Integrating Remember The Milk into Outlook

With my recent mobile phone upgrade to a Droid, I no longer am able to sync my tasks to Outlook. (I’m stuck to Outlook for work and I actually like Outlook but I need my task list on my phone.) The obvious best solution is to move my task list out of Outlook and onto the Web. Remember the Milk (RTM) to the rescue. I can place my tasks online and access them from any computer (including my Droid). But, now my e-mail and calendar are in Outlook but my tasks are in my browser. But there is a way to get RTM to appear in Outlook. Here’s how.

In Outlook, right click on your Mailbox and click New Folder… (Be sure you’re right-clicking on the local mailbox, not any mailboxes accessed via POP or IMAP.)

Name the new folder. (I’ve chosen “RTM” as the name.” Leave “Folder Contains:” as “Mail and Post Items”. Click OK.

Find the new folder in your folder list, right-click it and select “Properties”.

In the Properties dialog box, select the “Home Page” tab and enter the URL of your RTM account in the “Address:” field. Then check the “Show home page by default for this folder”option. (You can’t check this option before you enter a URL in the “Address:” field.) Click OK.

Now, just click on that folder and you’ll get the RTM site in Outlook.

I have noticed that if you’re not already logged in, you may be shunted off to your browser for the login process. Once logged in, just reopen the link in Outlook and you’ll be all set.

Oh, and this will pretty much work with any other Web site too.

One more note: Web pages displayed in Outlook will be rendered using whatever version of IE you have installed. Therefore, other than all the obvious security implications, links clicked that open new windows will be opened in IE and not any other browser despite your default browser settings.

Google Calendar Sync totally rocks!

I've got four computers I use regularly, two laptops and two desktops (one each at the office and at home). The desktops don't generally move but one or both laptops go with me on the road depending on the situation. Additionally my Cloudbook will be arriving soon (today hopefully). So, I might be sitting in front of any one of these computers and need to know what my calendar is. The four main machines all run Outlook while the Cloudbook won't. I've got a Google Calendar account but in the past you've not been able to (easily or completely) sync content between Outlook and Google calendars.

I had a partial solution in my Motorola Q smartphone but the Windows software would only let me sync with up to two computers (my office desktop and my home laptop) but that left out the other computers. I also have Web access to our Exchange server via Outlook Web access but to be honest, Outlook just isn't the same as a Web application. (And I'm doubting that it'll work well on the Cloudbook since it doesn't work all that well in Firefox on a Windows machine to begin with.)

So yesterday, I was VERY excited to hear that the folks over at Google had released their first version of Google Calendar Sync. This program is both simple and elegant. Download it from Google, and run the quick install. You'll then get this screen:

Enter your Google Calendar login information, then choose if you want to sync in both directions, just Google to Outlook, or just Outlook to Google. Lastly, set how often you'd like the content to re-sync and click Save.

The program will minimize to your system tray and sync your data. How much more simpler could it be?

I now have four copies of Outlook all with the same calendar along with my phone. Now, no matter which computer I have with me, I can enter a new appointment and shortly all of my other computers will have that same information.

Outlook 2007 Performance Update

Some have noticed that Outlook 2007 runs a little slower than the 2003 version did. Those of us that have massive amounts of e-mail and calendar data just chalked it up to the amount of data we're making it crunch. However, it seems that 2007 is actually running slower than 2003 as stated by a recent, yet unpromoted, Outlook 2007 update released this past April 13th.

"This update fixes a problem in which a calendar item that is marked as private is opened if it is found by using the Search Desktop feature. The update also fixes performance issues that occur when you work with items in a large .pst file or .ost file."

Believe it or not, the difference post update is noticeable.

Great new features in Outlook 2007

Of Time Zones and Appointments

Well, this is a problem I've finally solved and it has nothing to do with Vista. It seems that when you change Windows' time zone setting (as I've moved from Mountain to Central) Outlook reacts by adjusting the times of everything in your calendar. So, an appointment for April that I said was from 10-11am that I set while in MST was moved to 11am-12pm CST since that would technically be correct. Trouble is, the meeting still being held at 10am local time. (This gets worse when an "all day" appointment gets changed to 1am on one day to 1am the next day.) Well, a quick search and I found not only an answer but also an explanation of the issue. Check out Outlook, Appointments and Time Zones if you're interested.