Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog

Native DAV has the ability to customize the From address when sending. However, in Outlook Connector 12, that feature was missing. Is the feature coming back in the 12.1 timeframe?

Please at support for Tasks and Notes syncing. It's very usefull.

My vote on the task/notes thing is VERY simple: Please include it. Two reasons:

- Always bad to remove features that were present in previousl versions. Especially with this one, you are going to get a lot of protest from Office Live Small Business users, that certainly use the full set of Outlook features, if the new version of the connector suddenly doesn't support this anymore

- Sync is a killer feature in my opinion, but only if it "just works". If users have to first read lists and documentation on what exactly is synched and what isn't, and if that information is then even very detailed ("follow up flag dates aren't synched, follow up flags are, tasks aren't etc") the whole things will not take of for normal users. So, you should try as hard as possible to simply synch what is in Outlook, completly. Otherwise users have an incredibly frustrating experience.

Thanks for following up so quickly on the comments of the last blog entry. Rock on!

Cheers,

David

Its only synchronizing Inbox folder of my live email. How to make it sync other folders too ?

"The current version of Windows Mobile does not support syncing with the Windows Live Calendar when it is connected to Outlook using the Outlook Live Connector"

Does this apply to the iPhone (over iTunes) as well?

Be honest - I will stop tasing the Apple developer.

Hi! I think that support for Tasks+Notes synchronizing really whould be a great advantage for Windows Live platform!:-)

For example if you work on your home PC, notebook and pocket device, synchronizing of Outlook data (Tasks typically) gets quite complicated (especially between notebook and PC). I know there are specialized 3rd party programs to solve this problem, but they aren't usually very good. And they are paid, of course..

At the end I'd like to thank you that you are working on that 4102 error. It really got me angry when I was finding out what is the cause.. I hope you'll finally end this problem.

I've found a bug in the beta!

Always when I try to synchronize repetitive appointment created in Outlook, synchronization breaks and everything is "broken" from that moment (needs to re-create outlook data file).

One last thing - Why aren't the Contacts categories synchronized with Hotmail? Every time I'm forced to re-create outlook data file and download contacts from Hotmail they loose their categories assignment...

My biggest question is, "Why are Hotmail Plus customers treated like second class citizens?" There isn't much of an incentive for Hotmail Plus these days, and even though we are a paid user, we don't pay enough for get the premium features.  

If there isn't a need for Hotmail Plus, then cancel it. If there is, then give us a benefit, such as full features of a program like Outlook Connector.

It would be really nice to be able to sync the new Windows Live Calendar with my Exchange calendar (in Outlook) using the connector. Now I have my Exchange Calendar and my Windows Live Calendar side-by-side, but they are not synchronized automatically.

I tried to accomplish this by publishing my Exchange Calendar to Office Online, and than subscribing to it from the Live Calendar. Unfortunately the latter doesn't work (I think it's not supported somehow).

Keep up the good work.

Hi,

There is no bug report form, so here it is.

Outlook as a strange behavior when I open the calendar, the tasks and the contacts in new windows.

If I close Outlook, the windows are closed in a determined order. If I open Outlook again, the windows are opened, but in an inverse order.

Each time you close and open Outlook, it change the order. I would like that the order stay the same and be predictable from use to use.

malartre AT gmail.com

I have been receiving an error in Outlook 03 for the last two days under the server status.  The calendar is not syncing.

Outlook Connector Version 12.0.6237.1003

Account:##########@hotmail.com

Signed in successfully at 8/9/2008 4:08:22 PM                                                                          

Mail: Last successfully refreshed at 4:08 PM.                                                                          

Calendar: Error at 4:08 PM.                                                                                            

Contacts: Last successfully refreshed at 4:08 PM.                                                                      

Errors :

Time: 8/9/2008 4:08:23 PM

Error in Calendar

Synchronization error.

Time: 8/9/2008 4:08:24 PM

Error in Calendar

Synchronization error.

Using the beta connector.  Mail and contacts are working fine.

The Beta connector works great for me so far. I have a few comments.

* The new AJAX on-line calendar is great.

* Thanks for making this available for free.

* I am opened to a (modest) paid subscription of MSN once this works properly and that the features I need are added! This is great for families.

I think the following is needed:

* Notes and tasks please!

* Subfolders in mail.live.com mail folders

* Flags and color categories!

* The ability to have mail.live.com folders not to sync with Outlook. What's the benefit of having a 5GB mailbox if it all has to sync to the desktop!

