So what all can we do off-line? Here’s a list of Can’s and Cant’s:

You Can

Read mail

Respond to mail

Apply labels

Apply Stars

Search for an email

Open attachments

You Can’t

Use spell check

Do anything else that requires an internet connection (duh). I didn’t read anything about contacts being offline or not in the announcement or anywhere else. Perhaps that’s all a part of mail, not sure.

So the list of cant’s is quite a bit smaller, isn’t it? Not bad. Here’s the announcement from Google about the offline email.

To enable the offline service, go to your email and click on the Google Labs icon to go to the Labs. While you’re there, take a look at the other Labs offerings – they always have something going on. Then just click the radio button to enable offline access. Gears (the power behind this), will start caching your mail on your hard drive, getting ready to be accessible when you’re next offline. Google also has some settings you can tweak if you are having spotty coverage and want to be offline for awhile anyway.

I’ve seen other bloggers talking about the rollout. Some see it as a threat to Outlook, I really don’t think they are quite in the same league. For one thing, GMail still has the ‘beta’ clinging to it. That’s enough to make many IT people very nervous. It’s not an Enterprise product and it’s still web based—what if there was some kind of huge web outage or hack attack? I’m thinking this will perhaps spur Microsoft and Yahoo to upgrade their Live and Yahoo mail services to this level, that would be nice to see. Yahoo does offer off-line email with the download of Zimbra software. With Zimbra, you can have all your email together in one place – even Outlook mail (but that’s another blog article).  Some interesting discussion on off-line Gmail can be found from ZDNet blogger, Garret Rogers.

This is a nice addition to Google, I’ll be glad when Windows Live has the same capabilities.

If you are a *current live-mail or hotmail account holder and use either Outlook 2003 or 2007, you can bring your web-based email, calendar and contacts into your desktop Outlook client with Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta 2. From what I’ve read, this functionality (with the email accounts), is not new. The highly-touted feature is the new ability to bring multiple hotmail calendars into Outlook and either look at them side by side, or overlay them. So, if you have a work, personal, kid’s activity and other group calendar, you can overlay them to find open slots or conflicts.

I must confess here that so far I’ve not set up a Microsoft web-mail account. Never liked or wanted ‘hotmail’ in any of my email addresses. However, I will probably set up an account with Microsoft ‘live’. I have signed up for the Microsoft Small Business Account and have a Sky Drive and Shared Documents space already set up.

Here is a snapshot of how your E-Mail Live account would look in your Outlook:

Below is an excerpt from Microsoft you should read:

“Essentially, Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta 2 will synchronize email, contacts and calendars from accounts with the *latest versions of Windows Live Hotmail and Office Live Mail with Office Outlook 2003 and the 2007 Office System. One aspect has indeed evolved since version 12.0 of the Outlook Connector to 12.1 Beta 2, namely using the free Windows Live Calendar service instead of the MSN Calendaring service previously available only to MSN Premium accounts.
“In order to make sure that all of your calendar items on the MSN Calendar service are correctly migrated to the Windows Live Calendar, you should follow these steps: with Outlook Connector 12.0 installed, synchronize your calendar with the MSN Calendar service one last time. After synchronization is complete, do not create new items on the MSN Calendar site. If you do, you will have to synchronize again using Outlook Connector 12.0 before migrating to 12.1 Beta. Install Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta,” Roic added.
Microsoft Office Outlook Connector version 12.1 Beta 2 is available for download here. “

I’ve written previously on how I moved my Gmail account into my Outlook, so if I eventually added a live account, I wonder if this would crash my Outlook 2007? There would be a lot of activity in Outlook!

Contact Syncing With Office Life Small Business

If you use the Small Business Live features on-line, here’s a way to have your business contacts right in your Outlook client. They won’t inter-mingle with your other Outlook contacts, they will show up as business contacts in ‘Other Contacts’.

Below is a great excerpt from Microsoft on how to do this complete with snapshots:

If Outlook 2007 is installed on the computer that you use to access Office Live Small Business, you can find the option to connect Contact Manager to Outlook on the Actions menu on the actions bar in Contact Manager. When you connect Contact Manager to Outlook 2007, your customer, vendor, partner, and other key business contact information is always on hand.

After you click Connect to Outlook, you see an Outlook message box prompting you to connect this SharePoint contacts list to Outlook. Your Contact Manager database (in addition to other Office Live Small Business lists and libraries discussed in this article) is designed to sync effortlessly with Outlook 2007.

