Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager Reviews

• Pretty packaging hides serious shortcomings

  
  By A1VUN4JU731CBH on 2008-02-28
  I was looking forward to trying MS Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager but after a few days of playing around with it, I am thoroughly disappointed and frustrated. But first things first.
  
  Before upgrading to OL 2007 I ran MS Office 2003. After the upgrade, everything else continued to be 2003 with the exception of Outlook of course. Installation was tedious and took a long time, but that's nothing new with Microsoft products these days - going through that process is like attempting to own Fort Knox!
  
  However, once installed, I was pleasantly surprised and really appreciated the improved functionality of the ribbon with all the functions that before were somewhat hidden in conventional drop-down menus. I also really like the new To-Do Bar that can be expanded and collapsed and another of my favorite things is the new and improved color coding by category and flag. So far so good.
  
  Just as I began to enjoy the new OL 2007, I had to realize that with this stand-alone product the devil is in the detail:
  
  My biggest aggravation is that Outlook 2007 as a stand-alone version has limited functionality. After searching the internet high and low for why all of a sudden my spell checker did not work anymore (I frequently switch between two languages when writing emails and very much depend on this), I finally found a White Paper MS published with a neat list of what all does not work in Outlook 2007 when Word 2007 is not installed. They call the chapter "Experience without Word 2007 installed". Amongst the functions not available are:
  - No auto-formatting for bullets and numbers;
  - No support for inserting and working with tables
  - No background spell-checking
  - No Thesaurus
  - No grammar checker
  - No auto-text (so where before, my name auto-completed when typing it, it now does not anymore)
  
  Wow! A product that they sell for well over one hundred dollars works significantly worse than the older version I had previously installed! In order to get the full functionality, I am now forced to upgrade my entire Office 2003 to the 2007 version - at least another $120, depending on what version of Office I need. Or attempt to uninstall OL 2007 and go back to OL 2003... This quite upsets me, I must say.
  
  Other things that I noticed:
  - Sending and receiving email frequently does not work; out of the blue I get send/receive errors. The thing to do then is to go into the Accounts function and use the new "Repair..." button. So far I had to use this three times in about the same amount of days. Apparently in this version, there was indeed a great need for a Repair function that before was not present...
  - Another weird behavior: Frequently, the program seems to independently change which email account it uses for sending, even when replying. For example, when I receive an email at my default account, then hit Reply, all of a sudden this mail is then being sent from another account. Very, very strange.
  - And lastly a minor observation: The program seems slightly slower, not too much but noticeable on occasion.
  
  As to the Business Contact Manager, I must admit I have not gotten around to trying it - I was far too busy with all the things mentioned above and will probably uninstall Outlook 2007 soon.
  
  In summary in my opinion, this whole thing is an aggravating marketing gimmick by Microsoft - sell Outlook 2007 as stand-alone, but basically force the user to upgrade to Office 2007 if he/she wants functionality that was previously available in Outlook 2003.
  
  Bad, really, really bad.
  
  
  

• Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager - The Most Improved 2007 Suite Product

  
  By A17BUUBOU0598B on 2008-02-26
  Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager
  
  For those of us that are very heavy Outlook users, I think it's safe to say we are not all in the target audience for this update. Business Content Manager adds a medium sized business CRM type tool to Outlook. This is kind of a mix of products, for those familiar with GoldMine and ACT. And if you are in the market for such a tool, WOW! Microsoft has knocked this one out of the park.
  
  It's impossible to talk about any Office 2007 product without mentioning the dreaded "ribbon" makeover. Word and Excel have new xml based file formats that in and of themselves wouldn't be an issue. The problem is the way MS removed the menu structure it took everybody forever to learn!
  
  Outlook 2007 is way better than the other programs in terms of look and feel. (I'm holding my breath. lol)
  
  It should be fairly simple for you to import your archives and access your settings in ways that are familiar. If you're a Windows Vista user, you can also import all those weird new calendar formats into this guy too. :)
  
  This product is included with a few suites, including Office Standard, Office Professional and Office Ultimate. It is not included in the Office Home, which is why many will buy it here. Alternatively, you can buy Outlook as a stand-alone application.
  Microsoft Office Standard 2007 FULL VERSION
  Microsoft Office Professional 2007 FULL VERSION
  Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 FULL VERSION [DVD]
  Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
  Microsoft Outlook 2007
  
  The Business Contact Manager piece adds some key new feature integrations with Outlook here. Outlook has always been great at creating calendar items and task lists. Now with BCM, those who have follow up routines for client calls can set them up and get reminders for every new client. Having those common "thank you" and "next steps" messages set up automatically is a nice time saver.
  
