Text-to-Speech in MS Outlook

				
Speech Synthesis of New Mail in Microsoft Outlook 
When new mail arrives in your Microsoft Outlook Inbox, the sender and subject 
 are read out aloud using the Microsoft text-to-speech control. Uses Microsoft 
 Agent.
The code consists of two sections. The first is a VBS script, which is placed 
 on the hard drive with a '.vbs' extension - in this example, as C:\SpeakNewMail.vbs 

This self-contained script includes a function to speak a text string with 
 the Microsoft Agent control, and accepts the text string as a parameter in the 
 command-line.
Code Listing 1 - SpeakNewMail.vbs
Place this script on your hard drive as C:\SpeakNewMail.vbs
Option Explicit 

 Dim args, num

 set args = WScript.Arguments

 num = args.Count

 if num = 0 then WScript.Quit 

 

 Dim text

 text = "" 

 
 Dim k

 for k = 0 to num - 1

 text = text & " " & args.Item(k) 

 next 

 

 Speak(text)

 

 FUNCTION Speak(txt)

 Dim GenieRequest 

 Dim Genie 

 Dim Agent1 

 

 If ScriptEngineMajorVersion < 2 Then

 EXIT FUNCTION

 Else

 Set Agent1 = WScript.CreateObject("Agent.Control.2", "AgentControl_") 
 

 Agent1.Characters.Load "Genie", "http://agent.microsoft.com/characters/v2/genie/genie.acf"

 Set Genie = Agent1.Characters("Genie")

 Genie.Get "State", "Showing"
Genie.MoveTo 100,100

 Genie.Show

  Wscript.Sleep 200

 Genie.Speak (txt)

 

 Wscript.Sleep (4000 + (200 * LEN(txt)) )

 Genie.Hide

 End If

 END FUNCTION  
Code Listing 2- ThisOutlookSession
The following code is placed in the ThisOutlookSession module of Microsoft 
 Outlook:
Private Sub Application_NewMail()

 Dim oFolder

 Dim oNewItem

 Dim s

 Set oFolder = GetNamespace("MAPI").GetDefaultFolder(6)

 For Each oNewItem In oFolder.Items.Restrict("[Unread] = 0")

 s = "Email from " & oNewItem.SenderName & ". Message - "

 s = s & Trim(oNewItem.Subject)

 Speak (Trim(s))

 oNewItem.UnRead = 0

 Next

 End Sub

 

 Public Function Speak(txt)

 Dim spk As String

 Dim t As String

 t = " " & Trim(txt)

 spk = "C:\SpeakNewMail.vbs"

 spk = spk & " """ & t & """"

 Call WSHRun(spk, 1, True)

 End Function

 

 Public Function WSHRun(strCmd As String, bVisible As Integer, bWait As Boolean)

 'Shell run

 Dim WSHShell

 Set WSHShell = CreateObject("wscript.Shell")

 WSHShell.Run strCmd, bVisible, bWait

 Set WSHShell = Nothing

 End Function