Testing Outlook 2010

A couple days back I installed Outlook 2010 Beta because I read an article about it that described a couple features that I could really use. So far, I must say, I am reallyimpressed with the product. Although the interface hasn.t been changed that much, the changes that they did make to it sure do look nice.

So, here.s the doozy feature: Support for multiple exchange accounts in a single profile. This is a huge deal for me. I have several exchange accounts that I have to keep up with and the current version of outlook (2007) just doesn.t make that very easy.

I never really understood why support for multiple exchange accounts per profile wasn.t provided before. The 2007 version already allows you to view multiple calendars and multiple address books. So what.s the big deal? I can only assume that the big issue was related to the API. For example, every call to the .add item to calendar. function of the API now needed to be .add item to XXX calendar. (specifying which account to handle). Even so, I would think backwards compatibility could be handled well enough by specifying a default calendar when dealing with legacy outlook API applications.

One thing I didn.t expect was to be providing feedback (outside of my blog) about my .Beta Experience.. However, the MS Office team made it very easy to provide feedback by adding little smiley and frown icons in the task tray. Normally I would be peeved that there is not just one more icon next my clock but two, but given the amount of time I spend using Office/Outlook I am happy to provide some ideas about the next release version. I have already provided some input on several ideas that hopefully they will consider seriously, although really doubt it.

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Conversation view

Email messages are displayed more efficiently then ever with the changes to the conversation view. Instead of just displaying a grouped grid of emails per conversation, outlook goes the extra mile of rolling them up into a single line item that has the most recent thread. From what I can tell and have read, Outlook determines if older emails are included in the reply of newer emails and considers the older emails read if the new email has been read. If multiple people have replied mid-thread (to the same email) then multiple lines are used to display the most recent email in each of the sub-thread emails.

Further-more, your own replies show up in the conversation history. No more having to go to .Find related emails. and try and guess which reply is the right one you wanted to view.

This .Conversation View. feature cleans up the inbox quite nicely.

Keyboard Shortcuts

. they don.t work well. Hopefully this is just a Beta issue. Many of the keyboard shortcuts that existed in the 2007 (and earlier) versions don.t work. For example, ALT+L does not reply to all, it is now SHIFT+ALT+R. Another example is when creating an email ALT+. doesn.t bring up to the .TO:. address selection window. Instead, I find that whenever I press ALT+<ANYTHING> the ribbons are focused.

New Message w/ Multiple Accounts

Now, when you have multiple email accounts and you create a new email, the From address is automatically set to whatever account you were viewing in the primary screen. This is very nice because when I create a new Email it is related to the account that I am viewing.

One Calendar Per Exchange Account

When multiple exchange accounts are associated with a single profile, each exchange account gets a separate calendar, just as you would expect. They even make it easy enough to drag-and-drop calendar items from one exchange calendar to another.

Unfortunately they don.t let you rename the calendars and they simply display .Calendar. and then the account associated with the calendar in small grayed out text. I would think they would just name the calendars after the Exchange account that it is associated with. Perhaps this will be fixed in the Release.

The ability to drag-and-drop calendar items from one exchange calendar to another is very nice. However, I don.t think this is very useful unless you provide the ability to synch the calendar items. For example, I have two exchange accounts (A and B). On account B I receive a meeting request and accept the request, then a calendar item is displayed on my second .Calendar. (associated with account B). My Windows Mobile Phone watches exchange account A and I want the new calendar item to be on my phone as well so that my phone reminds me of the event, so I drag and drop the calendar item from Calendar B to Calendar A. This permanently disassociates the calendar item from exchange account B altogether, so not only does no one on the second exchange account domain see my event, but any updates I receive on the meeting through account B are considered completely new calendar items.

Passwords are remembered

Finally, exchange passwords for accounts not within my computers domain get remembered! Previously, if you.re computer was not on the same domain that the exchange account connects to, it would ask you for the account password every time you load account in Outlook. This is no longer the case; passwords are remembered as long as you say .Remember my password..

More information in emails

There is quite a bit more information contained in an email when viewing it now. For example, if you happen to setup your contacts with pictures then their pictures will show up a couple more places than in 2007 (like down in the lower right corner or a larger version of the image when you select .See more information about: XXXXXX. as shown in the screen-shot).

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Quite a bit of information is aggregated into a single .overview. section about the person sending you the email:

  1. All items: This includes all activity and messages from the selected person.
  2. Activities: This displays activity posted on the selected person’s social network sites, such as alerts, comments or messages.
  3. Mail: A list appears of recent e-mail messages that you have exchanged with the selected person.
  4. Attachments: Attachments that you have sent to or received from the selected person appear.
    Being able to see all the attachments from a single person is very nice. I can.t count how many times I have been on a conference call with a particular set of people and had to scour my email box to find attachments relating to the call.
  5. Calendar: Past and future meetings or appointments including both you and the selected person appear.
  6. Status updates: This displays the most recent status updates that the selected person has posted.

Note: The Activities (2) and Status Updates (6) sections have to be setup with social-site plug-ins that haven.t been developed yet. Talk indicates that plug-ins for social networking sites like Facebook and twitter will be available by the time Outlook 2010 is officially released.

On top of displaying the calendar for the person being displayed in the .See more information about XXXXX. pane, when receiving meeting requests, outlook does a nice job of displaying your calendar within the email so that you can see the events surrounding the time of the meeting request. This is very nice for those with many meetings and calendar events because you don.t have to swap between two separate windows to see whether there are any conflicts in schedules. Sure, Outlook 2007 told you if you had any conflicts, but that was all. As for what the conflict was, you had to go to a separate window for the calendar to figure it out.

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IMAP .Purge. button missing

If you.ve ever used an IMAP email account then you know deleting an item doesn.t really delete it; It marks it for deleting and then you have to .Purge. the mailbox of any items marked for deletion. Somehow I wasn.t able to find the Purge button in Outlook 2010. I ended up having to create a custom ribbon group with the Purge button in it.

Note: If anyone knows why this is, by all means, please comment and I will update. I suspect I am missing something because I can.t imagine the Outlook group not having the need to ever .Purge. emails from IMAP accounts in their pre-beta testing.

Here are the steps to add the ribbon group:

  1. Go to the .Send/Receive. ribbon (Alt+S) and right-click on one of the ribbon group labels. Then go to .Customize this Ribbon..
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  2. In the right pane, make sure the .Send/Receive. tab is open and go to .New Group.. A new group called .New Group (Custom). will be created within the .Send/Receive.. Make sure the new group is highlighted an go to .Rename.. I named mine .IMAP..
  3. In the left pane, select .All Commands. from the .Choose commands from. drop-down menu.
  4. Select the .Purge Marked Items in All Accounts. and press the .Add. button in between the two panes to add it to your new .IMAP. group.
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Summary

I.m very impressed with Outlook 2010. They have accomplished the core feature I was hoping for (multiple exchange accounts per profile) and have added quite a few productivity features as well. There are still a few kinks to work out, but given that there aren.t that many, I would imagine we can look for a release in around 6 months.

I just hope they don.t cancel beta licenses before they release; I don.t want to go back to a single exchange account profile! =P

 

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