  You can also do some basic graphs and charts for marketing management. This is a nice to have and will be necessary for all those running small and medium businesses using this product.
  
  There are some decent help pages and tutorials included too. Those come in handy for learning some of the BCM functionality not everybody is used to.
  
  As for Outlook, some users have complained about missing functionality when this product is installed without other Office products, like Word. Luckily (or unluckily) I already had Office Home on my machine. However, if you don't have Word already on your machine, you will want to investigate that.
  
  The main issue with CRM type software has always been stability. Once you get your customer database to a large size, you can see which products are better. Most products have a point where you start to get corruption and / or break-downs. Only time and experience can tell you that.
  
  Still, this is a great entry into this arena for Microsoft. With this product they added more than they took away. I only wish basic Outlook was included with the Home version of Office!
  
  Check this one out! Enjoy!
  
  

• Excellent Upgrade, but could be even better

  
  By ARXU3FESTWMJJ on 2008-03-12
  I'm a longtime user of Office 2003 with Outlook and was eager to try out this upgrade for Outlook as it's the application I use the most (other than Access which I use for my software development projects routinely). I really didn't have any need to upgrade the other applications, so this stand-alone was perfect for me. I actually don't use Outlook for email generally, preferring to use the standalone email open source product Thunderbird which gives me a lot more ability to customize and add other features to (and since I don't have to connect to an Exchange server or anything else that specifically forces me to use Outlook.) So I personally was not put off by the fact that things like spell check will not work if you use Outlook 2007 with the rest of the Office 2003 suite. That's been well documented here by other reviewers, so I won't go into it.
  
  Putting those issues aside, this is a really nice upgrade. A lot of upgrades are sort of "so what", but this one really impressed me. First, the look and feel of it is much more polished. It's more than just a pretty face, I find the items on my calendar for instance much more striking and easier to see what I have coming up at a glance. While the install itself seemed endless, the final product does seem to run plenty fast enough on my machine (it's fairly high end, 8 GHz, 3 gig of RAM) older machines may have more problems. Outlook 2007 uses a different style of toolbar than older versions, I really like the new toolbar, with the tabbed panels and fancier icons, it's just a matter of getting used to it. Here are some highlights from the different sections of Outlook, things that I specifically like or don't like. Please note that in some cases, I may be mentioning things that are possible to do with customization...however, they are not things that are easy for the average user to figure out, particularly since the product comes with basically no documentation at all, other than typical Microsoft Help.
  
  1. Email - as mentioned, I don't really use this much, but it *does* include a really nice RSS reader with a large list of feeds you can add immediately. Ironically, the one for Outlook 2007 is wrong, it adds the Outlook 2003 feed, I went to the Microsoft site to find the link for the correct one. One thing I also noticed is that when you are in Email, or any other area of Outlook other than the Calendar, there is a new "To Do" bar that displays all your upcoming appointments and tasks, and a field to create new tasks. Really great new feature.
  
  2. Calendar - I really like the way appointments look as mentioned. Also there are now very clear Day - Week - Month buttons at the top, these were not as easily found in the previous version. I do find it funny that there is still no Year view. I can do this with calendar apps on my tiny Pocket PC, it seems ridiculous that I can't see a yearly overview, or at least a 3 month overview on my desktop. Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to customize the number of lines for appointments on the monthly calendar. If you don't have large numbers of appointments, it'd be nice to show 2 lines so you can read the whole appointment, as you can on the weekly view. In particular, this would be nice when printing calendars, rather than holidays and birthdays that are all chopped off. I did notice that I have spell check available when creating appointments, so clearly it's available for at least some functions. I also though ran into issues with Outlook not wanting to save my appointment when I was editing it and trying different options...but it didn't give me any really detail as to why, just kind of a random thing.
  
  3. Contacts - In additional to the new interface, you've got all kinds of new stuff you can add and link with contacts. There's some neat new options, such as a link to go to the address on MSN maps, open their webpage in your browser, total customization of the business card for the contact, etc. You can add images to their contact notes, as well as a variety of other things like charts and graphs if you have the rest of Office 2007. I did notice as well that I can now sort my contacts by category. This drove me nuts in the 2003 version, that it would not sort by category, so very glad to have it now!
  
  4. Tasks - Fairly similar to the changes with contacts, lots of additional things you can link to the task, I like being able to paste in the business card of the contact for the task, for instance. You can also link the task over to an account in the Business Contact Manager
  
  5. Notes are still a bit more basic than I care for, but I use OneNote so only use these rarely now. It's definitely easier now to group them into categories, color code them, sort them, etc. but very basic functionality. OneNote is so superior in every way, but unfortunately is still sold as a separate product. Kind of a side note here...but I really wish that with many of these parts of Outlook you could add drawings as you can in OneNote, for those of us that have a tablet.
  
