5 Great Plugins for Microsoft Outlook

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Some time ago we wrote about a few alternatives to Microsoft Office that might be worth a closer look. But that may not be an option for everyone - you may be completely satisfied with the Office suite or your company may simply mandate its use.

Whatever the reason, if you use Office in a business environment it’s very likely that you spend more time using the email program Outlook than any of the other available components. So while you’re at it, you might as well try to get a bit more out of Outlook.

Here they are - 5 great plugins and add-ons for Microsoft Outlook.

• Speedfiler - a Claritude plugin that makes the process of archiving incoming and outgoing email messages much easier. From within a received message, it’s quick and easy to determine where this message needs to go and by using the “pre-file” feature, you can set the archive destination for each outgoing message once it has been sent. If you receive a good amount of email every day, this plugin can help you clean up but - even more importantly - it will prevent inbox clutter from happening in the first place.
  
  system requirements/download - $25 (30 day trial available)
• Attachment Alarm - You write an email, click “send” and ack, you forgot to attach the sales proposal or presentation. If this ever happens to you, try Attachment Alarm for Microsoft Outlook. It’s pretty easy to use - the add-in scans all outgoing email messages for words or phrases from a customizable list (ie “see attachment” or “attached”) and notifies you when it finds a listed keyword but no actual attachment in your email message.
  
  system requirements/download - $20 (15 day trial available)
• Auto BCC/CC - A simple plugin but a time-saver for those of you involved in team-selling. It allows you to pre-define a blind CC for your all outgoing email messages or to base the BCC on the recipient of your email - ie. if the email goes to Tom, Ted and Mary will be bcc’ed - or the subject line - ie. “Project ABC” in subject, Paul and Sue get bcc’ed. This way, you could easily make sure that your support team gets copies of outgoing emails related to a specific project.
  
  system requirements/download - $30 (15 day trial available)
• LinkedIn Toolbar - If you’re an active LinkedIn user, this plugin is a must-have. It enables you to access much of the LinkedIn’s functionality (searching, adding new contacts, sending invites and managing communications) right from within Outlook. It comes with a handy wizzard which can scan your inbox and other folders for people you communicate with and add them to your LinkedIn Profile as well.
  
  system requirements/download - free
• Email Follow-Up - With the abundance of email we all receive every day, this plugin comes in quite handy. It helps you keep track of emails you sent and reminds you when a reply has not been received within a certain time-frame. If desired, you can have this plugin auto-remind the recipient that a response has not been received using a predefined template - potentially cutting quite a bit of tedious follow-up work out of your day.
• system requirement/download - $24 (20 day trial available)

We hope these plugins help you be more productive with Outlook. Give them a try and let us know your thoughts (and perhaps some ideas for plugins you use) in the comments. If these are of interest, we have a few more to share with you.

Update - we posted an update to this post with 5 more timesaving plugins for Outlook.