Why I won't be switching back from Gmail to Outlook

Switching from Microsoft Outlook 2007 to Gmail revealed two frustrations:

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

Recently the first frustration boiled to the point where I decided to reinstall the Outlook client, 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 for now. This is even more important as I move from desktop to laptop to smartphone to iPad. It no longer makes sense to have a mail 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 for 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 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.