  6. Business Contact Manager - So here's the real jewel in this product. I really didn't use the one that came with Office 2003 and only now see how much I was missing! First, to use this it will install SQL Server Express on your machine. I run standard SQL Server from a separate box, so it would have been nice to be given the option to specify a SQL location to use instead of forcing a new install of the server on me. But at least it only starts up when you try to access this section of Outlook, so that reduces the load at least somewhat on your machine. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with how much this does, the name really doesn't do it justice. I'm really putting some time into getting my current accounts, contacts and projects loaded into this, as it basically does the same sort of things that I was using a different project management program to do. Now, this is hardly going to replace a full-fledged, multi-user project management software application. But for a sole proprietor like myself, it does the basics well enough to be useful. I can create projects, enter tasks for the project, add notes and hours worked, view custom reports on my projects, etc. I don't do much sales and marketing at the moment, but that's all in there as well. I really just wish it did even more. I'd like to be able to link files and documents to my tasks, for instance, or at least, include better integration with OneNote, which is ideal for project documents and notes. I found it particularly strange for instance, that in my regular Contacts, I had a link to OneNote to create custom notes for that contact...but I did not have the same button in the Business Contacts (which is where it is *really* needed.) Better integration with OneNote would really be a huge boon to those of us that are using both of these products.
  
  Just as an additional side note, I was glad to see the upgrade did not break my ActiveSync with my SmartPhone, everything still works fine and syncs properly. I did notice that the contacts in the Business Contact Manager do not sync with the PPC, but that's to be expected (just something to be aware of). There's also still a big problem with Outlook and that is the issue of alarms not going off if the program isn't up and running. I always like to have them synced to my phone so I am less likely to miss them just because the program isn't open.
  
  Overall, this is an excellent upgrade, as long as you have a machine that can handle it and are not effected or bothered by the various issues with using it along with the Office 2003 suite. Some improvements to some functions would make it even better, but it is certainly still worth a look.
  
  

• RSS Feeds Added

  
  By A2F2S1L61X1LA9 on 2008-03-11
  Cosmetically, this version is not radically different from Outlook 2003 (which I upgraded from). The big different is the inclusion of Business Contact Manager - which for my needs proved to be a more than adequate contact manager - with a great level of detail.
  
  SQL 2005 Express is installed in the background as the database engine for BCM. Be advised that you will have to setup a maintenance schedule within SQL 2005 Express to dump the DB, etc.
  
  The feature added to Outlook 2007 that I really like is the addition of RSS feeds.
  
  Unlike one other reviewer, I had no problem with my 'down-level' office products installed on my PC. Office 2003 applications peacefully co-existed with Outlook 2007.
  
  

• Awsome Simple Business Contact Manager

  
  By A6P1UJ5TEKWBK on 2008-06-13
  Microsoft has done it again! Outlook with Business Contact Manager 2007 is a very solid, simple, and intuitive small business platform to work from. I have been in sales for over 10 years and have used a variety of solutions, including ACT and I like Business Contact Manager the best so far. If you enjoy actually selling as opposed to updating information continually, this is the solution for you. For instance, ACT has many useless and cumbersome bells and whistles that require input of information multiple times in multiple screens. Microsoft left these out...thankfully. In fact, I spent more time updating information in ACT than actually using it to be productive. Act is also prone to databases corruption. Our data in ACT was corrupted at least 2-3 times in a year. ACT Synchronization is finicky at best. And ACT integration to accounting software is cumbersome and expensive. Microsoft has trimmed the fat and created a very streamlined platform that gets the job done. No corruption of data thus far. Accounting software integration is a breeze-I use Microsoft Accounting 2007-also a very solid small business solution if you don't need automated Payroll-a less expensive option to QuickBooks. Only having to enter information once, simple customization, and seamless 2-way integration with accounting software is why I gave this a 5. It is not perfect but it is the best I have used thus far. Highly recommended. You will not be disappointed.
  
  
• I agree with other reviewers - significant shortcomings
  By A1HOLE9R6WPT85 on 2008-03-03
  I won't repeat what other reviewers have said about the shortcomings of Outlook '07, except to agree and point out (IMHO) the most significant shortcomings.
  
  First, Outlook has always been very susceptible to viruses, and generation after generation, Microsoft apparently refuses to fix the potential exploits. Also, this program is bloated and clunky, pretty typical of most of Microsoft's stuff.
  
  This version is bundled with a contact management software, which is probably its best feature, but is overpriced. There are about a dozen out-of-the-box contact management solutions software available at popular computer retail stores for about $25, which have basically the same features, or you can download free software from a variety of open source sites.
  
