A few weeks back, whilst setting-up a customer’s laptop, they wanted to be able to pick-up their emails from a Hotmail account in Microsoft Outlook.
Outlook 2003 and 2007 no longer allows users to pick-up emails from a Hotmail account. Instead you need a little add-on. In short the add-on is called “Office Outlook Connector 12.0 – Windows Live Hotmail for Outlook”.
The good news is that you’ll get the full power of Outlook, including Instant Search, the To-Do List, and offline access to your info. Any changes you make to e-mail and contact information in Outlook will automatically be synchronised with the Web version of your Windows Live Hotmail account.
There are some good pros to having this:-
- The connector allows access and synchronisation for both Hotmail and Live Mail
- Anything changed in your contacts, calendar or emails will automatically sync back to the webmail version
- With the Outlook Connector, you can view your calendars from Windows Live Calendar in Outlook, including other people’s calendars that have been shared with you. By managing your calendars in Outlook, you can take advantage of the time-management features that Outlook offers such as viewing multiple calendars in Outlook at the same time.
- At the moment this service is free (the way it should be!), at in version 12.1.
But there are cons too:-
- The Connector has a rubbish error log which means when something goes wrong, it’s not easy to understand why something went wrong. i.e. all you see is error numbers, not a real explanation.
- In some cases, The Connector does not make your account available to other programs.
The good news is that the set-up is a breeze to do, and it downloads everything in a jiff, and it is always best for the user to able to view or write messages even if they are offline. For example being on a plane or Internet connection is down.
Link: Outlook Connector download (requires validation of your copy of MS Office before downloading)
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