Workers' Edge

Last February, I described losing half my iPhone contacts after an iTunes sync. Even though I tried the Filadex Web-based contact manager, I don't like the fact that the information is stored unencrypted on Web servers.

More importantly, my iPhone always has my most up-to-date telephone and address contact list, while Gmail knows more about my e-mail correspondents than the iPhone does, and Google Calendar is my primary scheduler. Just to complicate matters, I spend most of my workdays (and some weekends, unfortunately) in Outlook.

I need to export my Google Calendar and Gmail addresses to Outlook and my iPhone, and move my iPhone telephone numbers and physical addresses to Gmail and Outlook. Simple, right? Well, it turned out to be not too difficult or time-consuming, although the result was a bit messy.

Sync Google Calendar with calendars in Outlook and the iPhone
Who knew Google Calendar and Outlook could play so nice? The aptly named Google Calendar Sync does the trick with just a few clicks and a minimum of thumb-twiddling. The program works with Outlook 2003 and 2007 on XP and Vista PCs, though it doesn't support 64-bit XP, according to Google.

After you download and install the program, you enter your Google ID and password and choose one of three options: sync from and to Google Calendar and Outlook; sync from Google Calendar to Outlook; or sync from Outlook to Google Calendar. The default sync time is 120 minutes, and the minimum setting is 10 minutes; there's no mention of a maximum setting. The sync begins after you click Save.

Up-and-down arrows on the Google Calendar icon in the notification area indicate a sync in progress; hover over it to see the percent complete or the time of the last sync.

The program converted my relatively simple Google Calendar to Outlook 2007 with surprising accuracy. In fact, the two calendars appeared and acted very much alike. Keep in mind, I didn't transfer any tricky repeating appointments, invitations, or time-zone changes. But for my meager calendar needs, the sync was fast and comprehensive.

To sync your Google Calendar and Gmail contacts with an iPhone, simply use the phone to create a Google Sync account. Instructions for OS version 2.2 and 3.0 are on the Google Mobile Help site.

Unfortunately, Google Sync is limited in the fields it supports and doesn't let you exclude entries or deal with duplicates. These and other of the program's limitations are described on the Google Sync Help page.

Move your iPhone contacts to Gmail and Outlook, or vice-versa
Use iTunes to export your iPhone contacts to Outlook--and Gmail, if you choose not to go the Google Sync route described above. Plug your iPhone into your PC, choose the device in iTunes' left pane, and select the Info tab. Pick either Outlook or Google Contacts in the "Sync contacts from" drop-down menu. (Yahoo Address Book and Windows Address Book are the other options.) For Outlook, you can choose which groups to sync. For Gmail, you enter your user ID and password.

Your only sync options are to merge or replace the entries iTunes identifies as duplicates, and to choose between two entries pegged as conflicts. The resulting sync was full of double entries, but I would much rather deal with manually merging the dupes than losing the information either entry contains.

I'll probably spend another hour or so cleaning up the extra entries created by the contact sync, but that's much less time than I'd spend trying to replace the info.

If you followed the steps in my post from August on merging your Outlook and Gmail contacts, you may have ended up with duplicates in your contact lists. Microsoft's advice for deleting duplicate contacts is to sort them by the date modified, Ctrl-select the ones you want to remove, and press delete.

The problem is, the duplicate entries probably aren't identical, so you're almost certain to delete some data along with the dupe. What you need is a way to merge the information in the duplicate contacts. There's no such feature in Outlook, but if you're willing to spend $30, you can make short work of your extraneous Outlook entries by running 4Team's Duplicate Killer for Outlook.

The program deletes or merges duplicate e-mail messages, calendar entries, tasks, and notes in addition to contacts. I tested the program with Outlook 2007 but, according to the vendor, it works with Outlook 2000, XP, and 2003 as well. The new version, 3, is said to work with "Microsoft Exchange type folders including public folders," according to the vendor's Web site, but I ran it on a standalone Outlook installation.

... Read more

Last week, somebody contacted me about a problem they were having with Outlook:

"I work for a general contractor and have multiple projects going on. When I get e-mails pertaining to particular jobs, I place them in Personal Folders that I name with the job name. When the project is completed, I would like to move the folder onto my hard drive without losing the date.

"I have over 242 e-mails for one job alone. When I move them, they all come up with the date that I transferred them and the subject matter is gone. There has got to be a better way of saving old e-mails without losing important data. It would be impossible to go back to find a particular e-mail after transferring them. The sender info is gone as well."