  In the final analysis, my decision was whether we needed the features in Outlook 07, or whether to continue using Pegasus or Evolution for email & contact management only. After using and comparing all three, Evolution stands out as the easiest, cheapest, and most simple, until a coworker suggested trying the new features on Gmail. We've been experimenting with Gmail for almost two weeks now, and frankly, it beats Outlook on a variety of points... and it's free, and it stores all your data online. I would strongly suggest looking into signing up for a free Gmail account and tinkering with the all new features before buying or downloading anything else.
  
  
• Disastrous
  By AFITFTAG0FKG4 on 2008-04-09
  First, I must say that nothing elicits "Mac-envy" so much as yet another revision to the Windows interface. This go-'round, the fine folk at Redmond have broken out the box of crayons, and writ large with the primaries. It's garish. There are some options for the Office suite by which it may all be toned down a notch, which helps. But one wishes Microsoft could get a designer on staff who has some sense of elegance+function when designing user interfaces.
  
  What you need to know about Outlook 2007 is the following:
  1) It is slower that its predecessor.
  2) It is MUCH MUCH slower if you aren't running Vista
  3) While it introduces a handful of minor, but helpful new features such as color categories, it manages to make the Rube-Goldberg apparatus of an interface into an even more confusing mess. Understand - this is not due to the much-maligned new Office 2007 "ribbon" - it is due to a whole host of new peculiar UI elements. Good luck sorting it all out.
  ...And perhaps most importantly,
  4) Pieces of it will become disabled after Windows Update does its thing. For instance, after allowing Windows Update to proceed, my rules disappeared, as did the "Rules and Alerts" item in the Tools menu. This resulted in the complete inability to create rules. Perhaps you don't use rules. I use rules a great deal. This has rendered Outlook 2007 unusable for me. I've put a lot of hours into attempting to sort the problem out - while I've found a number of people who had the same thing happen to them, I've found no solutions. Microsoft's resources are no help at all.
  
  BOTTOM LINE: Do NOT install this piece of software. Its improvements are negligible at best, it is slower and more difficult to use, the interface is inelegant and kludgy, and worst of all, parts of it will, in effect, disappear.
  
  
  
  
• Works very well, even with my smart phone and pda
  By ALWGY3T1VY5JY on 2008-03-03
  Flawless integration (once you download the add-in) with my pda or smart phone. I would recommend this over ACT 2008.
  
  
• I want my Outlook 2003 back!...
  By AH32BK6OVLY93 on 2008-03-04
  Ever since I installed this upgrade on my computer, all my programs have been running much slower. It takes twice as long for Outlook to load when I open it, and my computer optimization always needs recharging. I haven't taken the time to figure out how to do it yet, but when I do, I'm going to uninstall this Outlook 2007 and get my 2003 version back!
  
  
• Not much different from Outlook 2003
  By A2X3L31KCXBHCL on 2008-03-14
  I like Outlook and this product does what I need it to do and more. I've been using 2003 for a long time and this product is almost the same. The business contact manager is more for a salesperson or small business owner than for some one who just wants to keep track of their colleagues. I have also noticed that it takes a lot longer to open this outlook than it does 2003 and my computer runs slower when Outlook 2007 is open, so I don't leave this program running in the background like I did with 2003.
  
  
• Outlook 2007
  By A3FBTJCCNQXW2U on 2008-03-21
  I'm not exactly sure why Microsoft sells this product on it's own. I prefer to buy the entire Microsoft Office bundle; outlook is the office program I use least (except for email). Like others, I find this version of Outlook to be a bit slow. Sometimes I have to wait 20-30 seconds for my email, over an extremely fast internet connection.
  
  However some of the new features are very good, such as exchange server and sharepoint 3.0. At work, sharepoint is used effectively to connect our large work team (consisting of over 150 employees) by posting events, information, honors, and opinions. Another great feature is the ability to share your calender schedule through emails. Another good new feature is the auto-assitant feature, which allows you to send an automated message to people trying to email you when you're out. This feature was available in the previous edition, but now you can program the assistant to come on automatically at certain times (in case you forget to turn it on).
  
  Graphically the layout of Outlook is better in this version, Unfortunately most users won't notice these new features right away, because they are not as obvious as Outlooks pretty new layout.
  
  
• A prettier version of Outlook 2003, improved BCM, but a little slow at times
  By AVBLGXSWRN666 on 2008-03-28
  I have been using this program on a PC with Office 2007 installed, and upgraded from Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager (BCM). Two POP3 accounts were managed, and about 100-125 business contacts were tracked. I have four years' worth of E-Mail stored, amounting to thousands of E-Mail messages.
  
