Sound Questions

[nut4wine]

How do you select different sounds for the various alerts? The help says that you can use the drop down to select different sets, but they only thing there is "Default" and I don't see how to add to it.

Also, are the speaker icons in Entourage working for anyone? Whenever I click on one, I don't hear anything.

BTW, one piece of information, if you change where alerts are played in the system preferences (in Leopard, at least), it seems you have to restart Entourage for it to pick up on that change. Until I did that, I wasn't hearing alerts sounds for anything.

 

[Diane Ross]

How do you select different sounds for the various alerts? The help says that
you can use the drop down to select different sets, but they only thing there
is "Default" and I don't see how to add to it.

Also, are the speaker icons in Entourage working for anyone? Whenever I click
on one, I don't hear anything.

BTW, one piece of information, if you change where alerts are played in the
system preferences (in Leopard, at least), it seems you have to restart
Entourage for it to pick up on that change. Until I did that, I wasn't hearing
alerts sounds for anything.

Currently, Sounds are broken in Office 2008 and Leopard. FWIW, Apple Mail is
also experiencing the same problem.

 

[nut4wine]

I came across those posts later. For some reason I missed them earlier. Thanks for the information. Hopefully an update isn't too far away.

 

[Diane Ross]

I came across those posts later. For some reason I missed them earlier. Thanks
for the information. Hopefully an update isn't too far away.

I'm going to be posting a workaround for new mail sound soon, but using
custom sounds is so much better....

Before the sound problem, I've used custom sounds with rules in Entourage. I
use these specific sounds for special mails. Examples:

If mail is from:

a buddy... I hear the spoken text "buddy"
a friend... I hear spoken text "friends"
Work category... I hear the "ships bell sound"
Support work....the quack sound
Family...the "You've got mail"
Alerts....the alert sound...easy to hear this one in another room

The combination of spoken word and sounds makes it easy to identify the
notification. Too many just sounds will start getting confusion, at least it
is for me.

Starting to get the picture of how useful this could be?

See this page for using custom sounds with Entourage. You can even create
your own sounds or use computer voices to announce your mail. For example,
you could have the AppleScript say ³Mail from Dad².

Rule to Play Sound

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/rules/sounds.html>

I made a lot of these sounds available for downloading including the
AppleScripts to run them. Screenshots show how to create the rule.

 

[Hal]

I wasn't getting any sound, so I zapped the PRAM (Command/Option/P/R) at
startup and sounds are working fine on my 10.5.2 system running Entourage
2008.

Hal

 

[Hal]

I misspoke. It worked for one message (outbound) and not, again.

Hal

 

[cberrien]

I'm going to be posting a workaround for new mail sound soon, but using
custom sounds is so much better....

Before the sound problem, I've used custom sounds with rules in Entourage.I
use these specific sounds for special mails. Examples:

If mail is from:

a buddy... I hear the spoken text "buddy"
a friend... I hear spoken text "friends"
Work category... I hear the "ships bell sound"
Support work....the quack sound
Family...the "You've got mail"
Alerts....the alert sound...easy to hear this one in another room

The combination of spoken word and sounds makes it easy to identify the
notification. Too many just sounds will start getting confusion, at least it
is for me.

Starting to get the picture of how useful this could be?

See this page for using custom sounds with Entourage. You can even create
your own sounds or use computer voices to announce your mail. For example,
you could have the AppleScript say ³Mail from Dad².

Rule to Play Sound

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/rules/sounds.html>

I made a lot of these sounds available for downloading including the
AppleScripts to run them. Screenshots show how to create the rule.

Diane..thank you for your ideas for using custom sounds with entourage
2008. I tried to follow all you instructions...but when I run scripts
(e.g. set cusrPath to (path to "cusr" as string)
set soundAlias to (cusrPath & "Documents:Microsoft User Data:Custom
Sounds:alert.aiff") as alias

tell application "Play Sound"
<<event µMCSplay>> (soundAlias as alias)
end tell)
I get back APPLE SCRIPT ERROR File Macintosh
HD:Users:curtisberrienocuments:Microsoft User Data:Custom
Sounds:alert.aiff wasn't found. I have the aiff files in the Customs
sounds Folder in my Microsoft User Data Folder. Any ideas?
Thanks

 

[nut4wine]

The first thing I would check is the spelling of everything along the path and make sure that it's correct, especially the extension on the sound file. The second thing I would check is permissions, but since it's your home directory, I would think you add sufficient access.

 

[Diane Ross]

Diane..thank you for your ideas for using custom sounds with entourage
2008. I tried to follow all you instructions...but when I run scripts
(e.g. set cusrPath to (path to "cusr" as string)
set soundAlias to (cusrPath & "Documents:Microsoft User Data:Custom
Sounds:alert.aiff") as alias

tell application "Play Sound"
<<event µMCSplay>> (soundAlias as alias)
end tell)
I get back APPLE SCRIPT ERROR File Macintosh
HD:Users:curtisberrienocuments:Microsoft User Data:Custom
Sounds:alert.aiff wasn't found. I have the aiff files in the Customs
sounds Folder in my Microsoft User Data Folder. Any ideas?
Thanks

Open the script and remove this:

<<event µMCSplay>>

I had this same problem when I updated Play sound. I received this back from
the Play Sound Developer.

The problem you were having had to do with the fact that your scripts were
written with an older version of Play Sound that used a different internal
code for the "play" command in the dictionary (µMCSplay). So when you opened
the script with the new version installed, AppleScript saw the old code and
didn't know what to do with it. I make it a point to change terminology
codes very rarely so this doesn't happen often. Unfortunately, sometimes it
can't be avoided. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Here is the correct script:

set cusrPath to (path to "cusr" as string)
set soundAlias to (cusrPath & "Documents:Microsoft User Data:Custom
Sounds:newmail.mp3") as alias
tell application "Play Sound"
play soundAlias
end tell