Tools and Tips to Brighten Your Outlook
Five great ways to right what's wrong with the popular e-mail program.Everybody uses Microsoft Outlook, right? Except you cheapskates using Outlook Express, of course. Well, here's a scoop for you: Outlook stinks. There--I said it, and no lightning bolts have struck from Redmond (I put my rubber-soled boots on, though). For those of you who do use Outlook for your e-mail, I have some neat utilities and add-ons that make the program work the way I think it should.
I live in e-mail--often receiving 150 or more messages a day--and I regularly access my archive of roughly 15,000 messages. Outlook's meager skills at organizing and searching incoming e-mail leave me, well, unorganized. An Outlook buddy turned me on to a minor miracle: Caelo Software's $40 Nelson Email Organizer.
I think of NEO as an Outlook-as-it-should-have-been e-mail interface. The program lets me arrange e-mail by critical--or hypercritical--people (my editor waiting for a past-due column, for example), by frequent correspondents, or by date. NEO catalogs and indexes everything without messing with the actual messages. A button on Outlook's toolbar lets me instantly jump between Outlook and NEO for access to my calendar, tasks, contacts, and notes. NEO's automatic indexing makes searches startlingly fast.
Undoubtedly, many of NEO's most useful features will eventually be built into Outlook. But until then, buy NEO. The utility works with all versions of Windows and Outlook. Click here to download a 30-day trial version.
Quick tip: Instead of typing a due date for a task in Outlook 2000 or 2002, enter a description of it, such as the last Friday of the month. Outlook will automatically convert that to numerical format. Try some: the first Monday in March, 30 days from now, two months from last week, or Cinco de Mayo. Qué cool, no?
Trojan Lookout
Even with the latest patches and security updates, Outlook's virus defenses remain weak. (Go to the Microsoft Office Download Center for the most recent fixes.) SentryBay's nifty ViraLock encrypts addresses in Outlook and Outlook Express, rendering them inaccessible to viruses and Trojan horses. The encryption works on the fly and in the background. It applies to your e-mail folders and incoming mail as well, and addresses are decrypted as you send e-mail. The recipient sees nothing unusual in your message. Sure, your PC's regular antivirus program protects you most of the time, but think of ViraLock as a $20 insurance policy. You can download a 30-day trial version.
Hey, you're probably thinking I forgot my usual backup lecture. No way. Microsoft's Personal Folders Backup utility makes tucking away critical.pst files in Outlook 2000 and 2002 practically automatic. The Microsoft Office Download Center offers this great freebie. If you use other Microsoft Office apps, play it even safer by using the Save My Settings Wizard, which backs up all your Office 2000 and 2002 settings (such as dictionaries, templates, and AutoCorrect lists) in a single profile that the program uploads and stores on a Microsoft server. This wizard is included in Office XP, but if you use Office 2000, visit the Microsoft Office Download Center for your free copy.
Finally, I found a terrific way to zap spam in Outlook and OE. In my informal tests, IHateSpam, a $20 add-on from Sunbelt Software, successfully filtered out 80 percent of Outlook Express spam and a whopping 95.5 percent of my Outlook spam. See "New Spam Fighters: Smart and Effective" to read more about it.
If you want to make some news of your own, send me your Outlook tricks and utilities, then watch for them in an upcoming online newsletter. Go to our Free Newletters page to sign up.
| Buying Information |
NEO Caelo Software 4 stars (04/01/2003) $40 |
| Buying Information |
ViraLock SentryBay 3 stars (04/01/2003) $20 |
| Buying Information |
IHateSpam Sunbelt Software 4 stars (04/01/2003) $20 |
Contributing Editor Steve Bass runs the Pasadena IBM Users Group. Contact him at homeoffice@pcworld.com. Click here for more Home Office columns.