Forem: Akshay Jatin Solanki

I Was Tired of Saving Outlook Attachments One-by-One — So I Automated It

Akshay Jatin Solanki — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:52:41 +0000

I Was Tired of Saving Outlook Attachments One-by-One — So I Automated It

If you work heavily with Microsoft Outlook in a corporate environment, you probably know this painful routine:

Open email
Download attachment
Save file
Repeat again
Repeat 100 more times

It sounds small.

But when your work involves:

engineering documents
vendor quotations
datasheets
project files
MOMs
RFQs
procurement emails
client deliverables

…it becomes a massive repetitive productivity drain.

Especially in EPC, engineering, documentation, procurement, and project management workflows.

At one point I realized:

I was spending more time downloading attachments than actually doing meaningful work.

So I decided to automate it.

The Problem

Microsoft Outlook still doesn’t provide a clean native way to:

✅ Select multiple emails
✅ Download all attachments together
✅ Handle duplicate filenames safely
✅ Skip useless signature images
✅ Avoid repetitive clicking

Instead, the normal workflow looks like this:

❌ Open email
❌ Download attachment
❌ Save file
❌ Close email
❌ Repeat manually forever

For a few emails this is okay.

For hundreds of emails every week?

Not okay.

The Idea

I built a VBA automation tool for Outlook that allows me to:

Select multiple emails at once
Download all attachments automatically
Handle duplicate filenames
Skip inline/signature images
Prevent invalid filenames
Keep Outlook responsive during large batch operations

Now the workflow is:

✅ Select emails
✅ Run macro
✅ Choose folder
✅ Done

That’s it.

Real Productivity Impact

If you process:

100–200 emails/day
multiple attachments per email
large engineering/project documentation

this repetitive task alone can waste several hours every week.

The biggest realization for me was:

Small automation removes huge mental fatigue.

Not just time.

Mental fatigue.

Repetitive clicking slowly destroys focus during office work.

Automation fixes that.

Features

The tool includes:

Bulk Outlook attachment saving
Duplicate filename handling
Illegal filename sanitization
Inline/signature image filtering
OLE attachment filtering
MAX_PATH protection
Outlook UI responsiveness optimization
Defensive error handling
Performance optimization

It evolved from:

“simple VBA macro”

into:

“production-grade Outlook productivity automation.”

Example Workflow

Before:

❌ Open email
❌ Save attachment
❌ Repeat manually

After:

✅ Select all emails
✅ Run macro
✅ Everything downloads automatically

Who This Is Useful For

This turned out to be surprisingly useful for:

Engineering teams
EPC companies
Procurement departments
Documentation teams
Project managers
Corporate Outlook-heavy workflows
Anyone drowning in repetitive email attachments

Basically:

anyone who spends too much time inside Outlook.

Why I Shared It Open Source

A lot of office productivity problems are weirdly universal.

Thousands of people are probably repeating the same boring tasks every day manually because:

they don’t know automation is possible
nobody showed them
or they assume only “developers” can automate workflows

But small automation tools can genuinely save:

hours
frustration
repetitive effort
mental exhaustion

So I decided to publish this project publicly on GitHub.

GitHub Repository

Repository:

https://github.com/akshayai1996/Outlook-Bulk-Attachment-Saver

Future Improvements

Some ideas I may add later:

Sender-based folder sorting
Date-wise organization
CSV logging
Duplicate hash detection
ZIP extraction
Ribbon button integration
Progress bar
Power Automate integration

Final Thought

One thing I’ve started realizing recently:

A lot of impactful software is not flashy.

Sometimes the best tools are simply the ones that remove repetitive friction from everyday work.

This project started because I got tired of clicking “Save Attachment” hundreds of times.

Now it saves me hours every week.

And honestly, I wish Outlook had this feature natively.

productivity #automation #outlook #vba #office #workflow #opensource #engineering #microsoft #developers

From Frustrated to "Pro": Why I Built My Own Screen Annotation Suite from Scratch

Akshay Jatin Solanki — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:11:26 +0000

The Breaking Point 😫
I spent two days trying to simplify an existing, over-engineered annotation tool. It was full of bugs, heavy, and limited. I realized I was spending more time fighting the code than using the tool.

So, I did what any developer does when they reach a breaking point: I abandoned the mess and wrote it from scratch.

Introducing Simpink 🎨
I wanted something better than the "standard" tools like Epic Pen. I wanted something that felt like it belonged in 2026. After a session of intense, high-performance coding, I finished Simpink.

It’s built using Electron, Vanilla JS, and Hardware-Accelerated Canvas. It’s light, it’s fast, and it looks premium.

What makes it a "Gem"? 💎
I didn't just build a "drawing" tool; I built a presentation suite:

The Highlighter Halo: A persistent cursor aura so your audience never loses your mouse during a live demo.
Pro Video Recording: Native VP9 capture at 25 Mbps, featuring a high-fidelity Pause/Resume engine. (No more OBS required!)
Glassmorphic UI: A floating, draggable toolbar that looks like a part of a modern OS.
"The Orb": A unique minimize state that stays out of your way while keeping your tools accessible.
The "Simpink" Philosophy 🚀
I stripped away the bloat and focused on performance. Everything is rendered via the GPU for zero lag. I even converted my demonstration videos to cut the file size by 90% without losing quality—I wanted the smallest possible footprint for the user.

Open Source & Free 🌍
It is licensed under MIT. It is free for anyone—personal, professional, or commercial. Use it, break it, modify it.

Check out the code and grab the standalone installer on GitHub: 👉 https://github.com/akshayai1996/Simpink

If you've ever felt the urge to start over and build something better, let me know in the comments! Simpink is proof that sometimes, the "scratch" approach is the only way to go.

What I built in the last year — Excel VBA tools, Python scripts, HTML games & more

Akshay Jatin Solanki — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 04:21:57 +0000

Hi, I'm Akshay Jatin Solanki, an engineer from India.

Over the past year I've been building small focused tools that solve real problems. Here's a summary of what I've shipped:

🎮 Browser Games (HTML/JS)

Space Shooter — canvas-based, Web Audio, mobile + PC scaling
Chrome Dino clone — custom audio engine with Web Audio API

📊 Data Dashboards

India Housing Affordability Dashboard — 115 cities with real sqft/price data

🔧 Excel VBA Add-ins

Crosshair row/column highlighter
Merged cell filter
Navigator arrows
Delimiter text functions

🐍 Python & Numerical Tools

Cubic equation solver
Numerical integration utilities

♟️ Other

Chess agent framework with Stockfish WASM in-browser

All projects are minimal-dependency or single-file.

👉 GitHub: https://github.com/akshayai1996
👉 Web projects: https://akshayai1996.github.io/Htmlfun/
👉 LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshay-jatin-solanki/

Happy to get feedback on any of these!

Forem: Akshay Jatin Solanki

I Was Tired of Saving Outlook Attachments One-by-One — So I Automated It

I Was Tired of Saving Outlook Attachments One-by-One — So I Automated It

The Problem

The Idea

Real Productivity Impact

Features

Example Workflow

Who This Is Useful For

Why I Shared It Open Source

GitHub Repository

Future Improvements

Final Thought

Tags

productivity #automation #outlook #vba #office #workflow #opensource #engineering #microsoft #developers

From Frustrated to "Pro": Why I Built My Own Screen Annotation Suite from Scratch

What I built in the last year — Excel VBA tools, Python scripts, HTML games & more

🎮 Browser Games (HTML/JS)

📊 Data Dashboards

🔧 Excel VBA Add-ins

🐍 Python & Numerical Tools

♟️ Other