Microsoft Outlook does not have this feature. Actually, you can do something "like this" in Outlook but it's a royal pain in the ass. Users have to go through a convoluted process each and every time they send an email.
This blog post brought to you by a former Lotus Notes user who is now using Outlook who happened to stop by my cube yesterday.
Comment posted by Ben Poole03/13/2008 03:26:25 PM
Homepage: http://benpoole.com
1. Sit a Notes user in front of Outlook 2003
2. Ask them to compose an email (easy)
3. Ask them to insert a picture (not too bad)
4. Ask them to insert a table...
And this is the email app that has the amazing UI? Not so much.
Comment posted by Darren03/14/2008 01:54:03 AM
Homepage: http://www.dadams.co.uk
There seems to be a default option for saving sent e-mail, but I can't see an Outlook option that lets you decide whether to save "on demand". That is, I want to send and save e-mail #1, but not save e-mail #2. You can go into the message options each time, but that's a pain.
Also, Notes allows you, per e-mail, to decide whether you want to include file attachments or not in a reply. In Outlook it appears that you have to make a global decision about that. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know Outlook well enough. But that's the point, I'm a Notes user, and I'm not finding simple tasks easy.
Comment posted by Jim Casale03/14/2008 02:05:32 AM
I had one user ask me to move the "Send and File" button to the left so he doesn't accidentally click on "Send". Boy is he in for a surprise if we move to Outlook 
Comment posted by Peter Wilson03/14/2008 04:02:22 AM
Wow..that one feature in Notes has won me over I wish Notes had a decent Undo/Redo feature, was easy to create a Calendar entry via drag and drop like Outlook, the ability to have a single contact document with multiple personal and work email addresses...
I wouldn't throw stones in glass houses
Pete
Comment posted by Denny Russell03/14/2008 04:14:03 AM
Homepage: http://www.sherpasoftware.com/blogs/SherpaBlog.nsf/
Pete,
No one is throwing stones, it all works like that in Notes too.
Comment posted by Jim Casale03/14/2008 04:18:53 AM
@Pete I guess you got us on that one. How could I have thought Outlook wasn't perfect? Maybe it was Exchange I was thinking about. O second thought it can't be Exchange either - they do have that nice feature of having to uninstall the Exchange program to upgrade the OS from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008. Guess we will have to ask Mary Beth's counterpart to add that to the feature list for Domino. 
Comment posted by Dave03/14/2008 04:43:54 AM
Sorry - but the Send & File feature of Lotus is really lame because it doesn't work as a normal user would expect. An email sent with Send & File is not really putting an extra copy for safe keeping and future reference in the other File folder. If the user ever cleans out their Sent folder, then the "copy" they thought they had save in the File is GONE. Too bad Notes has not adopted the idea of an email being like a file on UNIX where multiple "copies" can exist as links to the same file. A remove command in UNIX does not remove the actual file until the last link is gone.
Comment posted by Alan Lepofsky03/14/2008 05:15:21 AM
Homepage: http://www.alanlepofsky.net
@Peter, Notes 8 does have multi-level undo, and you can drag and drop emails to create a calendar entries. (or you can use the Copy Into Action). I agree about multiple emails per contact, but I believe that is in plan for 8.5.
@Dave, when deleting an email from the send folder, you are prompted with "You are about to delete document(s) from this view as well as from all folders to which this document belongs. Continue deleting these documents, or only remove them from this view?"
Comment posted by Jim Casale03/14/2008 05:40:29 AM
@Dave, There is no excuse for poor user training in either product
Comment posted by Steve Chrysostom03/14/2008 05:58:55 AM
Homepage: http://www.tacp.com
@Ben, "sit a Notes user [with no Outlook experience] in front of Outlook 2003 ..." isn't a fair comparison. Neither of these products is designed to be instantly intuitive -- nor should they be. You could ust as easily sit an Outlook user in front of Notes for the first time, and they'd have just as much trouble. Who cares if they have 5% more or less trouble than the other (hypothetical) guy? Newbies get up to speed on a product through training, not intuition.
