Essential Tools and Tips for MS Outlook Efficiency
Do you, as I do, use Microsoft Outlook throughout the day? If so, you can probably save yourself a lot of time and even avoid disaster by arming yourself with some free and inexpensive tools. In this post, I’ll cover some of the choices that work best from me and round up some good efficiency tips for Outlook as well.
EZ Backup Outlook Pro from Rinjanisoft is a $14.95 application that lets you quickly save your mail, settings and address book to a local drive, network folder, CD/DVD or a remote FTP server. This is the main tool I use to keep my Outlook inbox trim, which greatly boosts performance when doing things like searches. It also protects your e-mails in the event of disaster.
Products competitive to EZ Backup Outlook Pro, such as Totalidea Software’s Outlook Backup Pro cost over $50, and EZ Backup Outlook Pro gives you all upgrades free after you purchase the product. Especially if you get a lot of mail, it’s worth the price.
If you use Gmail constantly, in conjunction with Outlook, Google has a brand new Calendar Sync application that is a must-have, and it’s free. If you’ve ever trashed your Outlook calendar trying to keep it in sync with Gmail, you’ll appreciate it.
Finally, I’m always surprised at how Outlook users often don’t know many of the basic tips that make using the application more efficient. Looking at calendars from an aerial view, setting reminders to follow up on messages and many other simple actions can save a lot of time. If you’re rusty on your Outlook skills, spend just a few minutes brushing up. Also, make sure and pick up some good tips from the reader comments in the post I just linked to. The practice time will pay dividends.
Do you know of any good tools or tips for Outlook?
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I use Xobni with Outlook and it rocks! It indexes all your emails and builds relationships between them. It makes searching for that email or attachment from months (or even years) ago an absolute dream. It does it in a fraction of a second compared to the age it takes Outlook. Check it out – http://www.xobni.com/
Very few people use Outlook’s task management capabilities because they are very limited.
ActionThis has been designed to help teams manage their tasks more effectively, and combines an Outlook client with a powerful web application.
Tasks no longer get lost, people get reminded to get things done, and the team gets visibility over who’s doing what – it really helps teams to get things done.
It also works at a personal level, allowing you to work anywhere, and with reports that can be emailed to you daily, nothing falls through the cracks.
Find out more at http://www.actionthis.com/
I will 2nd that Xobni recommendation. It’s still in beta but I haven’t noticed any issues and like Neil said blazing fast indexing + contact relationship tools.
I use lookout as a search engine for outlook . While it works with old outlook versions without any problems you have to use some tricks to get it running for outlook 2007 (http://www.belshe.com/2007/12/06/how-to-install-lookout-on-outlook-2007/)
I use the Plaxo plugin with Outlook.
I use SpeedFiler from Claritude Software (www.claritude.com). It’s amazing. It totally changed the way I deal with e-mail. It makes it easy to file all of your messages very quickly. It even prompts for a location to save your outgoing messages. Filing messages in appropriate folders used to be something I dreaded. With SpeedFiler, it’s second nature. By the way, I’m not affiliated with them in any way. I’m just a delighted customer.
I use Google Desktop to index Outlook plus my Gmail and all of my other files.
Since my employer sets a very strict (and ridiculously low) limit on the size of my main Outlook file, I move all emails to an Outlook file on my local disk (we use Exchange). I archive regularly to regular Outlook archives and then backup those files on regular basis to my server. Since Google Desktop can index the archive files as well as the main file, I can easily search back as far as my archives go.
saw outlook on the desktop on lifehacker once. very convenient to use but i guess it requires .net framework
In our company we use ShareO tool to track Outlook tasks and share calendars. Quite simple and useful solution.
When it comes to mails I simply want to SEARCH. Period. I have 600k+ mails (and i think i am not alone on this).
Fancy stuff is nice and keeps me interested one or to days ;-) But I prefer a real world solution on this matter. Without powerful search options i am lost.
Lookout was perfect for that. Gladly I found http://www.Lookeen.net. Contra: Costs money. Pro: Gets the job done!
Jack