If you are a user of Microsoft Exchange server (as most people working for a large company are) then you probably use Outlook on your desktop or laptop. The main advantage to using Outlook has aways been its tight integration with Outlook Calendar and Outlook Contacts. No need to switch to separate apps to look up a contact or to check your calendar. It’s all built into the program.
One of my big peeves with the iPhone is the fact that I have to switch between 3 separate apps, Mail, Calendar and Contacts to do on on my phone what I can do in one program on my desktop and laptops.
But as of January 29, 2015 Microsoft has solved this problem!
They released Microsoft Outlook for iOS 8.0 or later. It is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, but it is optimized for the iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
The best news? It is free!
It has been reviewed over 1600 times (as of this writing) with an overall rating of 4+ out of a possible 5 by people on the app store.
I have two Exchange accounts, several gMail accounts and a Yahoo account. The app handled all of them seamlessly, although I did need to know the settings for each account. It wasn’t able to copy the info from my existing accounts, but that was a minor wrinkle.
It attempts to ferret out my important email and place in a tab called “Focus”. So far it is surprisingly accurate in its choices. All other mail goes into the “Other” tab. Email can be archived with a swipe to the left and an appointment in the Calendar can be set by swiping to the right.
So far so good. My recommendation is that if you have one of the supported devices and are an Outlook user on your computer you may want to take this for a spin.
After all, the price is right!
You can find it here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-outlook/id951937596?mt=8