  For those contemplating an upgrade from Outlook 2003 with BCM, you should do so. BCM is a good idea, but the 2003 version (even after the service packs) were not as good as they could have been. The 2007 version is definitely an improvement in every way except speed, but I'll get to that in a moment.
  
  The E-Mail features of Outlook 2007 are pretty good. The ability to set up rules to auto-process incoming messages is very good, much like the 2003 version. The search folders and new flagging options are very handy to make it easier to find messages according to a variety of filters/searches. The fact that you can flag a message for follow-up at a later time, and have that appear as a notification and on your to-do list is very handy. I have yet to make full use of all of those related features to the best of their potential.
  
  Spam filtering is a weak point, but no worse than in the 2003 version. The simplified profile-based filtering with the ability to set up white lists and black lists is very basic compared to more sophisticated bayesian filtering available in other packages. I installed the SpamBayes add-on filter (freeware) which uses Bayesian filtering, and it's much more flexible in classifying spam messages. Spam filtering is so important these days, and when freeware packages do it better than a $100+ product from the likes of Microsoft, the people at Redmond should be embarrassed.
  
  The BCM works very well. Being able to track E-Mail messages, calendar events, to-do items, and other items to customers is very cool. I've not used other contact managers, so I don't know how it compares, but it serves my needs, so I haven't looked elsewhere.
  
  Its limited spam filtering ability is nothing compared to the speed issues encountered when incoming messages are retrieved from my two POP3 accounts. When the messages are being retrieved, Outlook stops cold. If you are typing a message, you can forget about continuing until the incoming messages are processed. It's incredibly frustrating to see a well-equipped machine brought to a halt, but that's exactly what happens. It's not a result of high CPU usage; a look at the CPU meter shows that neither processor meters is pegged when it happens.
  
  It was really bad in 2003, and just a little better in 2007, but still not acceptable. I have tried many different things, including archiving more messages into the archive.pst file instead of the outlook.pst file, but the improvements were only minor.
  
  Some would consider Outlook to be the embodiment of evil. As a person who came from using unix-based E-Mail (pine and elm anyone?), to PMMail for both OS/2 and Windows, I didn't have any problem getting used to Outlook and appreciating the extra features it brought to the table. Like anything, it's more often the operator behind the keyboard than the software on the computer.
  
  Outlook 2007 with BCM is a good product, but it could, and should, be better.
  
  
• Good, but you might need to update your other Microsoft apps to get full functionality
  By A7C77J4MH94B6 on 2008-05-16
  I picked up Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager because I needed a better way to track my customers' communications (I'm a work-at-home freelancer). I've been using it now as my primary e-mail client for about three months. So far, so good.
  
  I had little to no problems installing Outlook 2007. I'm using XP, and my Office suite is 2000. I like the GUI, but not all documents (especially Word and HTML docs) render as they do in their native apps, and I'm assuming this is because my other Office apps are getting way old.
  
  Also, I appreciate that Outlook 2007 lets you add RSS feeds. I subscribe to many newsletter and blog reports and find this feature useful. I've had no problems with just the e-mail reading/organizing capabilities; everything there works just fine.
  
  Like many people writing reviews here, I'm disappointed that Outlook 2007 with BCM is so slow. I used to use Outlook Express as my e-mail client, which is pretty fast compared to Outlook 2007, so maybe it's just a matter of getting used to the new app.
  
  I was hoping this app would allow me to do more with billing and invoicing, but I've read a few blogs and discovered to get Business Contact Manager to really do all it can do (which is probably a lot), you'll need Microsoft Accounting installed, too. I'm considering buying that app, but I wish I didn't have to.
  
  The full functionality of the app is a bit beyond me at this point (again, I'm upgrading from Outlook Express, so the learning curve is no surprise), but I hope this changes with time. Right now, I find myself using the same three or four functions all the time, which is normal. It's how I generally use the other apps in the Office group.
  
  I've found myself in the past criticizing certain aspects of other Microsoft products (Word in particular), only to find out later these apps had the ability to do what I wanted them to do all along, but I just didn't know it. In general, I wish Microsoft's apps were a bit more intuitive.
  
  
• Good tool but not for XP
  By A1O6I7294KOSP1 on 2008-07-02
  I have years of experience with contact management software from ACT to Microsoft CRM. I was excited to try this version as it included many new marketing related tools.
  
  I am running a fast XP machine as I am not ready to undertake the pain necessary to switch to Vista yet. Installation on my machine was simple yet time consuming. It took more than half an hour to install the product. That should have been a clue.
  
