Outlook-allow details for multiple individuals in family ie. bday

[Jacoby Larson]

Outlook should allow me to enter in details for multiple individuals in one
family. For instance, I can enter in my brother as a contact and fill in his
details such as a birthday, and fill in all the details of his wife and kids
and their birthdays and/or any special things about them. Right now I can
only fill in specific information about him. I know I could create a new
contact for each individual, but I don't want to make a contact for his 9
month old baby, know what I mean?

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...8e577e07&dg=microsoft.public.outlook.contacts

 

[homeLAN]

There are probably many people who agree with this sentiment and would like
to see Outlook more explicitly model family relationships. Count me among
them. But on the other hand, there is the practical issue of added complexity
and bulk; Outlook still needs to address its core business uses. Perhaps this
is a role for a third-party developer to jump into, to create an add-on that
does what you're suggesting. I'm actually surprised that no one seems to have
done this already. Or have they? If there is such a third-party program, I'd
sure be interested in knowing about it.

 

[Karl Timmermans]

Having seen similar posts in the past, out of curiousity, what percentage of
Outlook users does any one think would be interested in functionality like
that and more importantly, how many of those expressing interest would
actually pay for something like that (and what price would be considered
reasonable)?

Off the cuff, my guess is that all the numbers would be very, very small
relative to the Outlook population. The "return on investment" would be even
smaller for the effort required to develop and support a "modified CRM
model" which in reality is all that the "family model" in very simplistic
terms - just using different field names for much of it. In essence, a
"very" simplified business structure is one company/one location - multiple
contacts each with individual info. In this case, the family is the company
with multiple members each with different info requirements and reminder
triggers and that's using a "very" simple definition of family here to mean
only those "immediate family members" living within the same household etc.

Karl

--
__________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - Importer 1.3 / DataPorter 2.0
"Power contact importers for MS Outlook '2000/2003"
http://www.contactgenie.com

 

[Sparky]

I must say that I 100% agree that it would be great for MS to add this type
of functionality to Outlook. After spending a lot of time this holiday
season merging contact information together (spousal relationships) just to
generate mailing labels for my holiday cards, I started trying to figure out
if something existed to help. Unfortunately, I've found nothing.

If anyone knows of anything for Outlook 2003, please pass on the info.

~Sparky

 

[Erik]

Outlook 2003 has categories, I know it is not exactly what you are looking
for but perhaps it is a viable workaround. You could create a category
called "Smith" and add all the contacts that are a member of the family
"Smith". There is also a place to add someone's B-day.