...sucks balls compared to Gmail.

But it is the only thing keeping me with the Gmail web interface right now. With Gmail, its not necessary to have 'emailed the person in the past' for their address to show up on the list of autocomplete hits. Even if you did, and later go back and change that person's contact info, their old email still shows up on the autocomplete list.

Is there any way to make this more like Gmail (for lack of a better term)? I love the Outlook calendar and not having to open up a browser and wait on shit to load to see my email...but Outlook is being a little bitch in this regard. BTW I am using Office 2007 Beta 2. (but I remember the same thing occurring in 2003)

6/20/2006 11:02:50 AM

i agree that Gmail is much more powerful in this respect in that it will do a real-time filtering of your entire address book.

but the outlook problem you're having is one that kind of "goes away" after a couple weeks, right? I mean, after consistent use for a couple weeks, how often is it that you have to email someone completely new? 95% of your emails are generally to people you have emailed in the somewhat recent past, no?

6/22/2006 9:13:30 AM

For the most part, you are right. But the few times I DO email someone new, it is enough of a hassle to check through the addressbook and such that I reconsider Outlook altogether. I just don't understand how hard this would be to get right in Office. I should be able to set a contact's info in the address book and forget about whether this phantom cache has the right address or not, right? Is that too much to ask, MS?

6/22/2006 9:19:29 AM

I don't understand the problem he's facing. Could someone explain it to me in greater detail?

6/22/2006 10:22:49 AM

Outlook's autocomplete feature is not quite what it sounds like - it works on a caching principle. So it will only autocomplete names/addresses that you've previously emailed, which i guess it stores in some cache somewhere.

So in the Outlook To: box, if I've never emailed gargs@abc.com (or reinstalled outlook or something since emailing him last) but he is in my address book, Outlook will not activate autocomplete as soon as I type "g" or "ga". But if I go ahead and email gargs@abc.com, next time I type "g" in the To: box, it will attempt to autocomplete with the address.

Instead, Gmail is much more resonsive, and flexible too. it will start to autocomplete on all addresses in your address book. Plus, it bolds the parts of the name or address that match what you're already written, which is nice.

there's probably a nice Macro solution for this somehow

[Edited on June 22, 2006 at 10:29 AM. Reason : .]

6/22/2006 10:28:44 AM

well, you could just click on the To: text and select the recipient, or just drag the recipient's name from the address book onto the Mail button...but yeah...weird that Outlook doesn't have this feature.

Although I never missed it.

6/22/2006 10:40:20 AM

yeah i think this is pretty trivial in the scheme of things

but then i complain about trivial shit all the time,so game on.

6/22/2006 10:51:10 AM

ok, there's a much better solution than autocomplete.

Type the person's name...not even their email address and click on Check Names

Outlook completes the name and address and stores it in the autocomplete cache.

6/22/2006 11:13:48 AM

Also, you can manually check in names every time you enter a new address book entry so that way it's available through autocomplete immediately.

6/22/2006 11:20:46 AM

you don't even have to click on check names

type the person's first name

tab out and start typing your message. wait for a few secs and it'll figure out who it is by itself. if there are multiple entries with that same name, the red squiggly underline comes up under his name and right click and choose his email address

i like only having my recent contacts show up. i don't e-mail over 80% of the people in my contact list on a regular basis.

6/22/2006 11:20:47 AM

crap

you're right


it took like a second for it to autocomplete

6/22/2006 11:26:04 AM

^^ thats pretty hot

6/22/2006 11:40:01 AM

lol wow, i thought everyone knew that...

6/22/2006 11:52:55 AM

What it should do is...

if I leave the To field blank, it should automatically fill it with the email address of a hot young girl.

6/22/2006 11:54:47 AM

^ and the subject line should automatically fill with "lets do lunch, k?"

6/22/2006 12:21:20 PM