The steps for moving specific messages into a folder on your hard drive or other storage device are the same for Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003. Click File > New > Outlook Data File. Choose either Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst) or Outlook 97-2002 Personal Folders File (.pst) and click OK.

Next, choose the location for your new folder, give it a name (the default is "Personal Folders(1)," but you can probably come up with a more descriptive name), and click OK. Enter the name in the Create Microsoft Personal Folders dialog box, add a password if you wish, and click OK again.

Now drag the messages you want to store locally out of their current Outlook Personal Folder subfolder and into the folder you just created. The messages will remain intact, with all dates, attachments, and other content unchanged.

Last year, I decided to give Linux a try. Everything was going well, until I started working for a company that uses Microsoft Outlook for e-mail. There's simply no straightforward, reliable way to run Outlook on Linux. I tried Outlook Web Access, but the service strips code from HTML attachments, among other limitations.

(The company I worked for prior to my current employer used Lotus Notes, which is probably the only e-mail program in the world more proprietary than Outlook. Organizations must get some huge benefit from using these closed e-mail systems, because they sure make life difficult for users.)

I didn't get far with my Linux experiment, but I'm not giving up on my dream of a simpler PC. I'm ready for the true network computer. Unfortunately, Web apps aren't quite ready for me. More specifically, they're not ready for my boss, though they appear to be getting closer every day.

Do you really need all those programs on your hard drive?
It's downright wasteful to have huge software applications collecting dust on PC hard drives. Take a look at the programs with shortcuts on your Start menu. I bet you haven't opened half of them more than a handful of times in the last year, and a bunch you probably have used but once or not at all.

Adoption of Web-based versions of PC applications has been slowed by the services' limited features and performance compared to that of their desktop counterparts. Also, a dropped Internet link leaves you out in the cold.

Today, online services such as Zoho provide much of the functionality of various desktop apps, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Zoho also includes an offline component that lets you continue to work without a Web connection. Likewise, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Picasa, Wordpress, and more recently Gmail use Google Gears to allow offline access to your data in those services.

Security of Web-based apps comes up short
Of course, from an IT perspective, the most serious shortcoming of Web-based applications is their perceived lack of security. In particular, Google doesn't let you encrypt the data you store on the company's servers. Zoho's FAQ page states that the company will soon add a data-encryption option. Still, storing the organization's data on somebody else's servers can give system administrators nightmares.

There are still some applications I use regularly that don't have a Web equivalent: Outlook, the TopStyle HTML editor, and the Corel Paint Shop Pro imaging program, among a handful of others. The one thing all three of these programs have in common is that they were selected for me--by my boss.

Personally, I'm ready to go the Web-app-and-Netbook route. And as soon as I can say adios to the monster applications my work seems to require, I'll give the always-online life a try. Wish me luck convincing my employer to join me.

A couple of weeks ago, I described how to disable the feature in Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 that automatically completes addresses as you enter them in the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: fields.

As I stated then, I've come to depend on Outlook's address-autocomplete feature, though it's far from perfect. First, editing the list isn't easy. You can delete an entry you no longer need by pressing Delete after you scroll to the address in the drop-down list that appears as you type the name in one of the above fields. But there's no simple way to edit the list.

Sure, you can use the free NK2View utility from NirSoft to import and export address books, as described by the How-To Geek, but there's nothing quick or simple about the process.

What I really want is the ability to restrict the addresses that appear in the list as I enter them. For example, an Autocomplete Settings dialog box would let me limit the list to addresses I've entered at least twice (or three times, or five times, or any number I choose) to eliminate the one-offs (or three-offs, etc.)

An even simpler request to Microsoft's developers would be to let me restrict autocomplete suggestions to addresses that appear in my contacts. And while I have my wish list out, how about making it easier to sync contacts between Gmail and Outlook?

One way to cut through Outlook's autocomplete clutter is to use the Ctrl-K keyboard shortcut to access the program's Check Names feature. Simply type the first few letters of the address you want to enter, and press Ctrl-K.

If only one address in your contacts matches the letters, that address will be entered into the field automatically. If more than one address match the letters, the Check Names dialog box will open (see below). Scroll to an address, and press Enter to place it into the address field of your message.

The clean-slate approach to Outlook's autocomplete feature
If your nickname file gets out of hand, you can start from scratch by renaming the file, which will cause Outlook to create a new one the next time the program opens. Start by finding the .nk2 file. In XP, the default location for this file is here:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

In Vista, the file is placed in this folder by default:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook

If you don't find the file in either of these locations, make sure that your system is set to view hidden system files. To do so in Windows Explorer, click Tools > Folder Options > View and select "Show hidden files and folders" in the "Advanced settings" window. (If you don't see the Tools option in Vista's Explorer, press the Alt key.)

