Outlook Mobile Service, a new feature in Outlook 2007, lets you integrate Outlook 2007 with mobile phones. With Outlook Mobile Service, you can:
Send text and multimedia messages from Outlook 2007 to mobile phones. Outgoing messages are placed in your Sent Items folder, just as for e-mail messages.
Have e-mail messages, reminders, and calendar summaries forwarded to your mobile phone. This feature is a great productivity tool for people who are on the move often and need continual access to their Outlook 2007 items.
Send messages to e-mail and mobile phone recipients at the same time. You do not need to send messages separately to e-mail and phone recipients. Instead, you can choose a selection of recipient addresses, and Outlook 2007 sends the message as needed based on the selected address types.
Easily retrieve cell phone numbers of your existing contacts. Use the Mobile Address Book to quickly locate the cell phone numbers of your contacts. You don’t need to store this information separately. Instead, the Mobile Address Book ties into your existing Contacts folder.
Before you can take advantage of Outlook Mobile Service in Outlook 2007, you need to add the service to your profile. Follow these steps to do so:
Right-click the Outlook 2007 icon on the Start menu and then choose Properties, or open the Mail applet from Control Panel.
In the Mail Setup dialog box, click Show Profiles to open the Mail dialog box, select the profile in which you want to add Outlook Mobile Service, and then click Properties.
Click E-Mail Accounts to display the E-Mail tab in the Account Settings dialog box, shown in Figure 45-1.
Click New to start the Add New E-Mail Account Wizard, select Other, select Outlook Mobile Service (Text Messaging), and then click Next.
On the Account Settings page of the Add New Outlook Mobile Service Account dialog box, shown in Figure 45-2, enter your service provider information. If you don’t have a provider set up yet or don’t know the appropriate settings, click the link to Microsoft Office Online to browse to a Web page where you can select and configure a provider. The resulting Web pages will guide you through the setup process.
Note
Microsoft offers a service called SMS Link for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 that supports (at the time of the initial Outlook 2007 release) Alltel, Nextel, Sprint PCS, and Verizon Wireless. If you use a different service, browse to the Microsoft Office Online site from the link on the Account Settings page to determine current support status for your provider.
If you want to test the service, click Test Account Settings. Outlook 2007 tests the settings and gives you the option of sending a test message to your mobile phone.
Click More Settings to open the Outlook Mobile Service Information and Settings dialog box, shown in Figure 45-3. Here you can change the account name to something other than your mobile device number (such as My Mobile Account) and also change your phone number. Click OK when you’ve finished.
Click OK, click Close, and then click Finish to apply the change. Restart Outlook 2007 to access the new mobile features.
Outlook 2007 automatically adds the Mobile Address Book to your profile when you add Outlook Mobile Service to the profile. The Mobile Address Book is not a separate physical address book where contacts are stored. Instead, the Mobile Address Book hooks into your existing Contacts folder to retrieve contacts that have mobile device numbers.
To use the Mobile Address Book, click the Address Book icon on the Outlook 2007 toolbar, or click To, Cc, or Bcc in a message form. Either action displays the Address Book dialog box. In the Address Book drop-down list, select Contacts (Mobile) under the Mobile Address Book group. Outlook 2007 then displays all contacts from your Contacts folder that have a mobile number assigned, as shown in Figure 45-4.
Because the Mobile Address Book looks up contacts in your Contacts folder, it isn’t necessary to add contacts specifically to the Mobile Address Book. Instead, simply make sure that you specify a device number in the Mobile field of each contact as needed when you create the contacts.
Sending a message to a mobile device is essentially the same as sending a message to an e-mail address. The only difference is that you select the contact in the Mobile Address Book rather than the Contacts folder, GAL, or other address book.
To do so, follow these steps:
Start a new e-mail message.
Click To, Cc, or Bcc to open the Address Book.
Select Contacts (Mobile) in the Address Book drop-down list.
Select one or more mobile recipients, and then click To, Cc, or Bcc as needed to add the addresses to the appropriate field.
If you need to send the message to e-mail recipients as well, select the appropriate address book in the Address Book drop-down list, and then add addresses to the To, Cc, and Bcc fields as needed.
Click OK to close the Address Book.
Add subject, message body, and other information as needed, and then click Send.
Depending on your mobile account type, you can forward messages as either text messages or multimedia messages. To forward a message as a text message to a mobile recipient, select the message in Outlook 2007, and then choose Actions, Forward As Text Message. To forward as a multimedia message, choose Actions, Forward As Multimedia Message. In both cases, Outlook 2007 opens a standard message form. Click To, Cc, or Bcc; open the Mobile Address Book; select recipients; and then send the message.
You can configure Outlook 2007 to send alerts to your mobile device. For example, perhaps you want reminders and a calendar summary sent to your mobile device. Or maybe you’ll be out of the office for several hours and want your new messages redirected to your mobile device. You can accomplish both of these tasks with the Outlook Mobile Service account.
Outlook Mobile Service can forward reminders to your mobile device, as well as a summary of your next day’s calendar items. Follow these steps to configure forwarding of these items:
In Outlook 2007, choose Tools, Options to open the Options dialog box.
On the Preferences tab, click Notifications to open the Outlook Mobile Notification dialog box, shown in Figure 45-5.
In the Reminders And Calendar Summary area, select Send Reminders To Mobile Phone.
Type your mobile device number in the Send To Mobile Numbers box.
To have calendar summaries sent, select Send Next Day’s Schedule To Mobile Phone At, and then specify the time of day you want the summary sent.
Configure the remaining options as desired. You can exclude all-day events, exclude weekend items, specify a time frame for items to be included, and specify that Outlook 2007 send one message for each appointment or meeting request.
Click OK, and then click OK again to close the Options dialog box.
You can configure Outlook Mobile Service to forward messages to your mobile phone based on conditions that you specify, including how your name appears in the message, the sender, words in the subject, and message importance. Follow these steps to configure message forwarding to your mobile device:
In Outlook 2007, choose Tools, Options, and then click Notifications on the Preferences tab.
Select Forward Messages That Meet All Of The Selected Conditions, as shown in Figure 45-6.
Type your mobile device number in the Forward To Mobile Numbers text box.
Select the conditions that you want to apply for messages to be forwarded.
Click OK, and then click OK again to close the Options dialog box.
Outlook Mobile Service offers a selection of options that you can use to control how text and multimedia messages are sent. To set these options, choose Tools, Options, and then click Mobile Options to open the Mobile Options dialog box, shown in Figure 45-7. Set options as desired, click OK, and then click OK again to close the Options dialog box.
The section "Using Signatures" in Chapter 9 explains how to add a signature for each e-mail account. For example, perhaps you use one signature for a business account and a different signature for a personal account. Outlook 2007 treats Outlook Mobile Service like any other e-mail account, which means that you can add a signature specifically for your mobile messages. To specify the signature, choose Tools, Options, and then click the Mail Format tab. Click Signatures, and if the signature you want to use for mobile messages doesn’t exist yet, click New to create the signature, type the name for the signature, and then click OK. On the E-Mail Signature tab, select Outlook Mobile Service in the E-Mail Account drop-down list, and then select the signature that you want to use for the account. Create or edit the signature, and then click OK twice to return to Outlook 2007.
Note
See "Using Signatures" in Chapter 9 to learn more about creating and using signatures.