Use the Free Outlook Social Connector to avoid sending emails to the wrong people

Here’s how you can get Outlook to display pictures of the people you are sending emails to… a quick glance and you will know if you’re sending the email to the right person.

And the best part… Outlook will bring the person’s picture to you from Facebook or LinkedIn… you don’t have to do anything yourself.

Why is this useful?

The internet is full of horror/funny stories of people using Outlook accidentally sending emails to the wrong person… funny when it happens to someone else… possibly job-threatening if it happens to you.

The main reason this happens is Outlook’s Autocomplete feature… as you type an email address in the To, CC or BCC fields, Outlook automatically completes it for you.

Although this is normally a very useful feature, it also makes it super easy to accidentally send the email to someone else who has a similar name or email address to the person you really want to contact.

A Solution

Microsoft Outlook recently released a new (free) connector that pulls information from Facebook and LinkedIn directly into Outlook.

When you create an email, the person’s picture will automatically be displayed under your email.

A quick glance… and you know if your email is going to the right person.

Obviously this only works if the person you are writing to is on either Facebook or LinkedIn. Otherwise Outlook will not be able to display a picture.

You can try out the Outlook Facebook connector for yourself from this link. It works in Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010.

Related Articles
Your Clients are seeing your Embarassing Facebook Pictures in Outlook
Is your Facebook making you look unprofessional to Outlook users?
Deleting Email Addresses from Outlook’s Auto Complete List