Outlook continues to drive us all batty.  I’ve just upgraded to a newer machine and while it might not be the speediest beast on the planet, the 2 gigs of RAM makes everything run better including Outlook.  But I digress.  Outlook 2007 is trying to make our e-mail more secure, but it’s junk mail filtering system has some flaws:

Microsoft Outlook 2007 sucks. Or at least it sucks in how it handles its Junk E-mail functionality. Microsoft’s brilliant decision is to prevent users from Replying to any email that lands in your “special” Junk E-mail folder. Microsoft Outlook 2007, part of the Office 2007 suite, displays the following dialog box popup when I click Reply to an email in the Junk E-mail folder:
“To help protect your personal information, this message has been converted to plain text. Links and other functionality have been disabled. To restore functionality, move the message to the Inbox.”
There is also a ‘Do not show’ check box which adds a setting to the Registry so the popup doesn’t appear again. I happened to check it, so now when I click Reply to an email in my Junk E-mail folder nothing happens. The mouse cursor just sits there mocking me and my futile clicks of the Reply button. Strangely enough the Forward button works which makes absolutely no sense. Block Reply for security reasons but not Forward? Source: Outlook 2007 Sucks

I’ve run into disappearing e-mail problems with Outlook 2007 and Junk Mail.  I mark it not junk and it leaves the junk folder … but no where to be found in the inbox … strange behaviour.

Ever wonder if Microsoft is just doing this to us because they want to drive us crazy?  You have to wonder sometimes.

Plaxo launched v3.0 of it’s online contact management service/tool today, and since it’s in the news you might be wondering if you should use it (or restart using it if you have been away from it for a while).

First, just what is Plaxo and what’s all the hype about v3.0 anyway?  Plaxo is a service that let you sync your contacts, calendar, task, and notes (Outlook) online.  It was a social network of sorts so that when one of your contacts who is also on Plaxo changes their information, you are updated.  Also if you add a new person who is on Plaxo, then you’ll get their contact info.  Often this meant you got a more complete contact card for that person.

Calendar, task, and note sync, pretty much the same, except just focused on you.  From Outlook this was done via a toolbar.  When I used it under XP and Outlook 2003 it was pretty good.  Kept my contacts up to date and such.  The big complaint about Plaxo in the past was the “invite your friends to Plaxo” that it seemed to send out on its own.  Not cool.  Version 3.0 is supposed to have reduced/stopped this.

Now, the big question … well should I use it?  If you asked me on Friday I would have said, yes.  Go for it.  Having that online backup of all my contacts saved my tush on more than one occasion.  I liked getting detailed contact information from people when I added just their e-mail address to my address book.  I also liked being able to update my contact info there and figure a good number of important folks would get that update.

Today, though, Plaxo 3.0 came out.  Om Malik, Scoble, and Web Worker Daily all have coverage and reviews.  The gist is that Plaxo has realized that to stay in the social network game, they have to help people connect the dots.  Bring your Outlook, Yahoo!, Gmail, LinkedIn, and other contact lists into a cohesive whole.  So they spiffed up the interface, added a ton of new sync points, and this new thin called “Pulse” where you can see items from your contacts’ various feeds (Flickr, blogs, etc).  I really thought this was going to be awesome.  Then reality hit.

First warning sign was Scoble having trouble using Outlook 2007 and the new Plaxo toolbar.  I had shied away from Plaxo for a while because of that.  Hmm.  I was having a good bit of trouble getting it working.  It get stalling.  Second, and the stake in Plaxo’s heart for me, was from Web Worker Daily.  I noted a mention that a $50/yr premium subscription would allow syncing of more than 1000 contacts.  Uh oh.  Before I could sync my 1800+ contacts (I’m now down to 1752), but I couldn’t use the duplicate remover, etc.  That’s fine, I could deal with that.  I didn’t thing WWD could be right, so I had to check for myself.  Yep, if I want to sync all of my contacts I have to pay $50 a month.  Nice job of letting me know Plaxo.

Lots of us who have been around in business for a while have a ton of contacts.  The contact lists for some of the VCs I know must be immense.  I guess they are paying or leaving.

Should you use Plaxo?  Maybe.  If you have a lot of contacts, don’t bother.  If you can’t sync them all for free…then why sync a portion of them?  That is just stupid.  Maybe limit non-premium folks to once a day sync, I don’t care.  If you have a smaller number of contacts, I say it’s worth a try.  If you’re using Outlook 2007, proceed with caution.

Final word:

Plaxo 3.0 does look cool, and has added some very powerful sync point, but for people will 900 or more contacts (I say 900 because chances are you’ll add another 100 soon enough) you have to pay to have it be useful.

Update: I was wrong.  It appears that by trying to sync Outlook and Gmail and getting stalled with all the traffic it seemed that I couldn’t do it.  Well encouraged by Robert (PacificIT), who got it to work with his 3,000 contacts, I tried again and everything synced up nicely.  Thank you to Joseph Smarr who left the comment to officially set me straight.

Ah the out of office message.  Can’t remember when I’ve had to put one of those up.  Which isn’t a good sign, really is it?  Anyway, sometimes you don’t just want the basic “I’m not here” message to go to everyone.  It is possible to be more clever in Outlook (and I gather Gmail), you just have to use rules to do it. Lifehacker points out in their post, and rightly so, that this requires that both the host machine and Outlook have to be kept open and running for this to work.  Not going to work for me.  My machine is my laptop … if I’m out of the office, it’s probably with me (even if I’m on vacation for picture stuff if nothing else).

So I’m going to take a really good look at the Gmail tips.  Since all my e-mail routes through one of two accounts … it will be easy to cover all your bases.

