So I'm a recent convert of Outlook+Exchange to Gmail (company forced). I approve a lot of requisitions and such in email for automated processing by other applications. To do this, I simply review the message and if I approve it, reply and add "Approved" to the end of the subject. In Outlook, I created the VBA macro that would take the selected message and do the this task automatically: reply; modify the subject; send; and move the original message. This made for 2 click process… 1 to select the message and review it, one to respond with approval and archive the original message.
I'm an old hand with VBA but completely green with google script. From what I've seen, it looks intuitive but I need some help getting started. I'd appreciate some pointers. I've included a snippet of the VBA code below:
Dim obj As Object
Dim msg As Outlook.MailItem
Dim msgReply As Outlook.MailItem
Set obj = GetCurrentItem 'grabs the currently selected item.
If TypeName(obj) = "MailItem" Then 'make sure the item is a mailitem
Set msg = obj 'msg is now the mail item to work on
If msg.Parent = "AP Invoices" Then 'need to make sure the msg is in the AP Invoices folder
Set msgReply = msg.ReplyAll 'this initiates a reply all to the msg
msgReply.Subject = msgReply.Subject & "Approved" 'adds "Approved" to end existing subject
msgReply.Display 'displays the message
msgReply.Send 'sends the message
msg.UnRead = False 'marks the original msg as read
msg.Move olProcessedFolder 'moves the original msg to a different folder
end if
end if
In Outlook, I used rules to get the email into the "AP Invoices" folder and I have Gmail doing the same for a label using a filter.
Question: Once I have a script, how do I manually initiate it? On Outlook, I added a command button on the toolbar that launched the VBA macro… not sure if that is possible in Gmail.
Appreciate any assistance.
Best Answer
By exclusively using Google Apps Script there is no way to add a custom button to the Gmail toolbar to call a script. You could create a Gmail add-on that will show a sidebar with custom button, text boxes etc.
You could create a bookmarklet, use Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey or another similar web browser extension to use a "user script" and the Google Apps Script API to execute a Google Apps Script function.
References