How to Let Outlook Auto Speak the Subject of an Item when Its Reminder Pops up

When a reminder pops up in Outlook, some users wish to not only get the reminder sound but also hear the corresponding item’s main information, such as subject or others. This article will teach you to make this idea come true via a bit of scripting.

Outlook supports users to change the reminder sound. However, you may think that the reminder sound cannot fulfill your needs. What you hope is that Outlook can directly speak the item’s subject, such that you could easily gain the item’s info without needs to check the item. Even though Outlook doesn’t offer this feature, it still can be realized by Excel “Speech” feature. Thus, here we’ll expose a piece of VBA code to get it.

Auto Speak the Subject of an Item when Its Reminder Pops up

1. For a start, launch Outlook program.
2. Then, go to Outlook VBA editor with accordance to “How to Run VBA Code in Your Outlook“.
3. Next, in the new window, add the reference to “MS Excel Object Library” by following the steps in “How to Add an Object Library Reference in VBA“.
4. After that, put the VBA code below into the “ThisOutlookSession” project.

Public WithEvents objReminders As Outlook.Reminders

Private Sub Application_Startup()
    Set objReminders = Outlook.Application.Reminders
End Sub

'When a reminder pops up
Private Sub objReminders_ReminderFire(ByVal ReminderObject As Reminder)
    Dim objItem As Object
    Dim objExcelApp As Excel.Application
    Dim strSpeechText As String
 
    'Get the corresponding item
    Set objItem = ReminderObject.Item
 
    'Text to be read out
    strSpeechText = Left(TypeName(objItem), Len(TypeName(objItem)) - 4) & objItem.Subject & " is upcoming!"
 
    'Read out by Excel Speech feature
    Set objExcelApp = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
    objExcelApp.Speech.Speak (strSpeechText)
    objExcelApp.Quit
End Sub

Note: Change the speech text to your liking.

5. Subsequently, click into the “Application_Startup” subroutine and press “F5” key button.
6. From now on, every time when a reminder pops up, you will absolutely hear the associated item’s information.

Look out for All Potential Risks around Outlook

Since Outlook is vulnerable, you have to make efforts to safeguard it. Without any doubts, one of the most important actions is to bock all potential threats, such as email borne viruses, improper Outlook shutdown and so on. These request you to keep alert all the time. Of course, apart from these, you’d better make regular data backups that will help a lot in the event of Outlook corruption. Last but not least, you ought to get hold of a powerful third party fix tool, such as DataNumen Outlook Repair. It can repair Outlook file like a cork.

Author Introduction:

Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including mdf recovery and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com