  Once installed it configured easily and was very comfortable to use if you are used to working in Outlook. The contact lists and ability to schedule activities worked well. Virtually every aspect of the software worked as expected.
  
  The biggest problem is that it used a huge amount of resources to run. Other applications slowed to a crawl when I would open Outlook. It took forever to load outlook when you opened it. Literally at least 1 minute to load the app each time.
  
  The additional marketing tools worked well but ultimately I had to uninstall this as it was too much of a drain on my system.
  
  I am certain my review would have been different had I been running a Vista machine. However there is noting on the MSFT website nor on the packaging that indicated I would have any issues at all running it on XP. Although there was some very helpful information on the product pages that assisted in setting up and using the contact manager functions.
  
  Bottom line, if you're interested in CRM type functionality in Outlook, and are running Vista, you should take a look at Outlook with Business Contact Manager.
  
  
  
  
• Decent features + Upgrade
  By A1FRADBDXQPJJC on 2008-07-07
  This version is not very different from the current 2003 Outlook that I use. It's better to think of it more as an upgrade. The new features include:
  
  1) Business Contact Manager
  2) RSS Feeds
  
  Also, this version is compatible with my older version of MS word so no problems there.
  
  
• Great Features But Web 2.0 Wins The Day for My Needs
  By A3CZWVO53MLZI9 on 2008-08-20
  I have been a Microsoft Office (small company) user for years but have never familiarized myself with the Outlook software. I know many satisfied Outlook users so I decided this year to take a investigate what, if anything, I was missing.
  
  I loaded Outlook 2007 and then played with it. Outlook is all that it is advertised to be "you can effectively manage your sales activities and provide better customer service with contact history, source, status, sales amount, closing potential, e-mail messages, phone calls, tasks, appointments, documents and notes, all referenced in one place." It also has what most previous users may find to be a significant improvement - a new Project Tasks feature which allows the user to assign tasks to others and automatically transfer the task information to their task lists, a To-Do Bar and Outlook reminders. And there are many other touted improvements according to the manufacturers description.
  
  Many of Outlook's tools would have been useful to me in the past but, since I have not used this data management tool, I have little invested and am not wedded to it. I am glad. As a mobile executive, I am committed to Web 2.0 and only want to add those data management tools that are hosted. Desktop based software is obsolete. If Outlook were an Internet hosted application, I would be an enthusiastic user. My rating is based Outlook's features which are exceptional. But, I do not intend to become a user.
  
  
  
• IMAP Support is Unusable
  By A1KZMBLS2PPVTD on 2008-02-29
  In *concept* this product is great--integrated mail and calendar, business contacts, customizable filtering, integrated to-do lists... pretty much everything you'd ever want in a mail package. Sadly, poor execution makes this product nothing more than a boat anchor in a yellow box. The "improved" IMAP support is so slow, it takes anywhere from 20 minutes to up to an hour just to change folders. After four hours on the phone with Microsoft tech support, the best they could do was gut LiveSearch and all the other features that make this product worth having, and then it was *still* so slow that checking mail is a multi-hour exercise in frustration. If you're running an Exchange server the results are somewhat better--my brother likes it a lot on Exchange--but if you need to connect to an IMAP server, you're best using a different product.
  
  
• Not to great, but not bad either.
  By A1WSFHRBY2ZD1R on 2008-02-29
  This is exactly something that you would expect. The packaging comes with the familiar Microsoft Office but with the special added bonus of a Business contact manager.
  
  While its the prettiest and easiest to use of the outlook programs it still has its shortcomings: most specificly its extremely difficult set-up process as well as its lack of basic "word" features such as a spellchecker.
  
  Exclusive to this version are new tools that help you
  - Organize contact Informaion
  - A feature to help you manage sales and marketing activities
  - and a Centralized project management.
  
  
• A Good Idea, But it Desperately Needs Some Work
  By A969VLBBX8LQ7 on 2008-03-03
  Microsoft's "Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager is one tough program to set-up, but when you combine it with Microsoft's Accounting 2008 (it is a free download), it has its merits. I'll try to explain those, along with the bumps in the process, that I found.
  
  First of all, if there ever was a program that needs at least a short written booklet on setting-it-up, transferring contact information, and using the basics of it, this is it. If you are a business person, and you want to keep extensive records of calls, etc., this is more like ACT! , and a little better in saving details from your regular version of Outlook. To perform an action with a contact, you 1) highlight a contact, 2 ) right click on "call" or "create" to take one of those actions, and 3) you have a good record of your action while you perform your task.
  