Maybe one of the problems is that many of us are used to Exchange. I would like my personnal e-mail experience to be comparable. Well, a hosted Exchange solution is not affordable for families and individuals.

How does the new Connector impact subscribers of Hotmail Plus? The sign-up page states that calendar synchronization is not supported.

I noticed the thread on the junk email folder with Alessio Roic the Outlook Program manager is closed. None of his answers were helpful anyway. The outlook junk email folder randomly removes emails from the inbox and puts them in the junk email folder. This has happened several times to my boss and is seriously affecting our business. There has to be a way to turn it off. It is totally useless. We do not have any of the settings on to filter the email. We would just like to kill this junk email folder, permanently.

My wife and I have been using the 12.1 Connector for about a month now. We share our calendars that way. Here's my biggest complaint so far:

There is significant latency in synchronization , even after successive send/receive. I use it on two machines (work and home) and e-mail messages, contact, calendar items do not always sync. Its a bit frustrating to add an item to my calendar on one machine and not have it show up on my wife's view of my calendar and vice-versa. Same for e-mails in my Inbox. I do a send/receive before leaving for the day and so I would expect that if I use my machine at home or get it using the Web, I would see what I synced.

And I'll repeat this from my previous post: "The ability to have selected mail.live.com folders not to sync with Outlook. What's the benefit of having a 5GB mailbox if it all has to sync to the desktop!"

Thanks for efforts and great work.

Here are some bugs that I've run into so far.  i didn't expect the experience to be as good as with exchange, but i did expect more.

1.  when i send an appointment to people via outlook, they get it two times.  i'm not sure about the timing, but less than a day later, the meeting is deleted off my calendar.  this is not repro when i make an appointment that doesn't have attendees.  i'm trying to see if i make an appointment via hotmail on the web, then add attendees via outlook if it still repros.  the bad part is that windows live won't let you send invites out via their calendar.  you can only make appointments with yourself.  if you want to send out an invite, they redirect you to myspace and you essentially make an evite.  this is really a huge hassle because it won't be in your calendar and for simple appointments, you really don't need an evite.  

2.  some of my email shows up completely blank via outlook except the date.  when i go to hotmail, i can see everything.  i have noticed that this only happens with mail that was in my non inbox folders in hotmail prior to installing the connector.

3.  when i use conversation view in outlook, all new email shows up under conversation "none".  when i click on an email, focus is taken away from the email and it moves into the correct conversation or is moved to a new folder if there is a rule.  not repro if i group by date.  bummer because i love conversation view.

4.  in outlook with exchange, the reading pane was turned off by default in junk email.  not the case with the junk folder in hotmail via outlook.

issues with contacts (i was trying to merge my exchange contacts with my hotmail contacts (most of them from my IM).

5.  if i move a contact from my archive folder over to my hotmail account, and the same email address is on both, it asks if i want to merge the two, but it doesn't acutally merge the two, so i get dupes.  don't know if it's because i categorized everything.

6.  as a result, i went one by one (very tedious) and deleted my hotmail contacts and moved my exchange contacts over.  now the vast majority of my IM contacts appear in msn im as "non messenger contacts", so i can't im with them anymore.  i had filled in the outlook IM address field in my contacts.  turns out this is different than the field that msn im uses.  this field is not shown in the outlook contact form.  looks like i have more tedious work to do.

7.  some of my exchange contacts (archive folder) can't be moved over to hotmail.  rebooting doesn't help.

8.  hotmail respects my old categories for contacts, but doesn't have these categories in the "all categories" list.  shouldn't outlook just add these new categories?  it would make life much more simple.  easier to delete a category than to have to type it all in again.

Using the 12.1 Outlook connector:

For some reason, my Autoarchive and manual Archive is not working on the Deleted Items folder (for hotmail).

All other folders will archive without issue. Even my gmail account (connected via IMAP) will archive all folders.

Does anyone have an idea of why this is happening?

I really need to archive my deleted items (please, no rants on why I need to archive "deleted" items).

Thanks to any and all for any help.

Ok, i realize that Windows Live Calendar does not Sync with Windows Mobile using the connector, but i wondering a possible work around would be to replicate the Calendar on the @hotmail.com account (Windows Live) to the local Outlook Calendar (from which Windows Mobile can synch to) - Any idea how to automatically 'synch' or replicate the WL calendar to the local outlook calendar/