Here's a nice surprise that will make many Windows Mobile folks happy.  It appears Redmond is serious about WM6.5.3, including now adding new features to Outlook (see our previous WM6.5.3 coverage here).

Threaded email has been the holy grail for many and for good reason. Being an "Exchange centric" operating system, Windows Mobile has a lot riding on its image as the premier business (and more and more consumer) email machine.  Seeing as Google has left us high and dry for their Android platform, it only seems fitting that Microsoft fills the gap, as nothing beats native support.

Coming from the WM6.5.3 build 23517 (or 23515, there is some issue there), the Outlook client features a "Conversations" button near the top that gives different options for sorting (From, received, subject, etc.).

Messages act just like in Gmail: they are organized by a single topic, opening up the meta-message will reveal all the email in response.  There is also about three lines of text to preview the message, saving you time from having to open up every message.

Overall the system is very efficient and a huge win for an added feature.  Granted, we would have like to have seen this like yester-year, but we'll take what we can.

Update: to clarify, this is not Exchange 2010 dependent.  It will work with your regular Gmail account or other services.  It is the default sort option in Outlook, built into its core and independent of any Exchange account.

[thanks to A1jatt for the ROM]

Here is a real strange but evidently real issue for Omnia II users: if you  have Exchange + McAfee Anti-Spam E-mail Toolbar working in tandem, it appears that some of your emails won't come through when using the Omnia II with WM6.5.

User UpHillBattle (indeed) writes

I'm experiencing a strange problem with my new Samsung Omnia II (WM 6.5). I have set up ActiveSync (on the cell phone) to sync e-mail, contacts, calendar and tasks with an Exchange Server. I used the same setup on my older HTC Touch Cruise (WM 6.1) and had no problems then.

The sync appears to be successful after setup, but later some e-mails are synced to the Omnia II while others are not. I have reset the device to factory settings and set up the connection again, only to experience the same thing: Success at first, then later some e-mails are received, while others are not.

Upon some diligent testing he later responds

...it's the McAfee Anti-Spam E-mail Toolbar. For those of you that don't know McAfee, it has an optional toolbar that can be enabled in various e-mail clients (Outlook 2007 in my case) and that lets you manually mark (or unmark) e-mail messages as spam. When I disable the toolbar, everything is fine - when I enable it, I get the problems described above.

Both Samsung and McAfee have been made aware of the problem and a fix of some sort is expected in the future (vague, eh?).  Until then, if you have this gruesome-twosome setup, best to follow UpHillBattle's advice.

[via Windows phone Connection forum]

Here's another look at the upcoming version of Office Mobile. (Previous stories here and here.) Threaded e-mails, fun with spreadsheets, basically a great 2 minutes of Windows Mobile productivity. Enjoy.

We've previously discussed some of the upcoming changes Outlook Mobile may see with the launch of Microsoft Exchange 2010 (we say may because it's up to your IT department to actually implement them). A recap:

• Threaded e-mail.
• Voicemail transcription.
• Sync SMS.
• Block/quarantine phones.
• See when messages you've replied to or forwarded.
• See if a contact has some free time for you.

And, the really cool part: When your business (or Exchange provider, at least) upgrades to Exchange 2010, an upgraded version of Outlook Mobile can be pushed to your Windows Mobile 6.1/6.5 phone.

Now, see a few of those changes in action. Part 1 is above, and the second part of the video is after the break.

Technet [via wmpoweruser]

Read the rest of this entry »

No doubt keeping your Contacts database in check by reducing redundancies is always a challenge, especially with all the multiple syncs we do these days (Exchange, backups, Google, etc.).

One question we get often here at WMExperts is how to remove duplicate contacts on your device, preferably the non-manual way.  Up till now, we recommended the super powerful SKTools (which may be overkill for many).

However XDA member zaijian has created a "still in development" freeware app called Outlook Cleaner and it does the task rather nicely:

How it works
Contact cleaning works like this:
1) Scan the Contacts database, looking for duplicate contacts.
2) Exact duplicates are deleted.
3) Near-duplicates are displayed for manual merging/removal.
4) You go through the sets of near-duplicates, where you can see all the values which are different, and choose to keep, delete, or merge Contacts.

Not too shabby and he promised to add task/calendar cleaning in later versions to make it even more useful.  The app requires .NET CF 2.0, which many of you have already in ROM.  More info including download can be found here.

