I wasn't always fond of Microsoft Outlook add-ins. The first few waves of them were terribly buggy and made Microsoft Outlook unstable. Thankfully, that's changed. Some of the Microsoft Outlook add-ins I've seen in recent years are quite amazing.
For example, I swear by the SpamBayes add-in. Microsoft's own junk mail filter doesn't do a bad job, but I still like being able to train the filter myself.
Recently, the MAPILab Toolbox caught my eye. It's a collection of 18 Microsoft Outlook add-ins sold as a single bundle.
Some of the highlights of the collection:
- File Fetch lets you email your Microsoft Outlook installation (at home, for example) and request a specific file from the system, which is then emailed back to you. The exact file in question can be user-defined, and the whole process can also be password-protected for additional security. This feature alone is worth the price of the whole bundle, in my opinion.
- Automatic File Send lets you automatically send a file to specific people after it's been updated. This comes in handy if you have a roster, a price list or some other item that needs to be kept fresh for other people.
- E-mail Scheduler is sort of like Automatic File Send -- it sends a given user-defined message on a specific schedule, along with any file attachments you might want to include in the email.
- Batched Mail moderates email sending so you don't automatically blow your limit -- i.e., if your provider throttles the number of email messages you can send in a given period of time.
- Global Find and Replace performs find-and-replace actions across all Microsoft Outlook objects -- email, notes, tasks, reminders, contacts, etc.
- Convert vCards to Contacts (and vice versa) does just that -- It converts vCards to Microsoft Outlook Contacts, both singly and in bulk.
There are many other functions in addition to the ones I just mentioned, but these are my favorites. The whole MAPILab Toolbox bundle is available as a 30-day trial download. The full version starts at $24 U.S. for a single-user license and ranges up to $899 for a site license.
About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of Windows Insight, a newsletter devoted to hints, tips, tricks, news and goodies for all flavors of Windows users.
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Related information from SearchExchange.com:
Learning Center: The Microsoft Outlook Toolbox
The Year In Review: Top 10 Microsoft Outlook tips of 2006
Favorite Downloads: Our SearchExchange.com experts' favorite freeware
Reference Center: Outlook and Exchange Server administration tools
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