Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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Ever since I have used Outlook, which is quite a while, I have looked for ways to take my important information with me.

In the days of Windows 95 and 98 I was able to synch Outlook with a REX, the only PDA I ever found small enough to make it worthwhile. (I figure if I need my data a laptop with full features is worth taking along).

I still don't have a smart phone, but I realize that Windows Mobile is one solution for taking your Outlook contacts and calendar items along portably.

But what if you do travel, occasionally find yourself with nothing more than a web connection, or at a site where your laptop is not available for some reason?

The problem with many web synching applications and Outlook is that as soon as an app works with Outlook, Outlook undergoes some kind of transformation and there is a lag time until the app catches up.

Finally I found one app that works with a very popular web calendar (Google).

SyncMyCal adds a toolbar to your Outlook which helps you perform one-click synchronization between your Outlook and Google Calendar calendaring system. You can choose which calendars you want to synchronize and if you want to perform one way or two way updates.

Figure 1401

One thing I liked about this app right away was that it had different download versions for different versions of Outlook, right up to 2007. This made me feel a lot more confident about it working.

There are also two different versions, a free one that I decided to check out and another pro version for $25. The pro version goes beyond the free version's seven day synch range and allows you to synch automatically. To test the product I went with the free version.

The only slightly tricky part of the installation is the need to also install a .NET runtime prior to putting in the program, but installation of both went seamlessly.

With the calendar toolbar installed, I could click to open my settings and enable both my Outlook Calendar and connect to my calendar on Google.

Figure 1402

With both set up properly I was almost ready to upload my data.

Figure 1403

First I just had to let the program know how I wanted to synch, I could upload, download or synch with either giving Outlook or Google precedence. Since I had nothing in Google yet, and I work mostly from the laptop, I chose to synch with Outlook precedence.

Figure 1404

Now when click to Synchronize, I get a slider showing me progress, a summary of what my options are, and then I can also click to see a log of the operation when it's complete.

Figure 1405

If I refresh my Google calendar, sure enough, the appointments within my date range for the lite version — seven days total, 3 days prior, 3 days forward, are in my monthly view. And, I can click on any entry and revise it through my web browser.

Figure 1406

Pretty slick.

Where SynchMyCal really shines is probably for small organizations which would benefit from multiple user licenses, where coordination of calendars and appointments would be helpful. In addition, there is a mobile version for PDAs and other portable devices. If you don't use a Google calendar or don't want to for some reason, the company has its own flavor of calendar called 30Boxes which you can also synch Outlook to, or coordinate with a mobile installation.

What about if you use another kind of calendar online?

I took a quick look at AutoSynch from Yahoo and its calendar, and it reminded me of why I haven't done much of this.

First of all my current laptop is Vista, and Yahoo only supports up to Windows XP. Also, there was no clearly defined version of Outlook mentioned, so I was not confident of how it might work with 2007 — it may not quite be ready yet.

Typically like other synch programs, Yahoo promises to work with many different devices and programs which will make it tougher to troubleshoot. Given a choice with one that works, I will continue using SyncMyCal with Google.

Another promising possibility, however, is a company called Zoho with an entire suite of online Office apps competing, presumably with Microsoft and Open Office.

They have an online organizer and a downloadable synch tool for CRM (Customer Relations Management) that presumably synchs with Outlook.

It's my intention to take a closer look at some of their apps in the near future, and possibly test the synching capability with Outlook. Zoho has gotten some good press lately and the range of capabilities of its Office suite looks impressive.

I would be interested to see the full interoperability, however before embracing any online solution because for better or worse, the Microsoft Office apps are a standard and playing well with them is a prerequisite for the success of any program.

Probably the big benefit of these tools, or using an entire web solution like HyperOffice (which we covered months ago) — especially for smaller offices that have limited resources for IT — is that you can avoid installing Microsoft Exchange Server.

Not that there's anything wrong with MS Exchange, except that you need to manage an entirely new set of programs. If all you want to do is coordinate your Outlook data — calendar, appointments, contacts and notes — using a simpler web based solution probably makes a lot of sense.

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