Now simply rename the file. You could delete it, but I recommend keeping the original file around so that you can revert to it, should something go awry. A Microsoft Knowledge Base article provides complete instructions for resetting this Outlook feature.

I didn't realize how much I had come to rely on Microsoft Outlook's ability to automatically complete the e-mail addresses I entered in the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: fields until a recent Microsoft Exchange server update at my office wiped out the entries. Of course, one person's convenience is another person's security risk.

Eli Lilly and Co. found this out the hard way last year after a lawyer in the company's employ sent a confidential memo intended for a colleague to a report for the New York Times whose name was similar to the coworker's.

To disable Outlook's address-autocomplete feature, click Tools > Options > E-mail Options (under the Preferences tab) > Advanced E-mail Options. Uncheck "Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields" and click OK three times.

If you're a fan of Outlook's autocomplete feature, you may want to export your autocomplete entries to another PC. Microsoft provides instructions for doing so, though Vista users will need to refer to one of the article's comments to find the location of the .nk2 file they need to export.

But there's a better way: Nirsoft's free NK2View lets you view the entries in this file and export them as a text file, HTML, or XML. You'll find more information about the utility on the NirSoft site.

The third of my three updates to the 10-Step Security story I wrote back in 2005 covers steps seven through 10, which deal with e-mail safety. (Last week, I refreshed steps one, two, and three, which address Windows security, and steps four, five, and six that cover safe browsing.)

Three years ago, e-mail was the source of most PC virus infections, but that's no longer the case. Now you're more likely to catch a piece of malware from a Web site, whether by downloading a file or simply by opening a booby-trapped page.

Does this mean you may now open e-mail messages and attachments without a second thought? Uh-uh.

The first of the four e-mail security tips in the original story warns against clicking links embedded in messages. That prohibition still applies. It's easy to spoof a link so that it looks like it leads somewhere other than its real destination. As the tip recommended, it's much safer to enter the URL in your browser's address bar manually, or to find your way to the page using the site's own navigation or search function.

Likewise, the advice in the eighth security step to scan attachments for viruses before opening them is as valid today as it was three years ago. Nearly every antivirus program and security suite scans all incoming e-mail and file attachments by default.

Some people will tell you that your e-mail client's preview pane--the topic of security tip number nine--poses no risk because it's much more difficult for malware to attack your PC simply by viewing a message. Even if this were the case, I would still close the preview pane in my e-mail program for privacy's sake.

The original article describes how to close the preview pane in Outlook Express, Outlook 2003, and Mozilla Thunderbird. The steps for doing so in Outlook 2007 are the same as in Outlook 2003.

I'm a big fan of viewing e-mail in plain text, the subject of the last of the 10 security steps. Using plain text is not just a way to block viruses transported via HTML mail. Plain-text messages may not always look so spiffy, but the files open fast.

I described how to set Outlook 2003 and 2007 to send and receive e-mail as plain text in a post from last month. To set Thunderbird to view incoming mail as plain text, click View > Message Body As > Plain Text.

To send mail as plain text in Thunderbird, click Tools > Account Settings, choose Composition & Addressing in the left pane, uncheck "Compose messages in HTML format," and click OK.

A final note on security software and wireless encryption
Two sidebars to the original 10-Step Security list the top security programs in various categories and recommend use of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) to protect wireless networks.

Rather than using different programs for virus protection, spyware blocking, and other malware defenses, I prefer the suite approach. Using a combo security program reduces the chance of software conflicts, and if something goes wrong, you have only one vendor to deal with, for better or worse.

WPA provides sufficient protection for most home and small-office wireless networks, though you'll be safer if you upgrade to WPA2, if your network's router and other equipment support the later security standard. Using the older WEP security protocol is no longer sufficient because WEP is relatively easy to crack.

One last security-update note: the Mozilla Foundation recently acknowledged security breaches in the Firefox browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, and SeaMonkey Web suite. A security bulletin released last week instructs users to disable JavaScript until you're able to update to these versions:

• Firefox 3.0.5
• Firefox 2.0.0.19
• Thunderbird 2.0.0.19
• SeaMonkey 1.1.14

As of the evening of December 21, 2008, I could update to Firefox 3.0.5 and SeaMonkey 1.1.14, but not to Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (2.0.0.18 is available). To update Firefox and Thunderbird, click Help > Check for Updates. Visit the SeaMonkey Downloads & Releases page to update that program.

