Replace outlook with better free alternatives, and get it work with over-the-air iPhone synchronization.
[UPDATE: synching contacts, also note that these instructions work with several mobile phones, including Blackberry]
I’ve just designed out outlook from my daily operations and I’m quite excited. I used it as a calendar and to synchronize information with my iPhone. However, I’ve found various technologies which not only replace outlook, but are also better! There are a couple components to this system:
1. I never liked (or used) outlook as a mail client, and given the integration of outlook with the rest of windows, it’s been a pain. I’ve been using thunderbird for years till I found out about postbox. If you like bells and whistles, then it’s for you. It does everything, including downloading images from facebook so you can see the image of the person who sent you the mail. Or you can search your inbox for an attached image only. Play with it, I think it’s great. On the backend, I use an IMAP sever – most all the free web-based email services support this, but I’m using a server on a friend’s box.
2. Go here and add lightning for postbox. It’s a pretty imprssive calenar application that integrates into postbox
3. Configure your calendar to synchronize with google (this assumes you have an account with google, if not, then go set one up). Here the instructions online are misleading. What you want to do go to the calendar view, and on the left under the month calendar is a list of your personal calendars. Right click, and add a networked calendar, then follow the rest of the instructions here.
4.Follow the insturctions here to configure your iPhone to synchronize with google. Make sure you have push turned on.
4.5 Install Zindus and follow instructions to setup synchronization between you gmail contact list and postbox. Follow instructions as if you were using Thunderbird.
5.[Optional] If you must still use outlook calendars as well for some reason, then you can add this applicaiton to synchrnoize gmail and outlook calendars.
If you followed these instructions, then your iPhone’s contacts and calendar will synchronize with google. And your calendar application also synchrnoizes with google. Both these happen bidirectionally, so you can edit your calendar at any location and all calendars will automatically be synchrnoized.Contacts are synchrnoized between the iphone and google, but not anywhere else. I’ll try to figure out a way to get that working as well. The same applies to your contacts in postbox, google, and your phone.