Empowered Productivity » Outlook

How to Sync Outlook Tasks with your iPhone

Maura — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:44:20 +0000

I used Outlook to run my life for almost a decade, and the majority of the training I do is still using Outlook as the support tool. I am a fan and think it is a very powerful PIM (personal information manager) that can easily handle the complexity of your life. The one shortcoming is if you need to share calendars or other information, you need to be running an Exchange server and this doesn’t make sense for everyone (however you can sync your Outlook calendar with Google and share it that way).

A question I get a lot is how to sync Tasks in Outlook with an iPhone. I found an article online with detailed instructions for doing this and got permission to repost it here. It comes from Daniel B. Curran’s excellent how-to blog. Below are his instructions. I hope this helps. If you try this and run into any snags, I’d love to hear about it. And incidentally, I’m using To-Do (the app he mentions) to sync Tasks with iCal and I am VERY happy with it – well worth the $10 in my opinion. You can read about my experience with that here.)

Here is Daniel’s Post:

Let’s start with how you can sync your Microsoft Outlook Tasks to your iPhone for free.

I have read several articles about how to do this but I found the process to be convoluted. Let me make it very simple.

Step 1. Set up a free account at Toodledo.com The direct link for a new account is right here.

That should have taken you about 15 seconds. Let’s move on to step 2.

Step 2. Close Outlook, download Chromatic Dragon’s Toodledo Sync Application and install it.

Almost done! The sync application will want your Toodledo ID number. Leave it open on the tab that wants the ID number.

Step 3. Log into Toodledo and from the menu on the left select Account Settings. On that page you will see your Unique ID, simply copy and paste it into the sync program that you left open.

On the Synchronization tab you can change your Automatic Synchronization to whatever works for you. I don’t add tasks very often so once every 60 minutes is fine for me. To close the Options window select File -> Close. You will see a green checkmark icon in your tool tray. Right click it and hit Manual Sync.

Outlook is now synchronized to ToodleDo.

Ready for the iPhone part?

Ok, 2 ways to do this. The Free Way and the $10.00 way.

The free way? Toodledo now has an iPhone optimized version of their powerful, easy to use task manager. Just point your iPhone webbrowser to http://www.toodledo.com/slim and book mark it to your iPhone Home Screen. (Hit the + and select Home Screen, I renamed mine to “Tasks”)

Now you have the tasks that were in Outlook right there on Your iPhone screen!

Make a change on your iPhone and it will sync back to Outlook!

There is also a third party iPhone / iPod touch application that will synchronize with Toodledo and allow you to work offline. This application is called Todo and is available from Appigo on the iTunes App Store for about $10 but to be honest I don’t see the advantage of paying for it.

Do this for me, use the free way I described. I have the Todo software and will write another post later about the differences and let you know if it’s worth the $10.

UPDATE: ToodleDo has released an application to the iTunes store for $3.99 Check out Sync Tasks: ToodleDo Free Link vs. the ToDo $10 application.

What’s a PST File and Why Should You Care?

Maura — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:33:09 +0000

Do you use Microsoft Outlook? If not, you can stop reading now. But, if you use Outlook for email, or your calendar, or anything else, this is important information that you’ll want to know. PST is the extension of the file that contains all of your Outlook data, and if you’ve got anything in yours, you should back it up. Click on the 4 minute video below to learn more about the file and how to back it up and ensure that your data is safe. Thanks for reading!

Do You Need a CRM?

Maura — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:26:04 +0000

I was at a meeting recently and my table-mates started a discussion about contact management solutions. I hear this often. People need a tool to manage their contacts, so they begin to consider ACT or other CRM software. The bigger question that people don’t consider is that of aproductivity management solution, of which contacts is just one part. People try to solve the problem of contact management with a complex CRM solution, when they don’t even have a good system for calendaring, email, or to-do lists.

If you are considering a contact management solution, I suggest that you look at it within the context of your overall productivity, and to me this includes 5 things: calendar, projects/tasks (to-do list), contacts, notes, and email. For more on this, read this post.

I often recommend Microsoft Outlook for PC users. This is not because I am a fan of Microsoft. I am not. But the reality is that Outlook is powerful, virtually free (practically everyone has MS Office already, of which Outlook is a part), not particularly complicated, and syncs well with most handheld devices. However, one problem with Outlook is that some of the “advanced” features are not obvious, and many people miss them. This is especially true with the “contacts” section of Outlook. And I am not referring to Microsoft’s new Business Contact Manager. BCM comes with Outlook 2007 but you don’t have to install it. I suggest you don’t. I find it unstable and unnecessarily complicated, and there is very little that you couldn’t already do with contacts.

Most people don’t realize they already have what they need in Outlook. This was certainly the case with my table-mates at the meeting I mentioned. So this situation inspired me to create a short video on some of the features of Outlook Contacts that you may not have known were available to you. It’s below. I hope you find it helpful. Thanks for reading!