  Of the books that I've been able to "search" through, Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies (For Dummies (Computers)) looks good and covers most of the info well. Managing Contacts with MS Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager would probably work, too, but I was not able to go in and read any sections of it. With the "Dummies" book, I read around 50 pages on the problems I found, and it covered them correctly.
  
  Next, let me say this, if you have "Outlook" already on your computer, it works well (as it says on the package) with Office 2003 and Office 2007 (for Word features like mail merge), but it was a disaster with Office '97 and has a drawback with Office XP (2002). With '97, I actually cannot use the regular Outlook anymore, even after uninstalling Business Manager and reinstalling Office '97. It will work with Office XP, but it makes it part of Business Manager and shows it as "Contacts" under "My Contacts," see images I uploaded). Afterwards, you will not be able to use Outlook XP for mail, but you can use it for most other functions.
  
  You would think that one could easily upload ones contacts from a .pst (Outlook) file backup, but that is not possible. I, also, tried, as instructed, using a .csv (comma separated values) file and mapping the fields, but they would not transfer in. To actually transfer the records (see images), you have to select "contacts" under "My Contacts." Then, you highlight the contact you want to transfer. Next, on the Edit menu, click Copy to Folder, in the submenu Copy Items, choose "Business Contacts" under Business Contact Manager. If you want to transfer all of your contacts, just choose Select All under the File menu in your transfer process.
  
  NOTE: Given my calamities, I will say that after three crashes during one process of trying to share the CSV info, it did recognize there were conflicts, and it did repair them.
  
  If you've ever worked with Microsoft Project, Business Contact Manager will allow you to do a watered down version of setting-up a project. With the accounting package, you can keep tabs on your costs per project at the same time. This part is a little more intuitive; however, I'd still refer to a separate guide as the "help" files require you to hunt a lot to get all the information you need.
  
  PIM's, Personal Information Managers, have been around for a while, and Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager has some valued features. My first PIM was "Packrat" for Windows, and I still miss some of the features of it (such as using "keys" when saving documents so you can easily find information (sort of a "Journal" entry type of thing that is more extensive)). Later, I began using ACT! Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007. This program is neither of those. It is not bad, bad, just not as good as it could be. If you can deal with the problems of set-up, and either do not have Outlook on your computer now, or have Office 2003 or Office 2007, I'd say give it a shot, but realize you will have some bumps in the road up ahead.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• A Great CRM For Small Business!
  By A3MLKJ1HHA2SX0 on 2008-03-03
  If you own your own small business, or just have a lot of professional contacts you need to keep up with, then Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 is a great CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool that is affordable and relatively easy to use. I found it was a great tool for helping me keep track of not only customers, but potential clients and e-mail discussions with them.
  
  One of the best features of the product is that it can integrate directly with Microsoft Accounting 2008. It can even share the database, so you don't have to maintain two separate SQL instances. From there it can automatically help track e-mails, marketing campaigns, projects, etc with all the customers you do business with.
  
  Speaking of marketing campaigns, this is one of the big features of this product I'm just now starting to use. You can actually create and send out targeted marketing to your contacts (or subsets of) and have it track response rates for you. This is a feature which I've had to pay a third party service for in the past!
  
  The only downside to this product is that it takes some time to get used to. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to manage my contacts correctly! It also requires SQL Server 2005 (it will install it for you) so be prepared for a little more overhead on your system.
  
  Overall, its a great CRM for small business and can do a lot of powerful features that normally you'd have to engage third party services for. Just be prepared for a learning curve when you first install it!
  
  
  
• Best Outlook Ever!
  By A3Q1J68QY1MZQ9 on 2008-03-04
  If you haven't seen or tried Office '07 yet, you have to! This is the most user friendly version of any software product out there (and not just the Outlook, you'll find all new ways to use Excel!). Having the option to add photos and/or logos to your contacts, it's just beyond explanation on how easy it is to use Outlook, now. Plus, the design is very easy on the eyes. Would highly recommend!!
  
  
• Good Add-On For Outlook
  By A2TVJ0YDW3QO63 on 2008-03-04
  'Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager' is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that is tailored towards sales and marketing professionals to track overall performance. If you need a tool to help you track leads and/or sales and are familiar with using Outlook, this is a good resource to have at your disposal.
  
  Some comments have been made that this application is pricey, bloated and buggy, but my experience with using it has been positive. I find Outlook to be the best application for managing my daily correspondences, if you agree and are using Outlook most of the day, this tool will reside in a familiar environment that you will no doubt have lots of hours logged in on.
  
  If you need to track sales and marketing information and need an app to do so, this is a great resource and I can recommend picking up.
  
