Scheduling your Drive Time in Outlook

When I posted the simple macro to create an appointment from an email message, I got a message from a colleague, Kurt Shintaku, who came up with an idea for a time-saving Outlook macro when working with one of his customers: create a "Drive Time" appointment immediately before an existing appointment. 

I wrote this short macro while waiting for my airplane in the Denver airport and added it to my quick-launch toolbar for appointments (It's the signpost on the far right). Now I'm using Live Writer on the airplane to compose my blog post.  Here's what the macro does:

For the selected appointment, create a new appointment with the following properties:

  1. Subject should be Drive Time for {appointment.Subject}
  2. Location should be the appointment's location
  3. Duration should be 30 minutes
  4. Start time should be 30 minutes before the appointment
  5. Busy state should be "Out of Office"
  6. Category should be Yellow "Drive Time"
  7. Add a reminder of what not to forget.
  8. Save the new appointment
  9. Display the new appointment

Not a real appointment.

Give it a try and tell me what you think of it.  The macro is attached to this post.

DriveTime.bas