There is, however, a dark side to this.  If a piece of spam sneaks through, and you auto-reply to it, you might be confirming your e-mail as active to spammer.  I say might because the reply-to would have to be the spammers address and not some poor sot who’s e-mail address is being used.

 Diana Huggins who contributes to Lockgnome’s Windows Fanatics blog always seems to have those tips and how tos that people need.  Whether it’s watermarks in Word or new lines in Excel cells, Diana has posted them.

Sure, you might think they are simple, if you’ve already spent time trying to figure out how to do it through trial and error and Office help, but lots of people haven’t.

Instead of just posting every day her latest tip, just save us both some time and subscribe to the blog and get them via RSS.

We’ve been complaining, we’ve been trying to do what we can to improve things (including disabling most fun plugins), but Outlook 2007 has been dogged with performance problems since it debuted (actually in complaints started in beta).  Microsoft has finally released a patch for Outlook 2007 that is supposed improve the performance issues:

Microsoft indicated that the problem stemmed from RSS feeds, email, and calendar files all being stored in the same .PSD file which as one might imagine could grow in size rather quickly depending on the user. The problem lies not with the software, but how users are using the software. Jessica Arnold Outlooks Program Manager told ComputerWorld “Outlook wasn’t designed to be a file dump, it was meant to be a communications tool…There is that fine line, but we don’t necessarily want to optimize the software for people that store their e-mail in the same .PST file for ten years.”
Source: Microsoft speeds up Outlook 2007 - Download Squad

Vista’s Windows Update didn’t flag it for me today, so I downloaded it manually.  Have I noticed anything different?  Not really.  But it is Saturday and e-mailing hasn’t been high on my list of activities today.

In the quote above, it is important to note that they are right.  Keeping a ton of e-mail, especially old e-mail and calendar items, is pointless.  I let auto-archive run and do its thing every month.  Copernic indexes the archived e-mails so nothing it lost.

Also don’t forget to compact the mailbox periodically.  I’ll cover that in another post later.

The guys at ClearContext just can’t seem to leave well enough alone can they:

ClearContext’s AutoAssign is a simple way to create rules to assign ClearContext Priority and Topics to messages. For power users who would like more flexibility in rules creation, we have provided integration of this functionality into the Outlook rules interface.
Source: ClearContext Information Management System

No, they just have to keep making their product more flexible.  Man you gotta hate that.

Seriously, I have downloaded but not installed it yet.  One main reason is that I really don’t use Outlook’s rules feature much.  Frankly the AutoAssign function in ClearContext does the trick for a lot of needs. In terms of a software company this is what I like to see, just keep innovating constantly.  Release little enhancements frequently instead of major changes all at once.  Why?  Release the little stuff, essentially throwing it at the wall and see if it sticks, then see what users come up with to make it even better.

Hmm, make a good plan for all facets of business.

You know I love ClearContext for Outlook.  The colour coding, the prioritization, the ability to just file messages with a click, and filing sent messages with a topic, all these things let me really manage my e-mail.  A while ago Brad told me about the Vista gadget for CC and Outlook 2007.  I’ve been trying it since before it was launched and it’s just getting better!  Here’s the short and sweet announcement:

We’ve added three new action buttons to the Inbox Alert Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget.  Now you can Mark Read, Delete or Reply to the message you are previewing (Outlook 2007 only).  We haven’t posted to the Windows Live Gallery site yet, but you can grab it here.  See our gadget page for more detail.
Source: ClearContext Corporate Weblog

Here’s why this is cool.  I glance right and see what’s come in.  Quick look and I decide if I need to even read it right away.  Click and I scan the message.  Click and I delete it, reply, or just mark it read.  Don’t even need to get into Outlook if I don’t need to.  I switch between no filter and filter for Normal and higher.  Just depends on how busy I am.

Regardless this leap forward has made the gadget and CC even more useful to me!  Good on ya guys!

 One of the big problems folks have been having with Office 2007 is Outlook.  Frankly, it can be a serious dog.  Sluggish, serious performance lags.  All the things you don’t want in your “latest and greatest” e-mail client.  Looks like, thanks to Mack D. Male, there is a solution:

DELL has gotten back to me with a solution that seemed to work.

Following these steps:

1. Open Outlook as an Administrator by going to C:Programs/Microsoft Office/Office12 and right clicking on the Outlook exe program.  Choose “Run as Administrator”.

2. Then once Outlook opens, go to Tools, then Trust Center, then Addins.

3. Click “Go…” at the bottom and uncheck Outlookaddins.

4. To maximize speed, they recommended to uncheck everything EXCEPT Windows Indexing, which, according to them, is the only useful addin anyway.

When I did this, the speed of my Outlook 2007 improved significantly; although, we will all have to wait for Microsoft to release the update that fixes this issue completely. I hope this helped you.  Microsoft Discussion Groups Home

I did this last night and I think it’s working.  Mack and I would both like to see what others find.  Truth be told I didn’t disable Evernote clipping or ClearContext (of course!), but I still think there was a boost.

Give this tip a shot and let me know if it works for you.  Best of all you can “undo” it very, very easily.

Like Google Calendar but use Outlook to manage your day?  That’s my problem too.  Looks like there might a solution in gSyncit:

This Outlook plug-in supports one-way or two-way synchronization (you can go Google-to-Outlook, Outlook-to-Google or both) and works manually or automatically. After installing the program, look for a new two-button toolbar in Outlook; click the Settings button to access gSyncit’s surprisingly robust configuration options.
Source: Download of the Day: gSyncit (Windows) - Lifehacker

I gave this a shot and it worked great with my personal Google Calendar, but I couldn’t get it to work with a hosted version.  Still, it was pretty fast and it didn’t make my Blackberry barf!