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I am a “power-user” of
Outlook and am interested in fully migrating to Ubuntu and Evolution. I
have tried Outlook with Wine, but that was a waste of time. I push
Outlook to the limits and am hesistant to purchase a $300 copy of a full
install of Windows7 Ultimate and a $500 copy of Office 2010 in 6 months.
I believe that Linux has become a real alternative for a business user and
because of this I have joined your site to offer some advice that would improve
the usability of Evolution. I would be interested in being a beta
tester for Outlook migration and Contact Management if at all possible, I think
my extensive use of Outlook makes me an expert on the program. I have
done some very minor programming with it because frankly, while I bought the
book by Sue Mosher on Outlook programming, I found that most of it was not of
worth to me or basically didn’t work. I’ve even confronted
Sue on this several times and was only able to get some programming to work
properly once or twice. I bring this up, just to show you that I know
Outlook, and understand it well. I have 15 different contact folders with
over 10,000 contacts. Each window is displayed differently to allow me to
view the data as I feel comfortable with. In the import all the data is
brought into something called CouchDB and into one file. This completely
screws everything up for me to the point of making the import of my contacts
worthless. Also, not all the data comes over.
The notes section is fine, but little of the business address and/or mailing
address is imported. Also the Title is missing. If I create an address book and import a
CSV file, then I get errors, such as in the notes section I see "Title:
Mr." or "Gender:N/A". I can delete the import of Gender
but I need the Title to come over so that when I mail merge the name is
properly identified. So importing a CSV (windows) doesn't work properly
either. And while CSV brings over much of the mailing info, it deletes
all the notes section and replaces it with the info I stated above. I
used the notes section a lot and that again destroys my data making it
worthless. I also have issues with displaying the
data. You have the ability to Group and Sort which is great, but I can't
Group or Sort by the Data I need to do it by. I need to Display the Flag
Status in the File View and to Sort by that first and then by Last Name.
I need to Group by Company and/or Business State or Mailing State. This
info isn't available in the List view to add as a column or to Sort or
Group by. I also need to Group by Country, since
in Outlook this is known as Country / Region. I use this to separate
areas of the U.S. For example in one folder with over
5,000 contacts, I used Country/Region of Outlook to separate the country into
regions, SOCAL, NOCAL, SE (Southeast), MW (Midwest), NOTX (North Texas),
etc... This info does get imported, howevever I also use the Flag Status
(completed) to show which are the HQ's of the group of businesses (this is
where the mailer gets sent). This is not available on Evolution. You probably can't follow everything I'm
saying and this may not be the proper forum to discuss my needs if I'm going to
use this program extensively. You are very close to making this a
replacement for Outlook, but not yet. Who can I talk to in beta testing
to add these abilities? Very Truly Yours,
Bryan Karlan President 29752 Running Deer Laguna Niguel, CA 92677 (949) 363-7625 Office (714) 227-8892 Cell or Website |
