Outlook IMAP

Now that I have moved us over to Google Apps For Your Domain (GAFYD) completely, I have been fighting with Outlook to get a decent user / email experience.

It just doesn't seem to flow well - I got the SMTP/IMAP send/receive stuff all set up and working correctly, but it's clunky.

I have all the folders appearing in my Outlook client but the UX just does not flow - in order to LABEL a email (in google terms) I have to move it to a folder named as the LABEL I want to apply (if I want to label it 'Outdoor' I simply move it to the 'Outdoor' folder). Equally, anything I have labelled will be visible in that folder (if I labelled it 'Outdoor' then it'll be in my 'Outdoor' folder).

There are plenty of sites with step by step guides for configuring Outlook with GoogleMail, so I wont go into that but I will share this tip:

To download full emails (not just headers) you need to do the following :-

• Tools -> Send/Receive -> Send/Receive Settings -> Define Send/Receive Groups...
• Select the group your IMAP account is in (typically 'All Accounts')
• Click 'Edit'
• Select the account if there is more than one
• Select the option for 'Download complete items' (this is different for OL2003 and OL2007, below is OL2003)

However the biggest pain with Outlook is that it does not by default open in any account that does not have the usual default folders (Contacts, Calendar, Inbox etc).

As a Google IMAP account does not have these it automatically adds a 'Personal Folders' PST file and opens at the Inbox folder folder of that instead.

I am pretty much settled on letting OL grab a copy of my mail (just in case I need to edit offline), but am finding myself using Google's web mail interface most of the time.