Tag Archives: Outlook

outlook 2010

Disappointing return of Microsoft Outlook

When I switched from Microsoft Outlook 2007 to Gmail there were two frustrations:

  • Mail and desktop search are not integrated.
  • Gmail contact management is nowhere near as good as Outlook’s.

Recently the first frustration boiled to the point where I decided to revisit Outlook, this time it was Outlook 2010.

While Outlook 2010 has its charms, the experience underlined the reason for my original switch. Webmail clients are more flexible.

Gmail remains the best webmail client. This is even more important now I move from desktop to laptop to smartphone to iPad. It no longer makes sense to have a client on a single device.

Windows 7 integrated search

My main reason for sticking with Outlook until mid-2009 despite the lure of webmail was Microsoft Windows 7′s integrated search.

Being able to use one central search tool to find documents on my desktop computer and in my main work email account seemed too important. It was the reason I wanted a fresh look at Outlook, would integrated search still fire my buttons?

In a word, the answer is a resounding ‘no’.

Multiple email accounts

I use multiple email accounts – some of my regular freelance journalism jobs come with their own mail addresses. These all route though a single Gmail account.

Instead of setting up one or more mail accounts on the desktop, I connected Outlook to my main Gmail account using IMAP. This approach worked far better than I remember from my earlier attempts to mix Gmail and Outlook – a big tick for Outlook 2010.

Integrated search results a mixed bag

Windows 7′s integrated search managed to pick up terms in Outlook 2010 as expected. At this stage the experiment was looking promising. However, for some reason, the same email message containing the search term would appear at least twice in search results. Sometimes more than twice.

This could prove annoying, especially where terms appear in multiple email threads. In many cases I found the returned results were too confusing. To solve this, I found myself moving away from the main desktop search tool and just searching the hard drive or specific folders for documents.

In other words, integrated email search no longer delivers on its promise. This is why I found returning to Outlook a disappointment.

Better contact management

If search was the only criteria, I could have happily removed Outlook 2010 from my desktop and walked away for good. That decision was made harder for me because Microsoft improved Outlook’s already good contact management. My favourite improvement is a tool that pulls in contact details from my Linkedin connections.

I’ve whinged in the past about the lack of decent alternatives to Outlook’s contact manager.   This is one application cloud providers and others have failed to deliver. I’ve yet to see anything that comes anywhere close to Outlook for contact management.

Outlook tasks still dodgy

During my brief flirtation with Outlook 2010 I found the Tasks feature appears broken or, if not broken, behaving oddly. I never added any items to the Tasks list, but every so often an email would be singled out and listed as a task, not once by multiple times. What’s that about?

Outlook remains a must-have application for many company computer users. Despite this, it feels out of date – the way Lotus Notes started feeling out of date as a collaboration tool about a decade ago. Although I will miss its wonderful contact management, I can’t see myself returning to the fold while I’m working in my business.

Xobni for Gmail review: lipstick on a pig

Nothing beats Gmail as an email reader. Even so, the application has a glaring weak spot: Google’s feeble contact manager.

Which explains why I was keen to review Xobni for Gmail. As it says on the Xobni website; “Stop wasting time manually managing contacts”.

Xobni for Gmail looks good and is clever. Sadly it does little to fix the contact manager.

At this stage Xobni for Gmail is lipstick on the Google Contacts pig.

Xobni for Gmail tested on Chrome

xobni for gmailI tested Xobni for Gmail on Google’s Chrome browser. There is a Firefox version, but not one for Internet Explorer. People wedded to Explorer are likely to be heavily in the Microsoft camp and will get more out of using Xobni with Outlook.

Xobni adds a side-panel to Gmail with information about email contacts allowing you to search for names. It provides immediate information about individuals with name, job and company details. In many cases there are also pictures and social network information.

Installing Xobni for Gmail

Installing takes a minute. After restarting Chrome and Gmail, Xobni takes over the right-most panel. The application asks you to grant access to your Gmail account. If you’re worried by the security implications of this, you’re not going to like Xobni – you can stop reading now.

It takes surprisingly long for Xobni to pull the information from Gmail – more than an hour in my case.

When you’re in the Gmail list view, Xobni displays a list of ‘trending contacts‘. It isn’t entirely clear what criteria are used to decide who and what is a trending contact. The fourth, fifth and seventh people on my trending contacts list are people who I’ve never communicated with, Xobni tells me they were copied-in on emails recently sent to me.

That may need tweaking. I’d like the list to show people I swap emails with.

Where Xobni is more useful

Xobni is more use when you open and read an email. It shows the information it can find about the person. There’s also a graph showing how often that person emailed you and a message like this:

XXXXXX has included you on 8 messages since May 2011, most likely via a distribution list. The first message was to XXXX on May 10, 2011, and was regarding ‘XXXXX’.

Other tabs take you to a list of the most recent emails from the person and as much social media information as Xobni can find – including the person’s latest tweet. It also shows mutual contacts – although I’m not sure how that might be useful. You can edit some of the information.

Sadly, Xobni for Gmail doesn’t link with Google Contacts. This is a major omission.

Beware of the Beta

Major omissions may be fixed. At the moment Xobni for Gmail is a beta version. I tested version 0.1. I didn’t run into any serious hiccups, but I’m not looking at the finished product here.

I’m also concerned about the privacy aspects of Xobni pulling information from Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and so on.

But is Xobni really useful?

Xobni for Gmail is, in effect, another way of displaying information from a number of online sources. Although it does a good job of pulling material from Gmail and offers a handy search tool, search is Google’s strength. The add-on barely adds any functionality.

