Archive for the ‘Productivity Articles for Outlook Users’ Category
Syncing Outlook Data to iPhone and Android
I came across an interesting article in my tweet stream recently, written by the fine folks at Priacta. It was a cautionary tale about syncing Microsoft Outlook (for Windows) data with iPhone and Android. Since I discuss this with clients all the time, what I read there made me nervous. Nate from Priacta gave me permission to repost his article here, and you can also visit the Priacta blog by clicking on the link.
Before you get to his post, I’d like to say for the record that this has never happened to me, nor to any of my clients as far as I know. However since it’s been Nate’s experience, I think it is important information for anyone to have who is attempting to sync Outlook. I’ve found the sync from Outlook to iPhone to be rather seamless if you are using an Exchange server. In my experience, the tasks automatically populate to the Reminders app. And if you don’t like the view in Reminders, IMExchange2 has worked great for my clients. The app is free but the sync service costs $7.99 the last time I checked. I’ve also found it very straightforward to sync Outlook tasks with Blackberry.
Syncing Outlook tasks to iPhone without an Exchange server is a little dicier. I wrote this article over two years ago, and it is admittedly out of date, but most people have been able to find a good solution using this as a starting point.
I have not had very much experience syncing Outlook tasks with Android, but Nate does go into detail about this below. He also mentions “safer solutions.” My opinion is that there are many efficiencies to be gained by storing your data all in one program, such as the ease in Outlook of creating a task from an email. However an inability to view your tasks on your smartphone certainly negates any of these advantages, and Nate describes some benefits of going outside Outlook for your task management. He also discusses backing up your PST data, and if you aren’t currently doing that, you can find a how-to video here. You can also find advice about picking the right electronic tools in Chapters 6 and 7 of my upcoming book.
I unfortunately do not have a direct line to Microsoft, Apple, or any app developer mentioned here, so I can’t do much in the way of tech support, but my intention is to provide you with as much information as possible so that you can be prudent and take all necessary precautions when syncing your devices. Thanks for reading, and thanks to Nate at Priacta for being willing to share his post!
A note to Microsoft – if you have anything helpful to add, I will happily update this post with your comments.
Help! Outlook lost all my data!
Synchronizing Outlook tasks to your iPhone or Android is dangerous. If you don’t do it right, you could lose everything. Worse, the steps are different for each situation. When clients ask for my help, I usually steer them toward safer solutions.
Many attempt the sync anyway.
A client recently emailed me with this tragic tale:
“You were very kind to warn that trying to sync Outlook with my Android might prove challenging. I set up Exchange to connect Outlook 2007 with Touchdown, and MS encouraged me to add my own domain name which I almost did.
Reluctant to let MS host my account I tried to restore the original setup. In what turned out to be a colossal error, I deleted the email address which I had added to the MS365 (MS exchange) account.
Instantaneously, I lost all of my contacts, my calendar and my tasks. The real salt in my wound was losing all of customization I had made via your TRO online training.”
Recovering from that data loss took many hours of hard, stressful work.
Why Does Outlook Lose Data?
Outlook is old technology, more than a decade old. Back in the day, they pioneered the idea of synching between computers and mobile devices. Their solutions were sometimes clunky, awkward, and looked suspiciously like the 1980s, but they did it. Unfortunately, Outlook still uses that same infrastructure to sync with your iPhone, Blackberry, or Android.
When you try to set up the sync, you’ll see strange terms like “DOMAIN” and “Server” and “User ID” (not to be confused with “Username”). It may ask you strange questions about technologies you’ve never heard of, and more than likely it will ask you about syncing .OST and .PST files, one way or two ways, Direct Push or manual, updating contacts or not, etc. etc. etc. Sooner or later, most people guess on one of the questions. If you guess wrong, you could lose everything.
Alternatives to Outlook Tasks
Toodledo, Donedesk, Remember the Milk, and Nozbe are all great alternatives to Outlook tasks. If you set up email-to-tasks, you can forward task emails from Outlook to any of these programs. Forwarding email is as fast as creating Outlook tasks. In addition, all of these task managers are easier to use than Outlook tasks.
Syncing is easy and safe. Because all four of the programs listed above are online, accessing tasks on another computer involves opening the browser and logging in. Syncing to mobile devices isn’t much harder: an app, a username, and password. No confusing questions. No data loss. For those who also need fully offline tasks (e.g.: for travel), Toodledo and Nozbe offer great options for an offline desktop sync.
