Email software questions and apple/microsoft integration

Hello folks. My boss is having some problems with email and contact management that are a bit beyond my knowledge.

At present he's mostly reliant on two applications, spread across 3 computers:

On his home imac, apple mail.
Also apple mail on his iphone, which syncs with the imac and works nicely.

The third part though, is Microsoft Outlook 2003, on a windows laptop. This is the odd piece out in the puzzle and we're hoping to find some solution that doesn't involve buying an apple laptop. All our organisation's email addresses are owned by us and hosted on a third party server.



The problems we currently have:

Management of email accounts. He has two email accounts that he regularly accesses. Apple mail can manage these fine, but outlook seems to struggle. As far as i'm aware there are two solutions for managing multiple mails in outlook:

1. Using profiles. Creating a seperate profile for each address. This is what we've been doing up until now but it has never worked very well. notably there is NO WAY to switch between profiles within the application. The only way to do so is to close it down and restart it, which is inconvenient. In addition, this is also buggy, sometimes on restarting it resumes the old profile, so swapping between them is trial and error.

2. Not using profiles. This causes everything to be coalesced into one inbox, which is rather messy. We've attempted to sort the mail using filter rules, but this tool doesn't seem powerful enough to help out much. Quite annyoingly, we can't find any way to move (not copy) sent mail into it's own sent box per account.

So this isn't working. What we'd like are possibly tips for working with outlook 2003, or perhaps recommendations of other, better, desktop email clients. Or perhaps even web based ones. I was unsuccessful in searching for web based clients because many of them (hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc) seem to come bundled with a hosted email address which we don't want - just a full featured client to access existing ones through

-----------------------------------------

Our other main problem is contact management. he's an active businessperson, always in meetings, talking to new people, taking contactr details all the time, etc. his current workflow for that requires adding details manually to both the laptop and iphone (the phone syncs with the imac at home). We're looking to streamline this a bit so that ideally details can be entered only once. Whether this be achieved through syncing the laptop with the iphone, or perhaps usiong some third party web based contact management service, i'm not sure.

We've thought about trying Apple's MobileMe service, which sounds like it's peerfect on paper. however, it's not possible to sign up, and seems due to be shut down shortly. From what i can tell it never really worked, and iCloud is still a bit off yet.

I'm open to all suggestions that might help us with these problems. The suggestion of suitable commercial programs and services is fine, i can requisition expenses for what's needed

Any thoughts?

 

It may be worth looking at Micrpsoft Outlook 2010
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ee513173.aspx
and
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ee513173.aspx
Scroll down to
Outlook 2010 Product Guide
This will download a pdf for you to see some of its uses.
Scroll down to
Multiple Mailbox Support [FONT=Century Gothic,BoldItalic][FONT=Century Gothic,BoldItalic]Improved![/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Century Gothic,BoldItalic]
[/FONT][FONT=Segoe UI,Bold][FONT=Segoe UI,Bold]Do I need other products in order to use Outlook 2010 features?[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Segoe UI,Bold]
[/FONT]None of the creation or management tools in Outlook 2010 require other products.
[FONT=Segoe UI,Bold][FONT=Segoe UI,Bold]Which browsers are supported for Outlook Web App?[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Segoe UI,Bold]
[/FONT]Supported browsers include Windows Internet Explorer 7 for Windows, Safari 4 or later for
Mac, and Firefox 3.5 or later for Windows, Mac, or Linux.
[FONT=Segoe UI,Bold][FONT=Segoe UI,Bold]Can I access my e-mail when I am away from my primary computer?[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Segoe UI,Bold]
[/FONT]Using the new Outlook Web App, you can access your Outlook 2010 e-mail and content
from virtually any computer with an Internet connection.24 Additionally, using Outlook
Mobile 2010, you can access your Outlook content from your Windows phone
[FONT=Century Gothic,BoldItalic]I have used office 2010, for myself, and my daughter, and it has far more for business than we will ever use.[/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic,BoldItalic]It has a busines contact seperate bit for business on-line use, that I will never use, so I cannot say it will do as you want.[/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic,BoldItalic]If you have a spare laptop to try the trial version on, then I feel it might have what you need.[/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic,BoldItalic]Office 2010 seems to come in seperate bits, if wanted, so why not see if it now has what you need- [/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic,BoldItalic]I have a strong feeling the newer 'e-mail collector' will do what you want.[/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic,BoldItalic]If not, then perhaps someone else can hop on this thread and offer something.[/FONT]

