How do I fix this two-account setup?
July 16, 2019 9:05 AM   Subscribe

I am volunteering with an animal rescue that has no paid staff. The woman who does most of the coordinating (tons!) doesn't have her calendar on her phone and wants it there. I'm not someone who works in IT, but I can set up a calendar. Except I have run into problems. Can you help me figure out how to best help her?

(Today's earlier question is similar but not the same.)

The woman's computer literacy is decent for general use, but somewhat limited.

She is currently using Outlook on her windows laptop. Her primary account is with Juno. She has her email there, and keeps her calendar there, too.

Her iPhone has no calendar set up. Her mail from Juno comes to the mail app. HOWEVER, the organization uses a Google calendar, and she has a google account at our disposal.

The goal is for her to have a setup where she can read/write her calendar (currently Juno with Outlook and Google) and her email (Juno) from both her laptop and her iPhone and everything syncs up. She wants to continue to use Outlook on her laptop because gmail confused her.

My research is suggesting our best move may be to migrate her to google entirely, and then set up her phone with the google account for both mail and calendar. Can I set it up so that all the mail she gets from Juno is forwarded to gmail? Can I migrate her Outlook calendar to google calendar? And then I would set up her outlook to fetch her gmail instead of Juno, right?

I am kind of talking myself around in circles. Am I missing anything?
posted by Stewriffic to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)
 
Can I set it up so that all the mail she gets from Juno is forwarded to gmail?

You can.

Can I migrate her Outlook calendar to google calendar?

You can.

And then I would set up her outlook to fetch her gmail instead of Juno, right?

Yes.

I think what you are proposing is an effective solution to the problem. I hope she is pleased!
posted by howfar at 10:20 AM on July 16, 2019


So I think in this plan she has to stop using Outlook for calendaring, because I'm not aware of a good way to keep a Google calendar and Outlook synced. Is that going to be an issue?
posted by Rock Steady at 10:50 AM on July 16, 2019


She wants to continue to use Outlook on her laptop because gmail confused her.

So then why not just standardise everything on Outlook, forward Juno email to outlook and setup outlook email and Outlook calendar on both devices.

That way she will never have to tangle with the Gmail interface if she is away or using a different PC.

Moving away from an email account thats tied to a broadband provider is more important than which cloud service you use. If you don't need the advanced filtering and tagging options, then Outlook is just as good as Gmail.
posted by Lanark at 11:34 AM on July 16, 2019


Response by poster: So I think in this plan she has to stop using Outlook for calendaring, because I'm not aware of a good way to keep a Google calendar and Outlook synced. Is that going to be an issue?

Yes, it would be an issue if she can't use her google calendar in Outlook on her laptop. Do Google and Outlook not play well with each other?
posted by Stewriffic at 12:23 PM on July 16, 2019


Response by poster: So then why not just standardise everything on Outlook, forward Juno email to outlook and setup outlook email and Outlook calendar on both devices.

Because she needs to at least view shared google calendars that are already in place for her work with the organization I am helping with.
posted by Stewriffic at 12:26 PM on July 16, 2019


Best answer: Do Google and Outlook not play well with each other?

She can subscribe to the organization's Google Calendar in Outlook, but won't be able to make changes to it. See here. I believe there are third-party apps that will do the syncing, but they generally cost money and introduce an additional layer of things that can go wrong.

In this case, I think it is actually best to put Outlook on her phone and have her manage email and calendaring on her phone through that app. It's not ideal, as the iPhone is still going to want to use its own Calendar and Mail apps as the default (so for example, if she clicks on an "email us" link on a website it is going to open iOS Mail and not Outlook).
posted by Rock Steady at 3:37 PM on July 16, 2019


Best answer: And I just noticed who asked this question. We should have chatted about this at the anniversary meetup on Saturday!
posted by Rock Steady at 3:40 PM on July 16, 2019


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