Outlook 2010 People Pane

When MS Office 2010 came last year, the first thing I did in my Work PC’s MS Outlook was to switch off some of the new Panes and Add-Ons. I noticed when you are reading an email either in preview or full-screen you got a window at the bottom that showed all the conversations, activities, tasks associated with the sender of that email. I didn’t understand the need for it, immediately switch it off and never thought about it again. Few days back while using my Home PC, I noticed this Pane again, spend some time with it and thought it might be useful to have. Instead of switching between Inbox/Sent items and so on, you got all the details in one convenient window. Now I wanted this feature back in my Work PC but didn’t know its name and it turns out I couldn’t find it nor could my System Administrator.

After few Bing! searches it turns out the feature I was looking for is called “People Pane”.

But I couldn’t find the button in Ribbon to turn-it ON. The button & feature appears only if you have installed and enabled Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Add-On (File->Options->Add-Ins->Manage:COM Add-Ins). Enabling it I got the feature and I am giving it a spin for few days before deciding on retaining it.