Integrating Outlook 2010 with Windows Live Messenger for Instant Messaging

Question

I've seen a lot of articles about integrating Outlook 2010 with Windows Live Messenger 2011. While this appears to be very easy, I'm running into a problem because the windows live IDs of my contacts are different from our exchange account IDs. For example, my contact is [email protected], but his live account is [email protected]. When I try to "begin a conversation" from within Outlook 2010, Outlook tries to look for a "Windows Live" contact named [email protected] which doesn't exist.

Is there any way to synchronize the two? Ideally I'd like to be able to "associate" [email protected] with [email protected] so that I can initiate an IM conversation from within Outlook.

Solution

In the Contact details in Outlook, there is a field for IM Address. Use that for the Windows Live Messenger Live IDs.

It would be easier if you were all using Office Communicator 2007 or Lync 2010.

Comments

[Naidim]

@Pandincus: Did it work?

[Pandincus]

It does, but unfortunately it requires manually copying each person to my local contacts, and it requires that they first 'friend' me using their live account. This is to be expected, I just wish there was a magic solution ;-) Thank you!