Setting Up Office Live Accounts in Outlook

If you have multiple Office Live accounts, you can connect each one of them to Microsoft Outlook. Sound complicated? It's not, if you follow these steps:

1. In Microsoft Outlook, choose Outlook Connector --> Add a New Account.

The Microsoft Office Outlook Connector dialog box opens.

2. Fill in the following pieces of information:

• E-mail address: Use your Office Live e-mail address.

• Password: Use your Office Live e-mail address password.

• Name: This is the name that your recipients see if you send e-mail in Outlook from one of your Office Live accounts.

3. Click OK to create the Office Live account in Outlook.

You're prompted to restart Outlook.

4. Restart Outlook.

Upon opening, Outlook performs a Send/Receive.

5. Scroll toward the bottom of the Outlook folder list.

At this point, if you're tempted to jump up and down in excitement when you see your Office Live account(s) listed in the folder list, restrain yourself. There's even more good stuff yet to come.

6. Select your Office Live Mail account.

7. Click the plus sign (+) next to your e-mail address.

Now you can really get excited because you'll see all your Office Live items listed there filled with all of your Office Live information. If you've set up folders for your Office Live Inbox, then the folders appear as well.

For the very lazy (or very smart) readers who might have a bunch of contacts lurking in their main Outlook Contacts folder, you might consider dragging them down to the Office Live contacts folder so they'll synchronize with Office Live. You can also drag appointments, tasks, and notes from one Office Live account to another. It sure beats the heck out of adding all that information to Office Live, one item at a time!

The Contacts form in Outlook contains more fields than the Contacts form in Office Live. If you create a new contact in Outlook, and then synchronize it to Office Live, you see only the Office Live fields. When you open the same contact in Outlook, however, all the available fields — and their information — appear.