After you connect Contact Manager to Outlook, you can access the Contact Manager list in Outlook by clicking Contacts on the Navigation Pane. Contact Manager appears in the Navigation Pane under the heading Other Contacts, and is separate from your personal contacts, as shown here.

Notes

• If you do not see the Navigation Pane in Outlook, on the View menu, point to Navigation Pane, and then click Normal.
• By default, changes that you make to Contact Manager information in Outlook are updated in your Office Live Small Business account the next time Outlook performs an automatic Send/Receive.
• If you do not already use the Contact Manager tools in your Office Live Small Business account, see Focus your sales and marketing efforts using Contact Manager to learn more about what you can do with Contact Manager.
• To determine whether the version of Outlook that you use is Outlook 2007, do the following: In Outlook, on the Help menu, click About Microsoft Office Outlook. The dialog box that opens indicates which version of Outlook you are using.

Calendar Syncing with Outlook Connector:

The ability to bring your single or multiple live or hotmail calendars into your Outlook client was discussed above. Here’s a screenshot of how calendars can be displayed. If you have multiple calendars, just click the check-box next to the one(s) you want to display and you’ll have it! You can also share these calendars with others.

So-What Will Having This Do for Me?

• Ability to work off-line with your live or hotmail e-mail accounts. Write and read emails. The next time you’re on-line, everything should sync up and be up to date – on the web and on your desktop
• Same thing with calendars and contacts. Make updates and changes – they should all sync up upon re-connecting
• You can be more productive having your regular Outlook account and your web e-mail accounts in one place. No switching back and forth
• You can use the familiar and comforting Outlook interface
• If you installed the Business Connector application discussed in last week’s blog article, then you can also have off-line access to your business documents

It seems we all are looking for the ‘magic bullet’ of syncing software. We want to be able to access our email, contacts and calendar remotely, on our main computer and on our PDA.

A big ‘must’ for Virtual Assistants is the ability to access our clients’ calendars. We need access to post appointments, send invitations to meetings or find free time for setting up meetings, trips, etc.

When I moved a client to using gmail so I could access her email, I did some research into the google calendaring feature. I had heard so many great things about the google calendar and how easily it synced with people’s smart phones and outlook and other mail programs.

To my delight, I found that Google had introduced the very desirable ’2-way sync’ feature earlier this year. Google has all the instructions here.

So, download the file and follow the instructions to install it (you’ll have to have outlook closed). After installation, you’ll get the below box where you’ll then enter your gmail address and password. Then you will want to select the 2-way radio button. The only other option is how often to sync. Default is 120″, the lowest interval you can select is 10″.

Google Calendar Sync Options

Then pull up outlook and you’ll see a little calendar icon in your system tray. Hover your mouse over it and it identifies itself. When you see arrows moving on the icon, you know it’s syncing.

If you have more than one google calendar, it will only sync to your main calendar, so choose wisely. If you have a calendar further down on your list, you can go into the google calendar settings and decide which calendar will be your main calendar (a nice feature).

In addition to the sync function, google also has some other interesting calendar features. For example, code is provided if you want to insert your calendar inside your blog or website – handy if you have events to publicize. There are a host of options available for sharing your calendar on-line with others. Just choose the permissions you want others to have.

I’ve been using it for several months and it seems to be working well. You can also import your outlook contacts into google. From outlook, I did a file export into a .csv file (currently the only supported import/export method), and then imported that into google. More information here.

After 2 1/2 years, Jott has dropped the beta and announced that all users must log in and choose a plan. Here’s a snapshot of offerings:

Jott’s by-line is “turn your words into action”. You register for an account on-line using your cell phone number. Set your account preferences (do I want audio, written or both reminders and where do I want them), and you’re ready to go. Call the Jott phone number and an automated voice will ask you pertinent questions. Then some mystery person transcribes your words and gets it back to you. It’s amazingly accurate.

If you subscribe to one of the premium plans, you can utilize their new ‘Jott for Outlook’ feature. This download will install software in Outlook. Cool and useful things it will do:

• Call in a calendar appointment-Jott will guide you through the information needed and it’ll be on your calendar when you get back to the office
• Dictate an email and it’ll be waiting for you in your draft folder. Say you just finished one appointment and are dashing to the next. Call Jott and dictate a follow-up email.
• Add something to your tasks list

Another new feature (free), is called “Jott Express“. If you want Jott on your desktop, download and put the app on your desktop. It syncs with your on-line Jott account.

I prefer to put Jott on my iGoogle page and view my reminders from there. Jott also has an iPhone & Blackberry app to keep the road warriors organized.

