Outlook contacts
June 7, 2006 4:24 PM Subscribe
How can I filter email Outlook contacts and sync my contacts with my phone and another computer?
Outlook
There are several things I want to be able to do with outlook contacts and email that I’m not sure if it’s possible or how to do it.
(Sorry this is long and includes multiple questions, but I suppose you can always stop reading now! )
First, here is my configuration
HOME
Outlook 2003 with all of my contacts
Linkedin.com toolbar
Plaxo.com toolbar
Cingular 8125 (windows mobile phone) with ActiveSync 4.1
New work computer
Outlook 2003 which I uploaded a .CSV file of my contacts
Linkedin.com toolbar
Plaxo.com toolbar
ACT! (with company contacts)
ActiveSync 4.1 (I have not performed the first sync with my phone yet
I have around 1200 contacts in Outlook which are also in my phone via active sync. When I add a contact I make sure to assign a category or multiple categories like the city they live in, sportleague, work, personal, noemailaddress, family, etc.
(1)
So my first question is how can I use these categories? I would like to be able to filter on them like so:
Populate the “to” field with all people with these categories:
Denver, Personal, happyhour
But filter out the people with this value:
Business
I tried a product called Avidian Prophet which would let me combine categories (send to A category and B category) but not let me filter out (A and B but NOT C)
I would mostly like to be able to filter this for personal use. I do not need a CRM application. Nor do I need each email to be personalized. Ex: “Dear”. I would just like to be able to quickly send out a party invite or alert certain business contacts that a friend is looking for a job, etc. It would also be nice if I could filter my contacts on my phone. Ex: I can’t quite remember someone name but I can remember that they are in both my “hiker” and “happyhour” categories.
(2)
My next question is about how to sync my home computer, work computer, and phone. Active sync seems to just allow you to make the computer always update the phone or the phone always update the computer. I really like having my contacts automatically update when someone updates their info in Plaxo.com. So I have the computer as the master contact list. But when I change someone’s info on my phone then it does not get updated. So what I’ve been doing is adding them again. So if I’m out with John and he says he got a new phone I leave my john smith contact as it is but I make a new contact AAAjohn and manually edit the john smith contact when I get back to my computer. Not ideal. Not to mention when I start adding contacts to my work computer (and copying contacts from ACT!) it is just going to get worse.
(3)
Finally, I have a POP3 email account for work. If I add my hotmail account to my work Outlook does my outgoing hotmail messages automatically go through the work account? In other words, can my boss see them? I noticed that when I had hotmail in Outlook with my last company (which used Exchange, not POP3) that the Hotmail messages I replied to would show up in my Exchange sent box.
I hope this was clear and not ridiculously long. Any suggestions and answers are appreciated.
Outlook
There are several things I want to be able to do with outlook contacts and email that I’m not sure if it’s possible or how to do it.
(Sorry this is long and includes multiple questions, but I suppose you can always stop reading now! )
First, here is my configuration
HOME
Outlook 2003 with all of my contacts
Linkedin.com toolbar
Plaxo.com toolbar
Cingular 8125 (windows mobile phone) with ActiveSync 4.1
New work computer
Outlook 2003 which I uploaded a .CSV file of my contacts
Linkedin.com toolbar
Plaxo.com toolbar
ACT! (with company contacts)
ActiveSync 4.1 (I have not performed the first sync with my phone yet
I have around 1200 contacts in Outlook which are also in my phone via active sync. When I add a contact I make sure to assign a category or multiple categories like the city they live in, sportleague, work, personal, noemailaddress, family, etc.
(1)
So my first question is how can I use these categories? I would like to be able to filter on them like so:
Populate the “to” field with all people with these categories:
Denver, Personal, happyhour
But filter out the people with this value:
Business
I tried a product called Avidian Prophet which would let me combine categories (send to A category and B category) but not let me filter out (A and B but NOT C)
I would mostly like to be able to filter this for personal use. I do not need a CRM application. Nor do I need each email to be personalized. Ex: “Dear
(2)
My next question is about how to sync my home computer, work computer, and phone. Active sync seems to just allow you to make the computer always update the phone or the phone always update the computer. I really like having my contacts automatically update when someone updates their info in Plaxo.com. So I have the computer as the master contact list. But when I change someone’s info on my phone then it does not get updated. So what I’ve been doing is adding them again. So if I’m out with John and he says he got a new phone I leave my john smith contact as it is but I make a new contact AAAjohn and manually edit the john smith contact when I get back to my computer. Not ideal. Not to mention when I start adding contacts to my work computer (and copying contacts from ACT!) it is just going to get worse.
(3)
Finally, I have a POP3 email account for work. If I add my hotmail account to my work Outlook does my outgoing hotmail messages automatically go through the work account? In other words, can my boss see them? I noticed that when I had hotmail in Outlook with my last company (which used Exchange, not POP3) that the Hotmail messages I replied to would show up in my Exchange sent box.
I hope this was clear and not ridiculously long. Any suggestions and answers are appreciated.
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 8:20 PM on June 7, 2006