I've been using Outlook for years for business contacts, but now that I've
retired, personal contacts seem much more complex. Similar improvements have
been requested before, but since I just got Outlook 2007 and saw few
improvements in the area of personal contacts, I wanted to reiterate my (and
probably millions of retirees needs).

Personal contacts are just too complex for a single contact record for a
family. A husband and wife each may have home and business addresses,
multiple phone numbers and multiple email addresses. Each of six kids may or
may not have their own home and business address, phone, email, IM address,
birthdates and the whole shebang that their parents have.

My suggestions for improvement a

1. Have a new tab for a personal contacts form with many more personal
fields, e.g. date of birth, date of graduation, date of death, etc., and yes,
you do keep track of people who have died. Now you have to track their
lawyer, accountant, insurance, etc. This new form may simply be an expanded
version of the existing contacts or details record.
2. In the personal contacts form, have a tab for "related records".
3. The "related records" form may consist of only two lists, both allowing a
relatively unlimited number of entries.
4.The first list, the "people" list, would consist of "name" and
"relationship". Some examples of entries would be:
John Smith, son
Pocahantas, John's girlfriend
5. Double clicking on "John Smith's" record would immediately open his
contact record. If it didn't exist, Outlook would ask if you wanted to
create one. If you did, it would ask if you wanted to copy contact
information from the "parent" record. In the case of John Smith, your son,
if he was living with you, you would copy the information and then edit it,
changing phone, email, birthdate, etc. If everything is new, you would enter
the information you have in a new contact form.
6. Creating the new form (John Smith's) would immediately create a "related
record" entry with the name from the "parent" record. You would have to fill
in only the relationship. To be most useful, both directions of the
relationship would have to be tracked. In addition to "Pocahantas" being
shown in the "parent's" "people" list, it will probably be shown in "John
Smith's" people list so that you could get to the record from multiple
directions when searching for Pocahantas.
7. The second list would be "groups" and would list all groups the current
contact belongs to. Some examples would be, "Church", "Neighbors" and
"Running Club". If you add a group name to the list, then if the group
record didn't exist, Outlook should ask if you want to create the group (you
may have misspelled it). If a new group is created or if a new group record
is added to a list, the name from the "parent" record should automatically be
added to the group so you could easily search for all members of a group.
Again, the two way connection must be maintained.
8. Make it possible to easily send emails to all members of a group (or to
not send to a few selected members).

I hope these suggestions are useful and understandable.

--
Lyle
Montrose, Colorado

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/comm...tlook.contacts

Montrose Lyle wrote:

I've been using Outlook for years for business contacts, but now that
I've retired, personal contacts seem much more complex. Similar
improvements have been requested before, but since I just got Outlook
2007 and saw few improvements in the area of personal contacts, I
wanted to reiterate my (and probably millions of retirees needs).

I think your suggestions are good, but Outlook is not really a Contact
Manager, per se. Nonetheless, there's no reason why you couldn't design
your own Contacts form to include this information.
--
Brian Tillman

Brian,

Thanks for your reply. You are right in that it is easy to add lots of
additional fields to a form. The hard part is doing the connections to
related records and groups.

As far as Outlook not being a Contact Manager, there seems to be a whole
section of the program called "Business Contact Manager". Why not a
"Personal Contact Manager"?

I could probably spend lots of time and design such a thing in Access, but
the problem is tying it back into my email program. I'm not the one with the
expertise to do it. Microsoft has that expertise.
--
Lyle
Montrose, Colorado


"Brian Tillman" wrote:

Montrose Lyle wrote:

I've been using Outlook for years for business contacts, but now that
I've retired, personal contacts seem much more complex. Similar
improvements have been requested before, but since I just got Outlook
2007 and saw few improvements in the area of personal contacts, I
wanted to reiterate my (and probably millions of retirees needs).

I think your suggestions are good, but Outlook is not really a Contact
Manager, per se. Nonetheless, there's no reason why you couldn't design
your own Contacts form to include this information.
--
Brian Tillman

You can design a custom form page, and save it as a Form Region. This is
something new with Outlook 2007, and it makes designing a custom form much
easier, as a Form Region automatically carries with it the style of the
form. As far as I know, it's not possible to create the sort of
cross-referencing you describe with Outlook, but at least you'll have a page
where you can record more information on a contact.

--
Michael

"Montrose Lyle" wrote in message
...
Brian,

Thanks for your reply. You are right in that it is easy to add lots of
additional fields to a form. The hard part is doing the connections to
related records and groups.

As far as Outlook not being a Contact Manager, there seems to be a whole
section of the program called "Business Contact Manager". Why not a
"Personal Contact Manager"?

I could probably spend lots of time and design such a thing in Access, but
the problem is tying it back into my email program. I'm not the one with
the
expertise to do it. Microsoft has that expertise.
--
Lyle
Montrose, Colorado


"Brian Tillman" wrote:

Montrose Lyle wrote:

I've been using Outlook for years for business contacts, but now that
I've retired, personal contacts seem much more complex. Similar
improvements have been requested before, but since I just got Outlook
2007 and saw few improvements in the area of personal contacts, I
wanted to reiterate my (and probably millions of retirees needs).

I think your suggestions are good, but Outlook is not really a Contact
Manager, per se. Nonetheless, there's no reason why you couldn't design
your own Contacts form to include this information.
--
Brian Tillman