Lookout makes using Outlook almost bearable
Outlook Search is terrible: in my mind it’s been the worst feature for years (even more annoying than Clippy). As someone who meticulously saves and categorizes every e-mail I receive (I have all four years of Olin e-mails, including mailing list threads, archived), it’s dreadful to have to search for an old email in Outlook: books are made into terrible movies in the time it takes Outlook native search to find an e-mail.
Of course, you could use Google Desktop to index and search for e-mails, but if you’re looking for a more Outlook-specific solution, look no further than the Lookout plugin. It’s a snap to set up once you find a copy: this thing has apparently gone the way of the buffalo, but my colleague Bruce has a version on his website, along with some thoughts about why Lookout is great. Like Google Desktop, you’ll need to let it index your .pst file(s) (don’t forget to index the archive folders as well), which took about 15 minutes for me. You’ll also want to set up the attachment filter to include .pdf files.
Like Bruce, I experienced both a huge speed increase and more relevant results. There’s a small glitch in what I can only assume is the message preview functionality: the tooltips flash for only a fraction of a second, totally useful and my minor aggravation with the product.
Best part: Lookout is freeware, albeit no longer supported.
Check out the image below: Search took 0.02 seconds!
Technorati Tags: lookout search, outlook
Category: Technology 2 comments »
August 24th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Lookout MADE using outlook bearable! The fact now is that they stopped developing and supporting that tool, so for everyone who works with outlook 2007 and with the format docx, xlsx etc. it´s sensless! The follower is called lookeen (www.lookeen.net) Same functions, even more features with product support and progressiveness!
October 15th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Absolutely agree about the added Outlook value through Lookout!
I was wondering whether anybody has found a solution for the “flashing tooltips”. I remember that previous versions of Lookout did not suffer from this phenomenon.
Gijs