Overall, Xobni is a nice-to-have, not a must-have. While the information it displays is sometimes useful, it is rarely essential. It does little to improve productivity.

The price of contact management software

After reading Connected aims to beat Gist at contact management, Connected’s Sachin Rekhi asked if there’s a price I’d pay for his contact management tool.

Connected is useful and simple. It is an improvement on Google’s Contacts application. Yet, for me, Connected isn’t worth the US$10 a month asking price.

Rekhi sensibly turns this around asking what would I pay for Connected?

What do I prefer, the free, but flawed, Google Contacts or paying US$120 year for the better, but still not perfect, Connected?

By my estimate Connected would cost me almost NZ$1 per contact manager enquiry. I can call directory enquiries and get a human to look numbers up for less.

Yet Rekhi’s question is meaningless because Connected isn’t the tool I’m looking for. I don’t want incoming feeds or CRM-style features, just an easy to use address book with room for notes.

I’m a journalist. I still keep my pre-digital paper Filofax on my desk and store important contacts this way despite attempting to become a paperless journalist. Admittedly I don’t update the paper list as often as I once did.

For years I used Microsoft Outlook as my digital contact book. When I stopped using Outlook for email years I carried on using its contact book. But Outlook isn’t installed on my new machine and synching Outlook files between machines isn’t easy.

Now Gmail handles my email. As I said earlier Google Contacts application doesn’t cut the mustard. I’ve tried text lists, Excel spreadsheets and HTML files. None is satisfactory.

My ideal would be for Google to get off its backside and reboot Contacts.

Connected aims to beat Gist at contact management

Sachin Rekhi of Connected emailed about his contact management tool. Rekhi says Connected is a direct competitor with Gist.

Like Gist, Connected pulls data from your online accounts. It works with email and social media sites like Twitter or Facebook.

And like Gist it builds a single, online contact book.

The interface is cleaner than Gist’s. Connected’s organisational tools are simpler and more straight-forward. This is helpful. While I found Gist useful at first, it quickly became overwhelming as I added more and more contacts who use social media and other online services. Connected doesn’t feel like sitting in front of a firehose.

I used to think Gist controlled the flood of incoming messages. Now I let most whiz past and focus only on key in boxes – mainly old school email and Twitter direct messages.

Connected is more about the contact book than the social media feed. This focus is its strength, it could quick become your first port of call for sifting through hundreds of contacts.

Feeding contact data into Connected is simple. You simply grant it access to the accounts you’d like to include. I tested it with Gmail, Twitter and Facebook. I could have added LinkedIn or any one of dozens of other online services.

There’s a go-away-and-make-a-cup-of-tea lag while Connected hunts down the contacts and pulls them into its database.

However I won’t use Connected as my online main contact book because the price is not realistic. At US$9.99 a month Connected wants a lot of money for performing a straightforward task. Sure Connected is an improvement on the free Google Contacts application, but compared with Gist, which is also still free, ten American dollars is too expensive.

And anyway, I haven’t bothered to use Gist in months. I don’t find the free application useful. I don’t really use Google Contacts either. It just sits there in the background. I used Outlook’s contacts manager when I used Outlook for email – but I’ve no plan to return there.

The world still needs an online contact book which can deliver Outlook’s contact manager features, but simply.

Gist, Plaxo and Xobni fail to replace Outlook contacts

Gist, Plaxo and Xobni all aim to cut through the social media cloud and pull together a comprehensive digital address book.

Although each tool has its pluses, none has a magic formula making it the must-have contact manager organiser.

Gist filters your in-boxes putting incoming messages in a single place. Its strong point is sorting things in order of importance. It works with email, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. Gist doesn’t always get this right, but it’s an improvement on the usual overloaded in-box.

Gist is free at the time of writing.

Plaxo does a reasonable job of synching to contact management applications. It can also pull in some of your social networking messages.

Plaxo is free, but you need to buy the premium service to synch with Microsoft Outlook and mobile phones. My Plaxo account is full of duplicate entries – annoyingly you can only merge these if you pay for the premium version.

Xobni looks good, but it’s an Outlook add-on and doesn’t replace the contact manager. It provides better index cards and links entries so you can quickly find a contact’s colleagues.

Google’s contact management tool – part of Gmail – is second rate. It provides little information and adds no value.

Of the three tools looked at here, I recommend Gist as a way to cut through the noise. But for now, Outlook remains the smartest contact manager.

When Outlook trumps Gmail

Three months ago I tested Gmail. My plan was to spend a week running all email through Gmail on my desktop, laptop and hand-held computers.

I wanted to move all my email accounts on all my systems through a single application as a way of simplifying things.

In practice it worked well. Routing my Gmail, POP3, Google Apps and Yahoo accounts through one in-box made sense.

Seeing the same messages through the same interface across my three systems made sense. The experiment was so successful I stayed with it for three months.

There was one small problem with Gmail: integrated search. It is easy to search Gmail messages. Email search is faster and more efficient than Outlook search tools.

I missed not being able to search Word and OneNote documents, text, HTML and email documents from a single, central location. But I figured this was only a minor irritation.

Then Windows 7 came along, with improved integrated search. It is noticeably better than Vista search and it works better with Outlook 2007. So much better, that I’ve reinstated Outlook 2007 as my main mail hub. I can use Outlook 2007 on my desktop and laptop, but not on my Palm hand-held.

This hardly matters, the Palm not the best device for writing email – though it is good for reading emails. And anyway, I suspect my trusty old Palm TX is not long for this world.

Update: I forgot the other bonus. Outlook 2007 integrates nicely with OneNote while it is a pain moving messages from Gmail to the application.