Anagram
Anagram
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anagram
an·a·gram (an'?-gram')
n.
- A word or phrase formed by reordering the letters of another word or phrase, such as satin to stain.
- A great software program that grabs text from nearly anywhere and inserts it into your Outlook or Palm.
All right, I confess. I added #2 to the above dictionary definition. But after you use this intelligent program for just a short time, you'll be ready to add it to the dictionary too. So what does this program do for you? Just what you'd hope for in an inexpensive, easy-to-use utility: it saves you time and makes your life easier.
If you're like me, you use Outlook on a daily basis for your email. Like me, you probably have lots of names in your Contacts list – but the remaining contact information is woefully missing. You may be able to email John Smith, Esq. but you don't have his address or telephone number in Outlook because you didn't want to take the time to type it in by hand or cut-and-paste it into the appropriate location. Instead, you just left it out.
Guess what? Anagram solves this problem in a snap.
All you need to do is choose the text you want to capture, like this for an email:
You capture it by holding down the Control key and pressing c twice quickly, assuming you have the default “ctrl-c ctrl-c” shortcut key enabled. (You can elect to have a different key combination work for you.)
Anagram somehow intelligently determines the type of text you selected and chooses what you want to do with it. In this case, for example, it understands that you want this contact information to be inserted into your Outlook program. It opens up Outlook (if it's not already running) and does this:
Voila! If you need to make any changes to where anagram decided to place the information, you have the opportunity to do so. If you like where everything is located, just click Save and Close and your contact information is complete.
Where anagram really shines is its ability to intelligently rearrange words and
letters (thus the name of the program) so that just the information you want is included – the rest is discarded. This is a much more difficult task than it might appear. The problem is that everyone has a different way of signing emails. My signature, for example, looks like this:
Alan R. Nye Law Offices
225 Commercial Street
Portland, Maine 04101
(207) 828-4400 phone
(207) 828-4300 fax
anye@alannye.com
www.alannye.com
This type of signature is a snap with anagram. It magically discards the words phone and fax in my signature and rearranges everything into the appropriate place in Outlook. I recently received emails from folks who had their signatures configured this way (as applied to mine):
Alan R. Nye Law Offices
225 Commercial Street
Portland, Maine 04101
H: (207) 828-4400
F: (207) 828-4300
C: (207) 329-5997
anye@alannye.com
www.alannye.com
Alan R. Nye Law Offices
225 Commercial Street
Portland, Maine 04101
207.828.4400 V.
207.828.4300 F.
anye@alannye.com
www.alannye.com
(Notice the differences in what they call their phone and fax, and where the information is located in their signature.) I even had an email from someone that I received after it had gone back and forth between other individuals. By the time it got to me, it looked like something like this:
>>>>>>>Alan R. Nye Law Offices
>>>>>>>>225 Commercial Street
>>>>>>>Portland, Maine 04101
>>>>>>>207.828.4400
>>>>>207.828.4300
>>>>>>>anye@alannye.com
>>>>>>>>>>www.alannye.com
When I highlighted the entire text, anagram ignored all the extraneous arrows and placed the information just where it was supposed to be.
It captures the address on any document – email, website or document. Now I'm not saying it won't ever make mistakes – but they'll be rare.
In addition to capturing contact information, anagram also captures information about appointments, tasks and memos and somehow figures out where the information goes in Outlook. If you use Outlook as your calendar and opposing counsel writes you an email suggesting that you meet next Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. to discuss discovery, you can simply highlight that information, press your shortcut key and anagram will place the information into your Outlook calendar.
My only complaint about the product is that it just works with Outlook and Palm devices. I use Amicus Attorney for many of my addresses and for my calendar – I'd love it if the software could be used to import the information directly into Amicus. Still, there's no arguing that this product is well worth its modest price and is a great time saver. I highly recommend it.
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