We love Gmail. It's our lifeline. But there are a few major hangups that cause us to bang our heads against the wall day after day. One is the lack of a proper IMAP idle process for true push support and proper use of labels on Windows phones. (Yeah, there are decent third-party solutions out there. We're talking about native, out-of-the-box push e-mail.)

The other issue is contacts, which Google finally is starting to address. From the official Gmail blog:

Up until now, Gmail only supported some contact fields. Whenever someone imported their contacts from apps like Outlook and OS X Address Book, we used to put fields Gmail didn't recognize into the contact's notes section. Based on feedback from you, we added support for more contact fields (like birthday and website) and now store each of these fields separately, which makes syncing and round-tripping your data work better.

There you have it. We're getting there. Still not perfect, but better. (Insert "beta" joke here.)

Not one of the many who use Microsoft Exchange on your Windows Mobile phone? Totally understandable as it either costs hosting fees or requires you to work for a company with an Exchange server.

But if you're not using it, why can't you just delete "Outlook Email" from the email client, eh?  That sucker is just an empty void that you skip over to get to your real email accounts and alas, WM won't let you just delete it. Curses!

Have no fear, as it's all in the registry baby!  Diigibio at XDA documents how this is done, repeated below. Just use your favorite registry editor (or read our how-to) and navigate to this area:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Inbox\Svc\Activesync

Simply back up your device or that registry value and delete the \Activesync folder, followed by a soft reset.  Bam, no more "Outlook Email" folder to skip over.

Thanks, Scientific!

Update: Yeah, people are having, um, varying results with this one. Use at your own risk. And be sure to back up your phone first.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 (and ActiveSync) is coming, and that means new features for Windows Mobile. Some of them are for IT types, others directly affect you, the end user. Here's what's in store:

On the Server side:

• Block/allow/quarantine phones: That's one for the IT side.
• OTA update of Outlook Mobile: That's right, a new version of the app can be pushed to your phone. Wouldn't hold your breath in hopes of seeing this outside of a corporate environment, but you never know.
• Sync SMS: It'd been rumored for a while. You can send text messages to networked phones from Outlook or OWA access and respond from either, as well as from your phone.

On the phone side:

• Threaded messages(!): Instead of cluttering your inbox with each and every message, they're threaded by "conversations." Nothing you're not already used to elsewhere, and a welcome addition to Windows Mobile. There also are options to ignore threads or move them to other folders.
• Reply state: See which messages you've replied to or forwarded.
• Voice card/transcription: If someone sends you a voicemail through Exchange, it's transcribed(!!!) and you can play it directly in the e-mail. Very cool.
• Get free/busy: No, not like that. It's just quick way to see if someone on your network is free or busy.

Again, this all involves Microsoft Exchange 2010, through it'd be great to get some of the Outlook Mobile features for people outside a corporate envrionment. For those of you on the inside, start lobbying your IT department now.

Microsoft Technet via wmpoweruser

A couple of weeks ago, WMExperts podcast listener Mark (Hi, Mark!) asked Dieter and Mal if there was a way to clear out the search history from the company directory (Exchange) side of Outlook Mobile. We scratched our heads for a while and then went to the source. Here's what the Outlook Mobile team came up with:

1. From the file explorer, navigate to Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\
2. Delete “GalSeachHistory.dat”

There you go. Easy as pie. Once again it proves it's not what you know, but who you know. :)

And if you have a question for Dieter and Malatesta, shoot an e-mail to podcast at wmexperts dot com.

We've been wall-to-wall Microsoft services lately and for good reason -- Microsoft's Live offerings are really maturing lately. One hassle, though, is that most people's desktop PIM manager is Outlook and Outlook hasn't (until now) fully synced calendars with Live Mail. No more, as Paul Thurrott points out: Microsoft has released a beta of Microsoft Office Outlook Connector 12.1. It's good stuff, adding calendar sync capabilities to the already existing contacts and email sync, though there is one tiny caveat that some users may need to know about:

Note to Premium Subscribers:The Outlook Connector will automatically upgrade your MSN Calendar to the new Windows Live Calendar beta. Once upgraded to Windows Live Calendar, you will be able to synchronize multiple calendars, including shared calendars to Outlook! You will no longer be able to access MSN Calendar.

...It's still not a full fledged solution for mobile (unless you're an old-school, cable-based ActiveSyncer, in which case we presume those synced calendars can be synced over USB just fine), but it's a sign that Microsoft is heading in the right direction. Those “right direction” signs are all over the place these days, now we just need some unification.

Thanks to Rene for the tip!