...many moons ago, my work mail was sent exclusively through a unix based mail server. I worked on a linux machine and used pine, exmh, then netscape mail for awhile. Slowly though, my workgroup and the rest of the company moved to Exchange servers/Outlook mail for all mail/meeting stuff. For awhile I forwarded everything to the unix mail, but eventually I got more and more excel/word/ppt/ attachments , having to log into a windows terminal server session to invoke outlook periodically to check my exchange mail. Now I keep a wts session with outlook running(using rdesktop) up in one of many virtual desktops (fvwm2) So...

My problem though was that when working in one of the other virtual dekstops, I wasn't notified of new outlook mails/reminders. I wanted a little xbiff like widget that notified me of new mail with perhaps even a subject preview. Miricle of Miricles, I noticed that they recently installed activestate perl on the wts machines. So I decided to try and use a win32/ole interface to notify me of incoming mail or reminders and a seperate process would launch a simple tcp server that would handle 2 clients. The win32 process(client1) detects an outlook event, notifies the tcp server, then the server notifies a remote perl/tk app(client2). My problem is that when I attempt to retrieve the mail sender or address property I get an Outlook security prompt:

  my $namespace = $outlook->GetNamespace("MAPI");
  my $folder = $namespace->GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox);
  my $mailitems = $folder->Items;
  my $firstmail = $mailitems->GetFirst;
  my $subject = $firstmail->Subject;
  my $sendername = $firstmail->SenderName; #Outlook security prompt
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I found a description of possible workarounds at this site:
http://www.outlookcode.com/d/sec.htm

-but they all involve either installing a 3rd party app (I'm not allowed to touch the windows registry on these wts machines) or they are beyond my meager skills. Does anyone know a way around this? I can probably live without knowing the sender name on a message pop up, but I figured if anyone knew how do do this in perl, it would be someone reading perlmonks...and tips would be much appreciated.

I'll post the code of the win32 perl script (active state 5.6.1) that monitors outlook and launches a tcp server:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Win32::Process;
use Tk;
use Win32::OLE qw(EVENTS);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Outlook';
use IO::Socket;
use subs qw(dump_calendar Event GetMessage ErrorReport exit_app);
require Tk::ROText;
my $homelog = "H:/outlook_calendar.dump";

my $ProcessObj;
Win32::Process::Create($ProcessObj, 'C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe', 'perl H:\b
+in\receiver.pl', 0, DETACHED_PROCESS , ".")|| die ErrorReport();
######client coonection to above server process
my $socket = IO::Socket::INET->new(
                                   PeerAddr => 'localhost',
                                   PeerPort => '8008',
                                   Proto    => 'tcp',
                                  );
defined $socket or die "ERROR: Can't connect to port 8008\n";

#Get the active outlook process
my $outlook = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Outlook.Application') or di
+e "Error! $!\n";

#Event handler for newmails/reminders/etc
Win32::OLE->WithEvents($outlook,\&Event,"ApplicationEvents_10");

#########################################
#Create a basic window with a text widget
my $mw  = new MainWindow;
my $mw_text = $mw->Scrolled(qw/ROText -scrollbars ose/)->pack;
my $mw_entry = $mw->Entry()->pack(qw/-fill x -pady 5/);
$mw->bind('<Any-Enter>' => sub { $mw_entry->Tk::focus });
#$mw_entry->bind('<Return>' => [\&broadcast, $socket]);
$mw_entry->bind('<Return>' => sub { my $text = $mw_entry->get;
                                    $mw_entry->delete(qw/0 end/);
                                    print $socket "$text\n";
                                    });
$mw->protocol('WM_DELETE_WINDOW', \&exit_app);

MainLoop;
###########################################
#Win32::OLE->MessageLoop(); #Don't need it? already in tk mainloop


sub broadcast {
    my ($ent, $sock) = @_;
    my $text = $ent->get;
    $ent->delete(qw/0 end/);
    print $socket $text, "\n";
}


sub ErrorReport{
        print Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );
}

sub dump_calendar {
  my $namespace = $outlook->GetNamespace("MAPI");
  my $folder = $namespace->GetDefaultFolder(olFolderCalendar);
  my $items = $folder->Items;
  #Format a date string to use for a Start time filter###
  my ($dsec,$dmin,$dhour,$dmday,$dmon,$dyear,$dwday,$dyday,$disdst) = 
+localtime(time);
  my $fixed_year = $dyear - 100;
  my $fixed_month = $dmon + 1;
  my $mon = sprintf("%02d", $fixed_month);
  my $day = sprintf("%02d", $dmday);
  my $year = sprintf("%02d", $fixed_year);
  print "DATE: $mon : $day : $year\n ";
  my $date_string = "$mon/$day/$year";
  #######################################################
  my $strToday = "[Start] >= '" .$date_string ." 12:00 am' and [Start]
+ <= '". $date_string . " 11:59 pm'";
  $items->Sort("[Start]");
  $items->{IncludeRecurrences} = 1;
  my $appts = $items->Restrict("$strToday");
  $appts->Sort("[Start]");

  open (HL, ">$homelog") or die "Couldn't open $homelog: $!\n";
  my $current_item = $appts->GetFirst;

  while ($current_item){
    #print   "Subject = " . $current_item->{Subject} . "\n";
    print  HL "Subject = " . $current_item->{Subject} . "\n";
    print  HL "Start = " . $current_item->{Start}->Date . " " . $curre
+nt_item->{Start}->Time ."\n";
    print  HL "Location = " . $current_item->{Location} . "\n";
    $current_item = $appts->GetNext;
    }
  close (HL);
}
sub Event {
    my ($Obj,$Event,@Args) = @_;
    if ($Event eq "NewMail" ) {
      &GetMessage;
      }
    elsif ($Event eq "Reminder") {
      my $appt_item = shift @Args;
      my $start_time = 'N/A';
      my $subject = $appt_item->Subject;
      my $location = $appt_item->Location;
      if (defined $appt_item->{Start}){
        $start_time = $appt_item->{Start}->Time;
        }
      print $socket "APPT: $subject Location: $location Start: $start_
+time\n";
      }
    print "EVENT: $Event\n";
    #Win32::OLE->QuitMessageLoop();
}
sub GetMessage {
  my $namespace = $outlook->GetNamespace("MAPI");
  my $folder = $namespace->GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox);
  my $mailitems = $folder->Items;
  my $firstmail = $mailitems->GetFirst;
  my $subject = $firstmail->Subject;
  #my $sendername = $firstmail->SenderName; #Outlook security prompt
  my $sendername = 'unknown';
  #print "Sender: '$sendername' Subject: '$subject'\n";
  print $socket "MAIL: Sender: '$sendername' Subject: '$subject'\n";
}

sub exit_app {
  $ProcessObj->Kill(0);
  $mw->destroy;
}
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