  **** RECOMMENDED
  
  
• Not good for stand alone
  By A39G26LKBXB83D on 2008-03-10
  I want it integrated with the rest of MS Office so it won't do me much good as the standalone from the Amazon Vine program. My Office suite is old and I'm not about to buy the new one, and if I did it would include Outlook so this standalone is no good to me.
  
  
  
• It does what I need it to do. Mostly
  By A3CG6YLYZJXQG4 on 2008-03-11
  A year or so ago, I switched to Outlook, and while I can't say that I really liked it, I did find that it was an improvement over my old email program in a couple of important ways. It offered integrated address book, and calendar functions, and it didn't crash every fifteen minutes. I got used to its drawbacks because it offered me greater functionality.
  
  Along comes Outlook 2007 with the contact manager, and suddenly there's a whole new level of functionality to make me even happier. Now I can sync my Outlook calendar with my Google calendar, import RSS feeds and, with a tiny app and a couple of keystrokes, I can import contact information quickly from any online resource.
  
  On the downside, and predictably, it takes forever to install. Backup of everything except archived mail is sort of a pain, and the way it creates files is kind of squirrely. But in general I'd say that it's made keeping track of my life just a bit simpler. And that's worth a lot to me.
  
  
  
• Maybe it grows on you?
  By A14638TGYH7GD9 on 2008-03-17
  Unlike most reviewers, I hadn't previously used Outlook. It seemed to be just an ordinary mail program, and I use something else for that. I really like the idea of Outlook 2007 though. I like being able to type in a task as it comes up and then sort and categorize it by project later. I like being able to review a whole email conversation easily, and to sort mail documents by category. I like the color-coding. I liked the thought of being able to track email campaigns handily.
  In reality, the program was so slow on my computer that I gave up in frustration long before I had gotten all the features integrated into my daily routine.
  Normally, I wouldn't hold that against a business program. My work computer may be a work computer by day, but my kids use it for WoW by night and I use it for pictures and email and blogging and so forth. A high-powered business program might just need a more high-powered or a more strictly business machine.
  However, this is billed as a small business application. I use the rest of Office for business without difficulty, so it seems as though Outlook should be just as friendly to my home/business computer.
  I haven't given up entirely. I'll just have to play with it more sometime when I don't have to get any work done.
  
  
• Needs Office 2007 to work properly
  By A10G4BPT5MGBHY on 2008-03-18
  I'm mainly a Mac person. On my PC I don't own Office 2007 (I have the 2003 edition), and apparently without it many features of this software package don't work, such as background spell-checking and the thesaurus. Often I can't send e-mail, either. Frustrating!
  
  
• Takes some gettig used to
  By AX7QMRXX81L9K on 2008-03-18
  I use Outlook 2007 at work, so I was excited to try it at home. Like many other reviewers, I was disappointed to find out that without the 2007 version of Word, many of the features don't work, like spell check. And I agree with reviewers who say it is slow to load. As for the Business Contact Manager, that's not something I use at all, so I can't comment on that. I do like the calendar, though.
  
  
• Business Contacts get organized but Outlook falls behind.
  By A6VPK7X53QNAQ on 2008-03-20
  MS Outlook has been invaluable for emailing, calendar, reminders etc. for quite some time. Outlook 2007 tried to add more features and functionality but unless you upgrade to Word 2007 as commented by other reviewers you lose some of the word processing features.
  
  Also, it may be just me but my computer has started running slower since I installed this version of Outlook.
  
  
• Good if a Tad Slow
  By A2I0CEBYLTLMXS on 2008-03-20
  I hadn't tried Outlook before, so unlike other reviewers, I can't compare this to previous versions. The program is a little slow, but I've come to expect that from Microsoft products. Microsoft does plenty of things well; being fast is not one of them. Still, for a small business, the Outlook program is great. The interface is easy to use and the program is quite intuitive. Oh, and I had Word 2007 previously installed in my computer, so I had no problem using things like spell check.
  
  
• A lot more than I needed
  By A2PNOU7NXB1JE4 on 2008-03-20
  Since I already have an older version Microsoft Office, I had Outlook but not with all the updated features this version has. Of course several I did not need, but may use in the future if I keep it installed. As others has noted, spell checker does not work if not using Word 2007, which I'm not. Also it does seem slower, but then maybe this 2004 computer is just tired and overloaded. Since i recently bought a new laptop, I may end up getting the 2007 Home/Student set that has Word, Excel, and PowerPoint since it permits 2-3 installations for an economical price. If I don't though, I will revert back to the older version. If you are the type who likes all the bangs and whistles that are the latest thing, then this program may please you.
  
  

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• Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies (For Dummies (Computers))
• Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
• Managing Contacts with MS Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager
• Microsoft Outlook 2007
• Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008 [OLD VERSION]