 

thank you greatly for the reply! i'll be having a look at that

i wonder if it's capable of syncing contacts with a phone, that would be super

 

It may need to be a Windows phone 7, but apparently, you can transfer data from your old phone.........
How do I get contacts onto my phone?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/howto/wp7/people/how-do-i-get-contacts-onto-my-phone.aspx
I know you don't want to see other e-mail accounts, but I use Hotmail (also G-mail, and talktalk accounts) They are all free - so not a cost at all- I have a premium account with hotmail (goes through Windows Live, now) that costs about £25 a year, but I don't really need it, especially now, as I am retired
I have never had to go as far as you as a business account, but I see there are far more uses for a business', like yourselves- in fact I did not put all available on my pc, as I will never need them ( I just do a little basic help for the over 50's now)- but from what I see it must be worth a 60 day trial, as I said, on a spare laptop, so that it does not interfere with your present setup, until, and unless it does what you need it too- then, if it does work as you want it, you can purchase during/after free 60 day trial period.
That way, no cost, if no good to you.
Sync your Outlook contacts to Windows Phone 7
Note If you use Outlook without Exchange, you cannot sync contacts directly from Outlook to Windows Phone 7; however, you CAN sync your Outlook contacts to Windows Live, which will then sync those contacts to your phone as soon as you add your Windows Live account to your phone.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2454811#4method
Sync Outlook Contacts & Calendars to Windows Phone 7
http://support.microsoft.com/common/survey.aspx?scid=sw;en;1832&showpage=1
　
How do I get contacts onto my phone?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/howto/wp7/people/how-do-i-get-contacts-onto-my-phone.aspx

Incidently, I used to use Office 2000/2003/2007, and I tried open office (I did not think it anywhere near as good as Microsofts office- but each to his/her own whims)
:wave

 

DavidGP has more knowledge than I have on this, but
I found various possible ways to use hotmail with the mac- might be worth a look
http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/10/04/mail-forward-aol-gmail-hotmail-msn-yahoo-apple-mail/
http://www.sspi-software.com/mailfwd_macx.html
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/import-contacts-from-windows-live-hotmail-to-outlook-HA010224411.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/export-contacts-from-outlook-to-windows-live-hotmail-HA010173395.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA010224411
　
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_transfer_hotmail_contacts_to_another_account.html
http://email.about.com/od/windowslivehotmailtips/qt/Export_Contacts_Email_Addresses_from_Windows_Live_Hotmail.htm

 

hello everyone! lots of interesting info here, but i fear we may be on the wrong track.

He has an iphone, not a windows phone. Money isn't the issue, but he's rather attachwed to it and won't change. if any hardware changes are to be made, it's more likely that the laptop would be scrapped and replaced with a macbook (or ipad). So he's leaning more towards the apple side of things. but for now we're trying to find a solution that won't involve new hardware.

we're not so interested in hotmail either, again cost isn't the issue, but his current emails are hosted by a hosting company that we pay for. they're quite associated with him and we don't want to lose them. It's a mater of reputation, branding, and also having a permanant contact address.

Changing to a new email address would be more trouble than this is worth, we'd have to update a lot of webpages and documents, and a lot of communications would be lost in the interim. so any solution that requires a new email address is out of the question.

we're quite open to changes on the user end - new clients/applications. Things serverside like rehosting out addresses would be more problematic, but good if they would help in the long run. anything that's going to affect potential senders, like changing the email address, won't work for us.

Also worth noting, our organisation currently extensively uses gmail. Everyone except the boss has a gmail account for work purposes, and we have our own google apps account for our domain, although we're not really doing anything with it yet. I'm not entirely clear on what it can do for us, but if it could help with these problems it'd be good. it's currently a free apps account, we're open to upgrading to a commercial one though.

We tried talking to google support about what it could do for us, and they were cooperative for a while. but i guess at some point someone asked their supervisopr about the situation, because they suddenly sent us a generic message that free accounts aren't eligible for support and stopped talking to us. This was hiughly illogical considering that the conversation was basically a sales enquiry and would probably have led to purchase of a paid subscription, but meh...


RE: Importing contacts, which seems oft mentioned. While that's technically what we want to do, it's something that we'd be doing on a regular basis (several times a day) so "sync" is probably a more appropriate word as the process would have to be frequent and automated, once set up.