Last January, a Worker's Edge post described how to swap data between your Google Calendar and the calendar in Outlook 2003 or 2007, using the import/export functions of each product.

A few months later, Google released a free program that not only moves data between the two calendar apps, but it also syncs the calendar entries automatically at the interval of your choice.

Google Calendar Sync is so fast and simple to use that my calendars were synced before I knew it. When you install the program, you're asked where you want to place the utility's shortcuts; by default, they'll be added to your Start menu and desktop.

When the installation completes, the program's main window opens, prompting you to add your Google ID and password, and to select either two-way syncs, syncs from Google Calendar to Outlook, or syncs from Outlook to Google Calendar. You can also reset the frequency of updates; the default is every two hours.

If Outlook's not open on your machine, you'll be prompted to enter your Outlook username and password. Then the data in each calendar will be added to the other (if you selected the two-way option). When I installed the Google sync utility, I was surprised how quickly the dozens of entries in my Google Calendar were added to Outlook.

I didn't I notice any missing or garbled entries. In fact, the similarity of the two calendars' appearance was a little spooky: I thought for a second that Google had taken possession of my copy of Office. (I probably jumped the gun on that thought by a couple of years.)

Google offers some caveats about using its Calendar Sync program. For example, you need to uninstall any third-party calendar-syncing applications on your PC beforehand. If you've been using another method, you must choose which of the two calendars you want to use as your primary one and clear the entries from the other. Finally, you have to perform a one-way sync from the primary to the secondary before you can schedule automated syncs.

Another limitation of the utility is that only your pop-up event reminders will transfer from Google Calendar to your Outlook calendar because Outlook doesn't support e-mail and SMS alerts. If you encounter problems using Google Calendar Sync, check the information on Google's troubleshooting page for the program.

After seeing what Google can do to enhance Office applications, I'm thinking that a Windows-killing desktop operating system from the company isn't such a bad idea.

You can't expect any application as complicated and full-featured as Microsoft Outlook to suit you perfectly right out of the box. Here are the Outlook adjustments I rely on to make the program safer and easier to use.

Send and receive mail in plain text
In a previous post, I described how to make sure Outlook shows all incoming mail as plain text. Quick recap: in Outlook 2003, click Tools > Options > Preferences > E-mail Options, and in the Message Handling area, check "Read all standard mail in plain text." To do the same in Outlook 2007, click Tools > Trust Center > E-mail Security (in the left pane) and check "Read all standard mail in plain text" under Read as Plain Text.

But what about the mail you send? Keep things simple for the recipients of your messages by sending them without the fancy--and usually unnecessary--HTML formatting. In Outlook 2003 and 2007, click Tools > Options and choose the Mail Format tab. In Outlook 2003, click Plain Text under "Send in this Format." In Outlook 2007, choose Plain Text in the drop-down menu in the "Message format" area.

Turn off new-mail pop-up windows
Some people want to know the moment a new message has arrived in their Outlook inbox. For me, the alerts that Outlook pops out of the system tray whenever a message comes in are distractions, plain and simple.

To quash the alerts, you can just click the Disable New Mail Message Alert option on the menu that appears when you click the down arrow in the top-right corner of the alert itself. Or if you'd rather not wait for the next alert to block alerts, click Tools > Options > Preferences > E-mail Options > Advanced E-mail Options. Uncheck "Display a New Mail Message Alert (default Inbox only)" and click OK three times.

See more of your inbox by disabling the Reading Pane
I tend to keep a lot of mail in my inbox--like, 301 messages, last time I checked. That's why I like to enlarge Outlook's Inbox window at the expense of the To-Do Bar (just click the X in the top-right corner, or drag it to the right to minimize it but keep it in view) and the Reading Pane (click View > Reading Pane > Off).

Another option for opening Outlook with the Reading Pane disabled is to add the switch "/nopreview" to the file path in the shortcut you use to open the program. Right-click the shortcut, choose Properties, and make the change to the path in the Target field under the Shortcut tab. For example, your file path may read like this:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE /recycle /nopreview".

Roll your own Contacts view
Outlook gives you plenty of ways to view your contact information, but none of the choices was just right for me. So I created a custom view that shows only the fields I want to see, in the order I want to see them.

To customize the look of your Contacts window, click View > Current View > Define Views > New. Give your view a name, choose a format, decide whether you want the view to be available to every user on the machine, and click OK. Next, click the Fields button in the Customize View dialog box, add or remove fields as you see fit, click OK twice, and select Apply View.