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Using Live Mesh to workaround an Outlook limitation

An Office Watch reader had a problem with Outlook Journal and found a solution in Live Mesh, Microsoft’s nifty file sharing / cloud technology

Office Watch reader, Nigel B. from Dallas had a problem with Outlook and found a solution in Live Mesh, Microsoft’s nifty file sharing / cloud technology:

In the curious way that we live and work with Microsoft products, I have encountered a new problem and implemented a simple solution. Thought I would share them with you.

The problem: For years I used the Journal feature of MS Outlook to track the time I spend working on MS Word and Excel documents. The documents are on a file server that I access from my laptop through a peer-to-peer network. I was very disappointed to find that Journal in Outlook 2007 no longer tracks files opened on remote computers. I don’t know why Microsoft did this. I wish they would reverse this decision or at least make it an option.

The solution: I had already set up a folder on my laptop to synchronize with the file server via Live Mesh. So the solution is simple. Now I open and edit documents on my local computer and let Mesh synchronize them back to the file server. And Journal is happily tracking the files for me again.

So I end up using a new Microsoft tool to solve a new problem that Microsoft created in an existing Microsoft program.

Perhaps that’s the new way to define progress!

PS, Live Mesh on my cell phone is just too cool. It has saved me a couple of times when I needed to review a document while on the road without a computer. And syncing photos from the phone to the office in real time is a complete paradigm shift!


We love hearing from Office Watch readers.  Nigel wrote in with a clear description of a problem and his elegant solution using a new tool from Microsoft.

Thanks Nigel, a copy of our Formatting Magic with Word is heading your way!

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