Do you use Office 2010 and Windows Live SkyDrive to work, share and collaborate with your team mates and clients? If you use Outlook 2010 to share links to documents you created and stored on SkyDrive, you are probably wasting time switching from Outlook to SkyDrive to send that email. Learn how to access SkyDrive files in Outlook 2010 and simplify the way you work with documents.
The way this works is by downloading and installing a free gadget called SkyDrive Gadget released by the popular startup Xobni, which is incidentally Inbox spelled backwards. Let’s take a look at how this gadget works.
How to Access SkyDrive Files in Outlook 2010
1. Create an account with Xobni if you don’t already have one. It should take about a minute to do that.
2. Download and install the SkyDrive gadget. Run through the steps in the brief wizard and you’re ready to get started.
3. When you open Outlook, the Xobni panel will be displayed at the extreme right. Login to Xobni using your Xobni credentials. 
4. Xobni will index your messages and folders and this will take about 5 to 10 minutes. Once the indexing is done, you can start using the Xobni sidebar to find contacts and messages.
5. In the Xobni Search bar, enter the name of the person with whom you want to share the document link. Click the profile name to access additional information about the contact.
7. You will notice a list of gadgets below the profile data. Select the SkyDrive icon and click Sign in. In the SkyDrive dialog box, login with your Windows Live ID credentials. Allow access to the app and you’re ready to share links to documents stored in SkyDrive using Outlook 2010.
8. Browse within the SkyDrive folder to select the file you want to share the link to, then click Copy URL or Email Link to send the link to the document.
The cool feature of using Office Web Apps is that users don’t have to have the same version of Office 2010 to view documents. However, the SkyDrive Gadget add-in only allows recipients to view files not edit them.
Give Xobni a try, and let us know how it worked out for you.
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