Also, regarding "4. Ask them to insert a table" I'm a Notes developer (1993-present) and still a fan, but my organization has moved to Outlook 2003 for email. The Outlook version of this function is *much* easier. If you use the menu it's a wash (Table / Insert / Table / dialog box with row & col options) but there's a default "insert table" toolbar icon which has a live drop-down for rows & cols -- the same icon and function as in MS Word 2003.
Comment posted by Ben Poole03/14/2008 07:24:13 AM
Homepage: http://benpoole.com
Steve, perhaps my original post is not clear enough: my point is that people familiar with Outlook moan about stuff that's "missing" in Notes, when it isn't at all: it's a user education / perception thing. All I'm doing is presenting this from another perspective: a Notes user approaching Outlook.
Up until a few months ago, I'd not used a modern version of MS Outlook "in anger". I've now been using Outlook 2003 for three months, and there are things about it that annoy me. Not in comparison to Notes, just generally.
One of these things is the complete lack of ability to add a table in a mail. You may have a menu option, but I do not. You say it's easier to add a table to content in MS Outlook 2003 than it is in Lotus Notes, and I say it is not. But rather than dismiss points of view, I want to understand why you say it's easier. So here goes...
Assuming that the "Table" menu is available in MS Outlook (like I say, I don't have it), here are the steps to insert a table in Lotus Notes and MS Outlook respectively. How is Outlook "easier"?
1. Lotus Notes
i. CREATE menu
ii. TABLE option
= dialog box asking about columns & rows, table layout, width
2. MS Outlook
i. TABLE menu
ii. INSERT option
iii. TABLE option
= dialog box asking for columns & rows
I appreciate that this is a minor thing, and it really doesn't matter, but I just want to get to the crux of why people perceive things as being "easier" when in actual fact they are not, or at least, there's very little in it.
Comment posted by Larry C03/14/2008 08:14:30 AM
In Outlook 2007, inserting a table is trivial. It's right there in the insert menu:
i. Insert (menu)
ii. click the large TABLE button
and as far as the original post (autofiling a sent email), it is the following (admittedly more steps than the single Notes 'send & file button):
i. Options (menu)
ii. Save Sent Item (button)
iii. Other folder (menu)
=. Dialog to choose which menu
And before everyone starts throwing stones at me, I've been a Notes user since starting with version 2 in 1991.
Comment posted by Ben Poole03/14/2008 08:33:03 AM
Homepage: http://benpoole.com
In Outlook 2007, inserting a table is trivial. It's right there in the insert menu:
... but not in Outlook 2003. Or at least, not for me. In fact, it's not in any menu 
So, back to usability. Larry says the INSERT menu, Steve says the TABLE menu... which is it? Or is it both? Neither? Do you mean to say that between Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 a menu option has moved? That's not very intuitive eh!
Sorry, I'm just being argumentative I know. But I hope you see my point that whilst Notes has its issues, Outlook doesn't exactly have this usability thing down pat either.
Comment posted by Chris Doig03/14/2008 02:58:03 PM
Homepage: http://www.chrisdoig.net
From my experience: As far as tables go, Outlook 2007 has some pretty fancy options. And the new menu bar is a bit easier to use that the Notes dialog box. There is very little in it, nad it amounts to user preference more that anything else.
On to calendar entries: When you drag an HTML email to the Outlook 2007 calendar, you loose all the pictures, formatting etc. This happened to me this week when I got a fancy HTML invite to a presentation. I decided to go, dragged the email to my calendar and promptly lost most of the information. Not what I would call user friendly. See the before & after screen shots on my blog: http://chrisdoig.net/ChrisDoig/ChrisDoig.nsf/dx/03142008034835PMCDOURF.htm
Comment posted by Peter Wilson03/14/2008 03:08:23 PM
Hi Alan,
> @Peter, Notes 8 does have multi-level undo, and you can drag and drop emails to create a calendar entries. (or you can use the Copy Into Action). I agree about multiple emails per contact, but I believe that is in plan for 8.5.
How do I redo something after I've Undo (undone) it in Notes 8 ? That's the complete feature that it needs !!
Go into Outlook, open your Calendar. Select a range of time for say the current day and start typing.. It makes calendar entry right there without doing anything else. How nice ...how user friendly !! Go to Notes and try to do the same. You can't even select a range of time during the day and if you start typing the "Starts with..." dialogue box opens. WTF?
