Office [Outlook] 2010 WARNING!
Have you been waiting for Office 2010 to release, so have many of us. The changes made are kind of nice plus they are offering a full 64 bit version. So when I was able to use the release version through my Partner’s Subscription with MS I was excited and ready to make the move.
I decided this would be a great time to clean up the work machine so I did a clean OS install, some hardware upgrades I had been planning and pout everything in place. I installed Office 2010 64 bit and made sure to setup Outlook.
Once I was setup I imported my Outlook backup and fired up the program to add some new appointments. I then plugged in my Windows Mobile phone and was all set to sync up my calendar. Imagine my surprise when I got a message that told me Outlook was not installed and I needed to set a default email program.
I figured that Outlook just had not made itself the default so fired it up and checked settings. I made sure it was set to default, rebooted and tried again, same thing. A search of the Partner forums revealed the issue. It seems the 64 bit version of Outlook will not work correctly with the current version of Windows Mobile Device Center, the way Vista and Windows 7 sync with Windows phones.
A further search of the forums found something disturbing. In the Microsoft FAQ about Outlook 2010 they state they are aware of this issue and will NOT be fixing it. Yes you read that right they KNOW this is broke and do not care.
Microsoft Office 2010 FAQ/Readme
The forums needless to say are in an uproar as so many of us assumed that Microsoft would make their premier product work correctly. The solution from Microsoft is to not use the 64 bit version of Outlook.
Call me crazy but deliberately leaving a broken product on the market without any plans to fix it and having that product be the king of your product line reeks of STUPIDITY! However sadly this is not the first time MS has screwed the Windows Phone users. I will point you to Live. You see when Microsoft updated the Live mail system they purposefully left out support for the Calendar feature. Numerous emails between me and Microsoft on this have confirmed they are not working to fix this despite knowing the issue is out there.
When I pointed out that the Google calendar worked perfectly with Windows Phones and wondered why MS would not fix their own product all emails stopped.
This i really sad when you realize I really like the new Office and think some of it’s features are worth the purchase. However take this warning to heart and know that if you rely on Outlook syncing to a mobile device you do NOT want to use the 64 bit version.
We can only hope that Microsoft has some plan in place to replace the WMDC program. Until then we have to either not make the move to 2010 or do so without the 64 bit support we where promised, unless you do not sync your devices…
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