How to Sync Outlook with iPhone, Android, etc.
If you need to sync Outlook tasks with Android or iPhone, make sure you do it right. First, syncing with Exchange Server is safer and more reliable. If you don’t have Exchange Server, consider getting it or using another program.
The best way to set up the sync is to call your Exchange hosting company and ask for their help. Every company has a unique server setup and unique requirements for setting up Smartphones. If your hosting company is unhelpful or wants to charge a lot of money for their help, consider changing companies. We use 123together.com and have loved their support.
I already lost my data. How do I get it back?
Call your hosting company today. They keep backups, but it’s easier to access recent backups. Depending on your company, they may charge you for the technician’s time. If it helps you restore your data, it’s worth it.
If you don’t use hosted Exchange, freeze your Internet backup service–such as Mozy or Carbonite–and find the backup of your .PST file. When that is restored, your Outlook will return to normal.
If you don’t use Exchange and don’t have any kind of backups, you might be in trouble. If you had IMAP access to your email, setting up Outlook again will restore your email. If you had contact/calendar synchronized to a phone, you might be able to restore those as well.
If you were using POP3 to access your email, then the only copies of your email were in the inbox that got deleted. If your data was valuable, you might consider something extreme, like calling a data-recovery center. They might be able to use highly specialized programs to recover most of the lost data.
Protecting Against Data Loss
Your data is probably more valuable than your computer, and an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure. Here are a few things you can do to keep your data safe:
· Use IMAP to access your email, not POP3.
· Use Exchange Server instead of running on local files.
· Run automated backups, preferably off-site backups.
· Get professional technical help when setting up, transferring, or syncing Outlook.
· Always make a backup copy of your .PST file before you attempt to set up a new sync.
· Avoid using Outlook for tasks.
The Bottom Line
Outlook is a great tool, but sooner or later, most people experience data problems. When that happens, the precautions you’ve taken will keep your data safe. Recovery will be simple and low-stress. But if you don’t take precautions, you’ll regret it sooner or later.
Track Conversations with “Post in this Folder”
As I explain in my training on the Empowered Productivity System, keeping details in your head causes stress — for example, that racing brain that keeps you awake at night. You might track information well when it’s an email or other electronic or physical format, but what about a conversation? Have you ever emailed yourself? Well, the Post in this Folder” feature of Microsoft Outlook is designed with this in mind. This short video will show you how. If you prefer to read, jump down below the video.
Let’s say you’re having a communication with someone over email about some subject, and you’ve created a folder for this topic where you file these communications so you have a record. But then at some point, one of you picks up the phone and you bring some issues to a conclusion verbally. Now your email record is incomplete. “Post to this Folder” is designed to accommodate exactly this situation.
Here’s how to do it:
In any window in Outlook, clicking on the “New” button will bring a new item for that window. For example, in the email window, clicking on “New” will bring up a new email. However, in every Outlook window, there is a little drop-down arrow right beside the “New” button. If you click on this drop down arrow, you will see a list of your choices for a “new” item.
- Click on the folder that contains the history of the email communication you want to add to.
- Click on the drop down arrow beside the “New” button, and select “Post in this Folder.”
- Here you can add a subject and then the content of the conversation. When you click “post,” it will appear in the email list above the most recent message you’ve moved to that folder.
Read here about keeping lists in Outlook’s “Notes’ feature. For more Outlook tips, and ideas on productivity and organization, visit regainyourtime.com.
How to Sync Outlook Tasks with your iPhone
UPDATE: 3/30/12: See a more recent discussion of this issue in this post.
UPDATE: 7/28/11: This post refers to syncing Outlook for WINDOWS (all versions, as far as I can tell) with your iPhone. It covers using ToodleDo (the free way) and using ToDo by Appigo ($4.99 as of today). Since this post, I can recommend another way to sync tasks to iPhone either from iCal for Mac or Outlook for Windows, and that is 2Do by Guided Ways Technologies. It works well and there are instructions on their website. I have not yet found a solution for syncing Outlook 2011 for MAC tasks directly with iPhone. I did find this article about syncing to iCal and if that works successfully, you can then sync tasks from iCal to iPhone via 2Do or ToDo. I can not speak to how well it works. These difficulties, to me, are sufficient reason to recommend AGAINST Outlook for Mac as a productivity solution. For other suggestions of productivity tools for Mac users, see this post and this post.
