Office Live: Getting to Know the Outlook Connector

Microsoft has designed a nifty tool — the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector — and included it as part of the Office Live Essentials and Premium subscription. The tool allows you to synchronize basic elements, so you can update them using either Office Live or Outlook.

Using the Office Outlook Connector is beneficial in a number of ways:

• You can access, send, and receive e-mail messages from multiple Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, and view the corresponding calendars and contacts, from within Microsoft Outlook.

• You can also schedule meetings, or share calendars with other Microsoft Office Live subscribers, by viewing your various Office Live calendars all in one area of Outlook.

• When you make updates in Outlook such as deleting messages, adding new contacts, scheduling meetings or creating new tasks your changes are automatically synchronized and reflected in your Microsoft Office Live Mail account.

• Offline changes synchronize to Office Live as soon as you connect to the Internet.

You can synchronize the following items between Office Live and Outlook:

• Personal Calendar

• E-mail Contacts

• Deleted Items

• Drafts

• Inbox

• Notes

• Tasks

After you connect Office Live to Outlook, the information automatically synchronizes every time you hit Outlook's Send/Receive button — or every time Outlook does an automatic Send and Receive. Think of what a great time-saver this is. For example, you might be working on a new e-mail message in Office Live but have to wait for some more information before you can complete it. You save the e-mail as a draft. Later, you open Outlook and see your draft just waiting to be finished. You finish the e-mail, and send it from Outlook using your Office Live account. The recipient replies to the message — which you can now view in either Office Live or Outlook.

In order to use the Outlook Connector, you must have either a paid Microsoft Office Live Essentials or Microsoft Office Live Premium subscription. The Outlook Connector is not available with Microsoft Office Live Basics subscriptions, although it is available with a fee-based Hotmail account.

To download the Outlook Connector from the Microsoft Download Center, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Microsoft Web site and type Outlook Connector in the search box.

2. After you find the download you need, save the file to a spot on your computer.

3. When the download is complete, navigate to the site where you saved the file and give it a double-click.

The Installation Wizard starts. You'll be clicking Next a few times to advance through it.

4. Open Outlook.

The Outlook menu now contains Outlook Connector.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/office-live-getting-to-know-the-outlook-connector.html