We’ve been enjoying a plethora of free products on the web the last few years. We all scratch our heads and ask each other, “how can this be free?” I think we all knew the day would come when we’d have to pony up for using these products, which is only fair. It’s great that Jott still has a free version of their product (ad supported). What are some other web apps you’ve used that were formerly free, but now are fee-based?

Of course, I googled my problem and after sifting through many results, I found the below which worked like a charm. Credit goes to Tech Recipes for this great tip. To summarize the tip, what you will do to eliminate the duplicates is to add a date column in your Outlook contacts and then you’ll sort by date to easily separate the duplicates.

1. Open your Outlook contacts

2. Click View, mouseover Current View and select Phone List. This will create a list of all of your contacts in a column based view.

3. Right-click a column header and select Field Chooser from the resulting menu.

4. In the Field Chooser box, use the dropdown and select All Contact fields.

5. Select Created.

6. Drag Created to the Column Headers to add it to the list. Close the Field Chooser box.

7. Now click on the newly added column header (Created). This will sort all of your items by the date that they were added to your Contacts.
8. Scroll down to the first contact in the list that is to be deleted and select it.
9. Scroll down to the last contact that is to be deleted. Hold down the Shift key and select this contact. This will highlight all of the contacts that you are going to remove.
10. Press the Delete key. The duplicate contacts will be removed.
11. Click View, mouseover Current View and select the view you normally use for your contacts (such as Business Cards).
12. Your Contacts should not display any duplicates.

This is a great solution for those times when you get a new device and something goes wrong with your contacts. Another way to fix the duplicate problem is to export all your contacts to a .csv file and open it in excel. Then, simply sort by name and delete the duplicates. I find this method helpful when I have several of the same contacts, but with different information. It’s easier to choose which one to keep when looking in excel (at least for me). Good luck!

Now if she had a reliable ISP, we’d still be using it, but problems developed and I removed the exchange/imap feature from her Outlook. When exchange/imap went away, so did all the nicely organized email folders that were on her iPhone. This decreased her productivity since she couldn’t file her many incoming messages. Who likes to lose features as we travel down the tech highway!

Enter Gmail and it’s highly touted IMAP features. I discussed with my client this option and how I’d be able to once again have complete access to her email and calendar and that she would again have all the folders available to her on her iPhone. She wanted me to go for it. So I first wanted to try it out on one of the family’s email accounts. Then I did it with my Outlook account (detailed in last week’s blog). Success!

I use the free and very useful Logmein to access my client’s computer remotely. I posted about this program a year ago. It’s been one of the most useful tools in my arsenal. I chose a convenient time to first back up her email and then did the set up by following the instructions from the great How-To-Geek. After adding the Gmail account from within Outlook, most of the tweaking could be done from within the web interface. I moved all of her Outlook folders (one at a time), down to her Gmail and got them organized as they were before (for the most part). There were a few odd error messages here and there. For example, one said I couldn’t move a particular folder, but then it would be there all the same. Gmail provided very easy instructions for getting Gmail onto the iPhone.

Everything has been working for the last couple of weeks. We are still working out a few kinks here and there. One irritant has been that Outlook 2007 is slow to sync all the folders and mail that are in the Google folders. It’s really been slowing her system down. I’ve been looking around for some tweaks for this and think this from Digital Inspiration may work.

So, would I do again for another client- you betcha! Of course, you have to have a client who has trust in you, a good sense of humor and a bit adventurous. The unexpected can happen, but with the proper preparation, having a back-up and restore plan of what you’re about to change and choosing a time that doesn’t impact business critical tasks, you too, can do it.

Class training emphasized collaboration with our clients was essential and we were urged to explore how to accomplish that–keeping in mind the technological comfort level of our clients.

I like to be sure something is going to function the way it says it will before implementing with a client, so I tried it out on myself! Last fall, Gmail came out with its highly anticipated IMAP feature. IMAP allows syncing of mail among multiple devices because the mail stays on the server. I read and heard a lot about it and I did a lot of studying and researching and then took the plunge.

Steps I Took

1. Before starting, I did a backup of my Outlook (you can’t be too careful). Then, I wanted some detailed instructions. I found them here with the How-To-Geek. He’s great. I followed these instructions and now I had my Gmail IMAP account in Outlook.

2. Then I started moving my outlook folders into Gmail. I used drag and drop to do this, although I’ve read since then that they should be copied, not dragged. I noticed that Gmail put annoying prefixes on each of my folders…the first three in the picture are before I edited the labels and the last two are after I edited the labels. It was more readable for me after I removed the prefix.

