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The missing features in Office for Windows Phone 7

Posted on 14 Jun 2011 at 12:10

Simon Jones takes a closer look at Office Mobile for Windows Phone 7 - and finds it's missing a few features

Windows Phone 7 has been around for a few months now, so I thought it might be useful to run through its capabilities with Office documents.

Despite the numeral, Windows Phone is definitely a version 1 product, very clever in some places and very dumb in others. It shows signs of scant development and design effort in some areas, but whether that’s by accident or deliberate dumbing down isn’t entirely obvious.

Despite the numeral, Windows Phone is definitely a version 1 product

The major use of Office data on Windows Phone 7 is Outlook email, contacts and calendar. Previous versions of Microsoft’s mobile platform – Windows Mobile 6.5 and earlier – used different synchronisation technology that covered Outlook Tasks as well, and when connected via USB they could synchronise Outlook’s Notes too.

While access to your notes directly from your phone would be nice, there is the possibility of using OneNote to perform this function. But WP7’s lack of Outlook Tasks could be a limitation for some people.

Missed tasks

I miss having Outlook’s Integrated Tasks and Reminders on my phone to remind me to pick up a book, vaccinate the cat or call Bill about a project.

Yes, I could put my tasks into OneNote instead of Outlook, but then I’d have to specifically launch OneNote to see them because they don’t have the full start-date/due-date/priority/reminder structure of Outlook Tasks.

Contact data synchronises between Outlook and Windows Phone 7 quite well, but some of this data can be missed without warning: Outlook holds up to 19 phone numbers for each person while Windows Phone 7 has room for only nine, and fields such as “Other Phone” aren’t synchronised at all.

WP7 also lists mobile numbers first, followed by Home, Home2, Work, Work2 and Company. Perhaps I’m just becoming an old grouch, but I typically want to phone someone at Work or Home rather than on their mobile – my friends are so predictable that I can guess whether they’re going to be at home or work and I’ll call their mobile only if I don’t get a reply from either. WP7 appears to be aimed solely at young hipsters who have their mobile surgically attached to their ear and rarely go home.

Calendar complaints

Outlook’s calendar information is handled quite well, but with definite restrictions: the Calendar Live tile on the start screen shows only one Next Appointment, which is clearly inadequate when you have a busy schedule.

Review

Windows Phone 7

You have to tap the Calendar Live tile to see the whole day and find out what’s happening later: showing the next two appointments plus a count of how many there are today would be better.

The Month View calendar is so small that you can barely see if there’s anything listed for a particular day. Windows Mobile 6.5 did a better job by colour coding the days you were out of the office and showing an icon that said whether you were busy in the morning, afternoon or both.

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User comments

Editing text...

Simon, pressing and holding your finger against the screen brings up the "I"-bar, which allows you to locate the cursor much more accurately. This works in much the same way as the magnifying glass cursor locator on the iPhone.

I like the way the e-mail indicator displays only how many e-mails have been received since I last looked. That is more useful to me than how many I haven't read. Going into the e-mail still shows the unread messages in a different colour.

The lock screen shows the next couple of appointments, so I hadn't noticed that the calendar tile only displays the last entry.

I think the rest are pretty much fair comment - with the exception of creating e-mails. To be honest, I don't want to faff around on such a small display trying to get the formatting right, I want to bash out a short reply and be done with it... Plus I come from the old school, where people think it is impolite to send a "formatted" e-mail with different fonts, tables etc.

In Linux, I used to have Kontakt set to display only text - with replies listing all the html tags of the original mixed in with the text. Most people quickly got the message and stopped trying to send me rich e-mails. :-D

I haven't really done much with Office itself on my WP7, but I much prefer WP7 in general to my old WM6.1 Touch Pro and my iPhone 3GS...

By big_D on 14 Jun 2011

Different design paradigms

It's fairly obvious that things would at least initially get dumbed down. Windows Mobile was designed with the precision of a stylus and resistive screen in mind whereas windows phone is a finger-tip capacitive screen based platform. There's no way the intricacies required can otherwise be achieved.

By TheBigM72 on 14 Jun 2011

I have outlook reminders set up. When I put something into my calendar with a reminder it syncs up with Windows Live and also Outlook. Maybe I'm missing what you mean.

I prefer the mobile number coming first as I generally never phone any land lines any more.

By TimoGunt on 14 Jun 2011

Don't forget "Mango"

Overall a very fair review of the product.
As you say, this really is a "V1", and I suspect it needed to be shoved out the door quickly.

The next (first "proper") update to WP7 comes in a few months and looks likely to address many of the issues you raise but probably raising many new ones too!

I'd like to see the post-mango version of this article...

By wittgenfrog on 15 Jun 2011

Outlook

Sorry, am I missing something. I cannot even see Outlook on my Phone, only Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Onenote. Would dearly love to be able to synchronise my Outlook instead of just download POP3 email.

By skeetboy on 16 Jun 2011

Outlook

By skeetboy on 16 Jun 2011

skeetboy

Outlook on Windows 7 IS the email application. Look on the Start Screen for the Outlook logo.
If you just have POP email then that's all you get. Other mail account types (IMAP or Exchange) give better integration with Contacts and Calendar as well. It depends on what is supported by your mail server.

By Simon_Jones_RWC on 16 Jun 2011

TimoGunt

I think you're referring to my comment about the lack of TASK synchronisation. Yes, you get reminders about appointments but that is CALENDAR, not Tasks.

By Simon_Jones_RWC on 16 Jun 2011

big_D

Yes, I found the I bar cursor a week or two after I wrote this article. Another bit of UI that is completely hidden from the user until they find it by accident.

I would like to be able to use italics or bold (or colour) in an email from my phone so I can emphasize some words without having to resort to CAPITALS which is akin to shouting.

By Simon_Jones_RWC on 16 Jun 2011

Outlook

Thanks Simon, but there is nor ever has been an Outlook logo on the start screen! Perhaps you mean that it only works with an exchange server or BPOS or Office365?

By skeetboy on 16 Jun 2011

Outlook

I did think that you were trying to say that it would synchronise with Outlook on my PC - which just gets POP3 emails.

By skeetboy on 16 Jun 2011

Outlook Icon

You can see the outlook icon on this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/howto/
wp7/default.aspx
in the second image under the heading "Featured Topics".
If you see "Mail" with an envelope icon instead of Outlook that probably means your email server can't serve up the contacts and calendar items.
We use Exchange Server so have no need for POP or IMAP accounts.
Windows Phone 7 does not use ActiveSync to connect to your PC. It uses Zune for file sync but email (contacts & calendar) go directly to and from you Mail server (eg Exchange, Hotmail, GMail, etc) over WiFi or mobile data connection.

By Simon_Jones_RWC on 16 Jun 2011

if you can't see your outlook mailbox you probably haven't set it up yet.
Settings - email & accounts - + add an account - Outlook

By TimoGunt on 17 Jun 2011

From an old old Win mob. User...

With regard Outlook:

Pocket Informant was always the app of choice. It brings a great interface for Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Contacts.

Of course it all syncs with Outlook on the PC.

Years ago when Win Mob was truly clunky it gave a useability still unsurpassed IMHO

They have stopped supporting Windows... So they made their last Win Release free... Don't know if it runs on WinMob 7

By Kevin000 on 28 Jun 2011

From an old old Win mob. User...

By Kevin000 on 28 Jun 2011

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Simon Jones

Simon is a contributing editor to PC Pro. He's an independent IT consultant specialising in Microsoft Office, Visual Basic and SQL Server.