Outlook4Gmail 4.0.24

Get your Gmail data in your Outlook installation with this cool Windows add-in.

When I went Android between 2007 and 2012, I fully switched over to a custom Gmail/Google Apps account and moved everything – email, calendar and contacts – over to Google services. However, I'm a big Outlook user, and getting all of that information to and from Outlook isn't always easy. That's where Outlook4Gmail can be a big help. It’s an Outlook for Windows add-in, and its kinda cool.

Outlook4Gmail is an Outlook add-in that provides easy synchronization between Outlook and your Gmail contacts and calendar. It supports synching contacts with all of the details – name, company, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. With it and these features, you'll be able to get all of your Gmail contacts synched between Outlook and your Gmail account. The free version doesn't support synchronization of more than one account, however. It does, however support one or two way, simultaneous synchronization for your address book.

You can also sync calendars with the add-in. You can import a calendar from Google into Outlook, export an Outlook calendar to Google, sync existing calendars, or create new calendars. Unfortunately, you will need the paid version to take advantage of this.

App Pro’s: free, supports one or two way, simultaneous synchronization for your address book, works with any Google account, including Google Apps.

App Con’s: Calendar sync requires paid version

Conclusion: As with any Outlook add-in, there's no real app start or exit. The add-in loads when Outlook starts and will create its own menu item and ribbon with buttons. If you bump into problems with either the account or other issues, the add-in will auto disable and you can get control of Outlook after you kill the task in Task Manager.

The biggest problem I had with the add-in was with calendar sync. The free version allows you to configure it, but doesn't actually sync the content. It’s a bit confusing, because the functionality just doesn't activate. The license is only $20 USD, but it's hard to test something like this when it just doesn't work in the trial version.