Pete
Comment posted by Darren03/16/2008 04:43:10 AM
Homepage: http://www.dadams.co.uk
@Dave... "the Send & File feature of Lotus is really lame because it doesn't work as a normal user would expect".
Normal user? What's a normal user? I've been using Notes for 16 years and it works exactly as I'd expect it to. If you're saying that it doesn't work as an Outlook user would expect, fair enough.
So can I get this straight... you're saying that if you send and file with Outlook it stores it twice? Once in the folder and once in 'Sent'. Hmmm, that's efficient. And why would someone want to clear out their sent view... it's a record of the e-mails they've sent.
This isn't about normality, it's about different approaches. If a user switches one way or the other, they still should be taught the basics.
Comment posted by Darren03/16/2008 05:05:55 AM
Homepage: http://www.dadams.co.uk
@Ben - in Outlook 2003 I think you need to turn on the option to have Word as your e-mail editor in order to get tables.
I know Ben, he's a very smart guy - but he couldn't find the option to turn on Word editing. So that tells me it's not very intuitive. Think about it, everyone tells us Outlook is great but, oh, you need another product in order to get it to do some stuff.
So, congratulations to Microsoft for adding tables to the native Outlook 2007 text editor. Whoop-dee-doo.
At the end of the day there's some stuff in Notes that Outlook doesn't have, and vice versa. Outlook users often don't understand the way Notes works, and vice versa.
All I know is that on a couple of occasions I've pointed Outlook at my Domino mail box using DAMO to get the Outlook user's perspective. The list of missing features and things I couldn't do racked up so much I had to switch back to Notes once a day to go thru my to-do list (and there were Outlook features, not things missing because of the Outlook / Domino pairing). So I understand Jim's concerns, and if the decision in his organisation goes the wrong way I hope he at least has the satisfaction of saying "I told you so".
As far as I can see, Outlook 2007 is really still just an e-mail client. Notes is much more, even more so in Notes 8 with the ability to handle composite applications, plug-ins and widgets. Notes is ready for the day that people decide there's a better way of collaborating and e-mail gets sidelined. Outlook isn't. A p*ssing war over features is one thing, fundamental flexibility is another.
Comment posted by Kurt03/25/2008 04:35:56 PM
Homepage: http://www.krtservices.com
I'm a dedicated Notes user who had to deal with Outlook/Exchange on a regular basis because I'm an IT consultant.
The biggest "What the hell???!!!??" I have with Outlook is trying to set up a signature with an embedded image - not only do you have to enable Word as your editor, you have to construct the signature IN WORD!!! The first time I had a customer ask for my assistance setting up "a cool signature with my company logo, like you have" I felt around in Outlook for 10 minutes before doing a web search and discovering I had to approach it from inside Word.
????
Granted I'm not a huge fan of having to create an HTML file for my signature and then make sure I store it with the same path on my desktop and on my laptop (how you do it in Notes,) but at least it was right there in plain English for me to see and deduce what was necessary.
Comment posted by tapin203/26/2008 04:35:13 AM
So our company brought the migration to Notes upon us. Good/Bad debate I will leave out of this thread. What I am looking for is a side by side comparison. If you did this in Outlook, this is what you can do with Notes. Anybody have a resource detailing that?
But my biggest need is this, I have years of PST files (Outlook emails that I have taken "offline"). I would this inforamtion to be in ONE application. How can I (if possible) migrate them into Notes?
And, how can I pull information "offline" in Notes? My company has this policy of only retaining information for 60 days, and I need to store information longer then that period. I know about the Retention feature, but I need things offline.
Comment posted by Kurt03/27/2008 05:10:26 AM
Homepage: http://www.krtservices.com
@tapin2:
Notes functions <=> Outlook functions seem to be spelled out pretty well here:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/lotus/idc/N8150/index.htm
Notes is supposed to include migration tools for converting your Outlook info, in fact I distinctly remember seeing the migration options during Notes installation - dig around a little and it should be there somewhere.
As far as offline copies, nothing could be simpler than using a Notes Archive - at the corporation I used to manage we didn't have time-based limits but we had a set space limitation and we trained everyone on use of the archive functionality so they could keep as much as they wanted locally.
Do a little research and all your concerns should be able to be addressed to your satisfaction.