3. Then I went into my Outlook account settings (Tools>send/receive groups) and told Outlook not to check for mail in my Outook account, but to only check my Gmail IMAP account. I did this so I wouldn’t get duplicate messages – one set in my Outlook and one set in my Gmail.

4. Then I went into the Gmail Settings and under the ‘General’ tab, I added my email signature. Under the ‘Accounts’ tab, I told Gmail I wanted to send mail from my outlook address, not my gmail address (more about this later). I also tweaked the settings so I could ‘Get mail from Different Accounts’ and I added my Outlook account here. The ‘Labels’ tab contains the former Outlook folders, now renamed labels by Gmail. Here’s where you click on ‘edit’ and change the name of the label to whatever you wish. The next tab is the ‘Filters’ tab. Filters are like Rules in Outlook. They are insanely easy to set up and they work so much better than Outlook rules — ever have problems with Outlook rules??

What I Really Liked and What Really Works Well

I like, no love having email access from anywhere. Of course, everyone says that, but it is oh so true. Even when I’m at home and too lazy to walk upstairs to my office to see if some mail arrived, it’s wonderful because I can use a downstairs computer. When I’m at my sister’s house, I can check my mail – it feels great!

The filtering and spam catching abilities of Gmail are legendary — and true. The filters just work and Google is pretty good at catching only the spam.

Pretty much unlimited storage. Currently, I’m using only 1% of my storage – no worries there! I’ve read that many people move to Gmail because of the almost unlimited storage. Outlook warns not to go over 2-3GB in their mail accounts as it takes forever to load and can/does become unstable.

I can keep on using my Outlook 2007client. I’m familiar and comfortable with Outlook, how it works, what it does and what buttons to push. Gmail, with its threaded conversations is great, but it takes some getting used to (for me, anyway). The web Gmail interface doesn’t appeal to me that much — because I don’t have years of experience with it. I’m getting more comfortable with it after a week or so now. But I like knowing I can work in either.

What Isn’t Working and a Glitch with Google

Sometimes I get annoying pop-ups in Outlook regarding not being able to file a message, use default folder and a couple other annoying things. I don’t know why and haven’t researched it to see what it is.

With Gmail, there is an ‘All-Mail’ folder, and an ‘In-box’ folder. I also set up a separate folder for one account’s emails to go into. As a result, I get 3 copies of each incoming email in each folder. If I flag one of them, then all three will show up in my ‘tasks’ list. This is irritating and I haven’t decided what to do about this.

This could be the most irritating and I did research this one and as far as I know, no one has come up with a fix for this: I told the Gmail settings that I wanted all my replies to come from my default Outlook address–however, when I’m using my Outlook client to respond to mail sent to my Outlook email address and I hit reply, Gmail will make the return from my gmail account instead of my Outlook account. I have to remember to click the down arrow and switch accounts. This is quite exasperating. Now, this does NOT happen when I’m using the web Gmail – only when I’m using Outlook. Anybody know how to fix this?

Overall, I’m very pleased with the migration to using Gmail’s IMAP service. I’d like to hear anyone else’s story or get some comments from others who have done this.

Next time, I’ll talk about how I moved one of my client’s mail from Outlook to Gmail!

Most of us are comfortable with the default layout of Outlook, but there are many customizable views you can set up. For example, I have mine set up with no auto-preview, but I have a a right-side autopane view turned on. So when I’m at my in-box and have my curser on a message, I can view it on the right side. This is but one way to customize your view. Play around with it – here’s how to do it:

Go to View>current view>define views. A table will open and from there you can click and customize how your message will appear. To dig deeper in this menu path, click on the ‘modify’ button and then ‘other settings’ – from there you can set the font size for viewing your emails (make it easy on your eyes!). There are options for the reading pane, auto-preview, setting column widths, etc.

If you need to make a quick setting adjustment –say you want to quickly see all the messages you haven’t read do this: View>current view>unread messages. Other choices from here include:

Autopreview

Last 7 days

Sent to

Message timeline (this puts all your message horizontally by date – looks impressive!)

Define views – more customization features here!

How many emails do I have in this folder?

Do you want to know how many emails are contained in each of your folders? Here’s how to do it:

Right-click on the folder and go to properties. You’ll see two radio buttons – one choice is to show the number of all items in the folder. The other is to show unread items in the folder. Select one and then you will see a number next to each folder you do this to. From this screen, you can also check on folder size –you don’t want them getting too bloated.