Outlook for Mobile Devices (iOS and Android)
Categories: Information
Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane
I ain’t got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
‘Cause my baby just wrote me a letter
Well, she wrote me a letter
Said she couldn’t live without me no more …
–Wayne Carson Thompson
When Wayne Carson wrote that tune back in 1967, it resonated with people. Everyone knew what it was like to get a letter from a loved one far away, the sense of anticipation as you recognized the handwriting, the joy of opening it and reading what he or she had to say. There were, of course, other ways to communicate; telephones worked just fine, and the telegram had been around for more than a century, but a letter was more personal, a thing that you wrote and touched yourself.
Today, of course, Mr. Thompson would have to talk about email, or texting, or Twitter, or something like that. (“Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home, my baby just Tweeted an e-vite!”… Maybe it’s a good thing that he wrote it almost fifty years ago.
Anyway, the important thing about communicating is that you communicate, and in today’s world, for most people, that means the phone. Our phones let us talk, text, email, post to Facebook and so on; without our phones, most of us are lost, wondering what’s going on. Does the world still exist? Does anyone still care about us? We don’t know, at least until we find a spot to plug in our phones.
If you’re using your phone for work (and who isn’t?), then you probably get email on it. The same is likely true of any tablets you or your office own. There’s a new tool to make that even more useful – Microsoft Outlook.
With little fanfare, Microsoft released iOS and Android versions of Outlook this past week, and the reviews have been great. It’s a major improvement over the default iOS Mail app, and it brings some new capabilities to the tablet or phone – mainly it can handle sending and saving email attachments, which Mail does not. It also makes it easier to find emails, allows you to easily view your calendar and contacts, and otherwise use more of the functionality of your OSU email. (It’s also quite an improvement on the Gmail app, if you use that.) All in all, it’s a really nice update for your Android or iOS device.
One last thing: this is still technically a preview app, which shows where Microsoft is going. It has a great deal of functionality, but it isn’t perfect, and it will almost certainly change as it matures. Be aware of this, and I think you’ll enjoy using it.