link to pdf files (clicking o them), but I haven't yet managed 
to open links to word and excel files.

In my home directory I have a .mailcap file:
---------------------------------
application/pdf;  "C:/Program Files (x86)/Adobe/Reader 10.0/Reader/AcroRd32.exe" %s
a plic tion/w rd; "C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Office/Office12/win ord.exe" %s    <- DOES NOT WORK and certain letters are missing.
--------------------------

Like Mikhail pointed out dired is really useful and
I use Dired extensively; it can also resolve addresses through the Intranet 
evaluating expressions like:

(dired-at-point "//Server1/everybody/my-dir")

I also open the files with the appropriate program (excel, word, reader..) in the Dired buffer
pressing F3, having the following  code in my .emacs:

;; Dired 
;=========
(setq delete-by-moving-to-trash t)
;;; Open files with i.e.
; http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2284319/opening-files-with-default-windows-application-from-within-emacs
(defun w32-browser (doc) (w32-shell-execute 1 doc))

(eval-after-load "dired" '(define-key dired-mode-map [f3] (lambda () (interactive) (w32-browser (dired-replace-in-string "/" "\\" (dired-get-filename))))))

cheers,
Giovanni

Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[Brett Viren]

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Hi Martin,

M <Elwood151@web.de> writes:

> One example of helpful integration: if I send or get an e-mail which I want
> to follow-up on later, I want to track that in org-mode and I want to have a
> way to quickly find the original message in Outlook again (to reply or
> forward it or whatever), which can be done with hyperlinks.

You can simplify making links to your email messages by creating a
custom link abbreviation assuming there is some uniquely identifying
chunk of the URL to use as a key.

Here are examples using google search and maps:

;; in .emacs
(setq org-link-abbrev-alist
      '(
        ("google"   . "http://www.google.com/search?q=")
        ("gmap"     . "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s")
        ))

Example org markup:

[[google:org-mode][org-mode on google]]



-Brett.

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Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[gambatte64]

maybe the information there is useful:

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/OrgOutlook

Alfred

Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[Luis Anaya]

Hi:

There have been a list of good suggestions of integrating org-mode with
MS products. I personally use org-mode primarily for task tracking
rather than document generation.  I use the following combination of
tools and techniques:

1. I get tickets assign for review on JIRA. I capture those using
jira.el . Yes, I am aware that there is a jira-org tool, but I'm used to
jira.el. I get a list of tickets, highlight any new ones and store them
in remember mode for inclusion into my task file. 

2. I do use gnus with IMAP in which I use davmail as the conduit. If you
are lucky to have exchange enabled with IMAP, then you do not need to do
this. In my workplace, that's not the case. The issue of using davmail
is that you get constrained to use emacs 22 being that version of gnus
that is shipped in emacs 23 does not play well with davmail. I have not
tried it with emacs 24. This is mostly for emails and capture any new
tasks or ideas that warrant to be stored for tracking. 

3. I do not normally store appointments in org-mode. I rather have my
phone nagging me when a meeting is coming up.  I use the weekly agenda
to track deadlines. 


Using HTML for export is a good way to transfer content as has been
suggested.  In my personal case, most of my documentation stored in org-mode
are meeting notes, I really do not have a need to transfer to Word being
that these are for my use. 


-- 
Luis Anaya
papo anaya aroba hot mail punto com
"Do not use 100 words if you can say it in 10" - Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[Kyle Andrews]

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Hi Martin,

You should be able to link to Excel and Word documents from Org by
prefixing the normal path with "file+sys:" instead of just file.  This
doesn't work when the files are on a Windows Share (at least for me),
though.  I'm also interested in getting a robust connection between Org and
Outlook so I will be paying attention to this thread with earnest.

Best Regards,

Kyle

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 5:06 PM, M <Elwood151@web.de> wrote:

>
>
> I'm using Emacs org-mode for task and information management in a business
> environment dominated by Microsoft products (Windows, Office, ...).
>
> I wonder how to create a set-up for maximum productivity and I'd like to
> know how you integrate org-mode in your work on MS Windows.
>
>>
>> Creating hyperlinks in my org-mode files/tasks, which let me jump directly
> to E-Mail in MS Outlook (Exchange-based), open Word-, Excel- or Powerpoint
> documents, etc. is a very helpful feature for integrating org-mode.
>
> Are there other techniques, tools or add-ons which are helpful for that
> purpose?
>
>
> Kind regards
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>

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Re: How to integrate org-mode in a MS Windows-/Office-based environment?

[Jambunathan K]

On the viewing front, doc-view can be used to view OpenDocument files
right within Emacs.

From the manual,

,----
| 35 Document Viewing
| *******************
| 
| DocView mode is a major mode for viewing DVI, PostScript (PS), PDF,
| OpenDocument, and Microsoft Office documents.  It provides features
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| such as slicing, zooming, and searching inside documents.  It works by
| converting the document to a set of images using the `gs' (GhostScript)
| command and other external tools (1), and displaying those images.
`----

The viewer uses unoconv as the default converter.  There were some
issues that I identified while using LibreOffice as converter.  It is
possible that pdf file generated by the two converters differ in a
subtle way.

--