Get Google Calendar Event ID from the Page

If you need to find out the event ID from a Google calendar event, then luckily Google puts the ID for us on the page! I found this posting on stackoverflow which enlightened me to this fact.

The ID is stored in base64 so needs converting. Follow these steps to get it:

1. Go to/edit the event in your Google calendar
2. Use the browser debugger (I'm in Chrome) or view the source (I'm using the debugger)
3. Click the elements tab and press Ctrl+F to search the markup
4. Search for data-eid
5. Copy the value for data-eid

And there ya go! If you don't have means to decode the base64 value use this site to do it.

When it is decoded you will see a sequence of alphanumerics a space and the email address associated to the account. Obviously it is the first sequence you need!

Sending Email using VBScript via Google Apps Mail / GMail

Following on from my previous post Sending Email using ASP.NET via Google Apps Mail / GMail, I have needed to send an email via GMail / Google Apps using VBScript. So here it is...

Dim objMessage

Set objMessage = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
objMessage.Subject = "MY_SUBJECT"
objMessage.From = "FROM_ADDRESS_SAME_AS_USER_NAME"
objMessage.To = "TO_ADDRESS"
objMessage.TextBody = "MY_MESSAGE"

objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item( _
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item( _
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "smtp.gmail.com"
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item( _
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 465
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item( _
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate") = 1
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item( _
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpusessl") = true
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item( _
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername") = "MY_USER_NAME"
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item( _
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword") = "MY_PASSWORD"
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Update

out = objMessage.Send
Set objMessage = Nothing

Select Multiple Emails in GMail / Google Apps Mail

I found it quite annoying when there were a lot of emails that I needed to delete in GMail. Turns out you can select multiple emails by checking the first item in the list, pressing the shift key and checking the last item in the list - hey presto :)

Sending Email using ASP.NET via Google Apps Mail / GMail

I have recently moved all my hosting to go through Google Apps and it is sweet :)

This meant that I needed to modify my emailing routine in various .NET apps. A lot of this can be done via the Web.Config, but due to various reasons, I need to control it in code.

So configure your MailMessage object as per usual. I have added msg.DeliveryNotificationOptions = DeliveryNotificationOptions.OnFailure; to mine, which could prove to be useful. Then configure your SmtpClient a follows:

SmtpClient smtp = new SmtpClient("smtp.gmail.com");
smtp.EnableSsl = true;
smtp.Timeout = 10000;
smtp.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network;
smtp.UseDefaultCredentials = false;
smtp.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("email@mydomain.com", "my-password");
smtp.Send(msg);

Now a lot of articles I read suggested that you need to use port number 587 for the SmtpClient. When I did, I got the following error:

Request for the permission of type 'System.Net.Mail.SmtpPermission' failed

So I tried without declaring it and it worked just fine :)

A point worth noting: Make sure the account you are sending the email through is the same account that you are sending from.