I used Outlook to run my life for almost a decade, and the majority of the training I do is still using Outlook as the support tool. I am a fan and think it is a very powerful PIM (personal information manager) that can easily handle the complexity of your life. The one shortcoming is if you need to share calendars or other information, you need to be running an Exchange server and this doesn’t make sense for everyone (however you can sync your Outlook calendar with Google and share it that way).
A question I get a lot is how to sync Tasks in Outlook with an iPhone. I found an article online with detailed instructions for doing this and got permission to repost it here. It comes from Daniel B. Curran’s excellent how-to blog. Below are his instructions. I hope this helps. If you try this and run into any snags, I’d love to hear about it. And incidentally, I’m using To-Do (the app he mentions) to sync Tasks with iCal and I am VERY happy with it – well worth the $10 in my opinion. You can read about my experience with that here.)
Here is Daniel’s Post:
Let’s start with how you can sync your Microsoft Outlook Tasks to your iPhone for free.
I have read several articles about how to do this but I found the process to be convoluted. Let me make it very simple.
Step 1. Set up a free account at Toodledo.com The direct link for a new account is right here.
That should have taken you about 15 seconds. Let’s move on to step 2.
Step 2. Close Outlook, download Chromatic Dragon’s Toodledo Sync Application and install it.
Almost done! The sync application will want your Toodledo ID number. Leave it open on the tab that wants the ID number.
Step 3. Log into Toodledo and from the menu on the left select Account Settings. On that page you will see your Unique ID, simply copy and paste it into the sync program that you left open.
On the Synchronization tab you can change your Automatic Synchronization to whatever works for you. I don’t add tasks very often so once every 60 minutes is fine for me. To close the Options window select File -> Close. You will see a green checkmark icon in your tool tray. Right click it and hit Manual Sync.
Outlook is now synchronized to ToodleDo.
Ready for the iPhone part?
On Your iPhone, go to the App Store and Download ToodleDo for $3.99.
<end Daniel’s post>
Open ToodleDo on your iPhone and select “Settings” and log in to your account.
You should now see all of your tasks on your iPhone in the ToodleDo app.
Further instructions if you have been through Empowered Productivity Training from RegainYourTime.com:
In the Chromatic Dragon ToodleDo Sync Application on your desktop, open “Options.” (You may have to find ToodleDo in your System Tray in the bottom right corner of your screen, right click on that, and select “Options.”
Select the tab that reads “Mappings.” Select the following options:
Then select the “Folders” tab and click “refresh folders and enable.”
Now select “File – Manual Sync”
Your Outlook tasks should now be grouped by categories on your iPhone app by selecting “folders” from the Home Screen.
I hope you have found this helpful. Good luck!
What’s a PST File and Why Should You Care?
Do you use Microsoft Outlook? If not, you can stop reading now. But, if you use Outlook for email, or your calendar, or anything else, this is important information that you’ll want to know. PST is the extension of the file that contains all of your Outlook data, and if you’ve got anything in yours, you should back it up. Click on the 4 minute video below to learn more about the file and how to back it up and ensure that your data is safe. Thanks for reading!
Do You Need a CRM?
I was at a meeting recently and my table-mates started a discussion about contact management solutions. I hear this often. People need a tool to manage their contacts, so they begin to consider ACT or other CRM software. The bigger question that people don’t consider is that of a productivity management solution, of which contacts is just one part. People try to solve the problem of contact management with a complex CRM solution, when they don’t even have a good system for calendaring, email, or to-do lists.
If you are considering a contact management solution, I suggest that you look at it within the context of your overall productivity, and to me this includes 5 things: calendar, projects/tasks (to-do list), contacts, notes, and email. For more on this, read this post.
I often recommend Microsoft Outlook for PC users. This is not because I am a fan of Microsoft. I am not. But the reality is that Outlook is powerful, virtually free (practically everyone has MS Office already, of which Outlook is a part), not particularly complicated, and syncs well with most handheld devices. However, one problem with Outlook is that some of the “advanced” features are not obvious, and many people miss them. This is especially true with the “contacts” section of Outlook. And I am not referring to Microsoft’s new Business Contact Manager. BCM comes with Outlook 2007 but you don’t have to install it. I suggest you don’t. I find it unstable and unnecessarily complicated, and there is very little that you couldn’t already do with contacts.
Most people don’t realize they already have what they need in Outlook. This was certainly the case with my table-mates at the meeting I mentioned. So this situation inspired me to create a short video on some of the features of Outlook Contacts that you may not have known were available to you. It’s below. I hope you find it helpful. Thanks for reading!