Lotus notes, outlook and Office 2007

I’m no fan of Lotus Notes. I prefer to use Outlook to read Lotus Notes; there is a connector that makes it possible to read your mail and use your calendar without ever having to open Notes. So it was happy days until I got a new laptop which only had Office 2007 installed. Office 2007 may be great, but the connector is not compatible and it meant having to go back to using Notes again. A couple of days of that and I was tearing my hair out. Even the promise of Lotus Notes 8 would entice me to stick with the experience.

So, how do you run Office 2007 and use Outlook as your mail client on top of Notes? It is possible… Office 2003 needs to be installed first with the notes connector working. Then install Office 2007, selecting to keep the old version of Office, perform a “custom install” and in the installation options remove all outlook components. You must not install Outlook 2007.

Result? Happy days again – Office 2007 goodness for all but Outlook! And I can live with email and calender in Outlook 2003 using Outlook’s text editor to write mail if it means that Notes can once again be an unused Shortcut on my desktop.