Is there a better way to search in Outlook?

Zascar

I use outlook extensively in work. My mailbox storage is not huge, so everything that is not in my inbox, I move to a catagorised folder, which is set up in a “personal folders” on my hard drive.
Searching this is a pain in the ass. The outlook search function is atrocious. I have Google desktop installed and that helps sometimes, but it’s not the best.

Does anyone know a plugin or program that improves searching in outlook?
I use Outlook 2003
Thanks

JohnK

There used to be a very good one called Lookout but development was stopped when Microsoft bought the company. Its a pity since Lookout allowed for a full text search of a load of attachments but it was really fast since it maintained and searched an index rather than the actual emails. I can have a look and see if I still have an installer for it but I haven’t used it personally in about 1.5~2 years so I've probably deleted it by now.

copacetic

did you let google install itself in the toolbar in outlook? this works pretty well in my experience, although there are issues with it losing track of things when you move them into folders.

Zascar

Exactly, looses it when you move or delete it... not great.

Just found this: http://www.isysemail.com - looks promising

Stephen

Get yourself Windows Desktop Search. It plugs right into Outlook 2003 and 2007 and will properly index your mailbox/pst files for instant search results.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/default.mspx

I'm assuming that if you have Vista it will just use Vista's built in indexing search engine.

copacetic

Zascar wrote:

Exactly, looses it when you move or delete it... not great.

Just found this: http://www.isysemail.com - looks promising

I used to uninstall and reinstall it once a week or so to keep it indexed:o

JohnK

Could you not just force a rebuild of the index?

copacetic

JohnK wrote:

Could you not just force a rebuild of the index?

it says you can but when you do it; it doesn't work for things that were moved or deleted since it first indexed them.

JohnK

Thats a bit crap. I know Lookout would totally scrap its existing index if you forced a rebuild so there'd never be any holdover; I'd have assumed they all would have done that actually.