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Microsoft Outlook is a popular desktop email program especially in the business sector thanks to its excellent blend of email and calendar functionality but also to its networking capabilities. Plugins for Microsoft Outlook on the other hand are not that easy to find. One of the better plugins for Outlook is the Clear Context add-on which comes as a personal and professional edition. The personal edition has a limited functionality (when compared to the pro version) but is completely free of charge.

Clear Context can be best described as an inbox management plugin for Microsoft Outlook. It’s main functionality can be divided into three key areas: Email management, attachment management and managing the inbox or other folders of Outlook.

The email management functionality is all about organizing the inbox and filing email messages. Clear Context provides filing suggestions, one click filing possibilities, highlighting of the most important messages and a threaded email conversation view.

Attachment management on the other hand makes it possible to view all images and attachments from a selected folder without having to browse through individual emails to find a specific attachment. This does give the user a chance to save multiple attachments found in multiple emails at once.

A notification manager can be used to move so called notification emails (like new Twitter followers or Facebook friend requests) from the inbox into other folders to unclutter the inbox.

Clear Context is installed as the pro version. It will revert to the personal version automatically after 30 days. Users who do not want to wait that long can go into ClearContext > about and enter the registraion username and key personalv4 to enable the personal edition right away after installation.

It is not seldom these days that popular web services get integrated with other popular applications or services to offer a more comfortable way of working with both services. Twitter is one of the prime candidates for that integration as it is highly popular in these days. The TwInbox add-on for Microsoft Outlook integrates Twitter in the email client giving the user the opportunity to work with Twitter directly in the mail client.

TwInBox, which was formerly known as OutTwit, is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 running on Windows XP or Windows Vista with the likelihood that it will also work in Windows 7. Installation is a breeze. All that needs to be done is to run the setup (while Outlook is closed). The TwInbox add-on will automatically be displayed in the Microsoft Outlook toolbar on the next start of the email client.

The first thing a new user needs to do is to get into the options and enter the Twitter username and password to link these to the Outlook account. A new Outlook folder for Twitter messages has to be created in the same interface as well. There are other options like displaying notifications whenever a new Twitter message arrives.

The Outlook add-on allows a user to perform common Twitter tasks like updating the Twitter status, receiving new messages or replying to messages. There are also quite a few options that could be very interesting for some Twitter users including the ability to handle Twitter messages like emails with the option to archive, manage, group and search them. There are also options to track keywords, upload and post pictures and files that have been send to Outlook, automatically sort messages in sender folders or to assign custom folders and categories to new messages. There is also a graph available that is displaying Twitter usage statistics.

The very same developer that is offering the Microsoft Outlook Twitter Add-on has created another add-on for Microsoft Outlook that is integrating Facebook in the email client. FBLook is available for Microsoft Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 running on Windows 2000 or later. It integrates some of the functionality of Facebook in Outlook including the ability to update the status from within the email client, receiving status updates from friends and seeing the number of new requests (including Friend Requests, Messages, Invites, Pokes)

The installation of the Facebook add-on for Outlook takes only a few seconds and requires no user interaction at all. New buttons are added to the Outlook toolbar that become visible on the next start of the email client.

It is obviously required to log into Facebook before information can be retrieved and send to the online service. This is done by clicking on the Login to Facebook button in Outlook. It will spawn a new browser window or tab that is displaying the Facebook login page. The user has to log in and confirm the log in in Outlook to be able to use the controls in the email client.

From then on its possible to use all the features provided by the Microsoft Outlook add-on. One interesting option provided is to update the Facebook status using the music track played in either Windows Media Player or iTunes.

Microsoft Outlook users can sort emails and other messages in the email client by clicking on one of the column titles at the top. That’s a pretty common way of sorting emails and offered in other email clients as well. What many Outlook users do not know is that their email client is also offering advanced sorting possibilities.

This can be easily achieved by pressing the Shift key and at least two title columns. It is for example possible to sort by sender and date, title and date or sender and subject. The only important thing to remember is to press the shift key while doing it to get the desired effect.

Outlook will display the up and down sorting icons (up or down arrow) in the columns that have been chosen by the user to make it easier to understand how the emails were sorted. The first selected column will be the primary sort order, the second obviously the secondary with the possibility to add additional columns as well.

Here is a practical example. Lets say you receive lots of message from one email sender. You can sort the emails in Outlook by sender which would display the most recent emails from that sender on the top. If you wanted to sort these emails by size you would simply press shift and then click on the from and size column titles so that the largest emails would be displayed on top from each sender (another click on the size column would sort them with the lowest on top as it would reverse the sort order).

This sorting technique works not only with emails in Outlook but also RSS feeds and pretty much everything else that is displayed in tables in the email client.

1 From Outlook Express, navigate to Tools > Accounts

2 Select the account that is encountering the error from the list and then click Properties
3 Navigate to the Servers tab and check the My server requires authentication box under Outgoing Mail Server, then click OK
4. Now, simply try to resend the email by clicking the Send/Recv button

It is sometimes important to monitor and archive emails, especially in a business environment. One example would be that a supervisor wants a copy of every email that an employee sends to customers to keep track on everything. Probably the easiest way of achieving this is to add the supervisor as a cc or bcc recipient in the emails. This is supported by all modern email clients be they web based such as Gmail, Microsoft Live Mail and Yahoo Mail or desktop based such as Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook.

The Outlook Auto BCC / CC add-in has been designed specifically for Microsoft Outlook. It allows the installation of automatic bcc and cc recipients in email messages based on rules. Possibilities include setting a rul for all outgoing emails from all email accounts, messages send to specific email addresses or messages that match specific phrases in the subject or attachment.

It is furthermore possible to create exceptions to rules so that certain email addresses and emails do not get archived or monitored.

This is an excellent solution for email archiving as well as it it unproblematic to send all emails to another email account for backup purposes. It would for example be possible to create a backup Gmail account and add that new email account as a BCC recipient for all email messages that are send from Microsoft Outlook. Another interesting option is to configure the Microsoft Outlook add-in so that only emails that contain specific keywords or phrases are send to another recipient.

The main benefit of this email archiving and monitoring solution is that the user behind the monitor does not has to remember to add a BCC or CC recipient as the Outlook add-in manages all aspects of this automatically.

Auto BCC / CC is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Outlook XP (2002) and Outlook 2000.

Time zones play an important role in email conversations. Not so when mailing a friend or colleague in the same region but when mailing someone who is living in another region of the world. Expecting a direct response from someone when it’s late at night their location is one of the problems that can occur.

It does not really matter if an online email service such as Gmail or a desktop email client such as Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook are used; Most, probably all, do not display information about the recipients timezone in the email client.

Sender’s Time Zone (via Technospot) for Microsoft Outlook changes that for Microsoft Outlook as it displays information about a sender’s time zone when replying to emails.

The plugin for Microsoft Outlook requires no configuration after the installation. It will automatically display the sender’s current time and the time zone difference in hours ahead or behind when replying to email messages in the email program.

Sender’s Time Zone is a plugin for Microsoft Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Outlook XP (2002) and Outlook 2000.

Have you ever noticed that Microsoft Outlook uses the feeds from your IE7 or IE8 common feed list? If you don’t actually use Outlook as an RSS reader, there’s really no reason to have that feature enabled and wasting space in your mailbox.

If you have a ton of feeds, this could also theoretically speed up Outlook—at the very least it makes your system a little cleaner.

Note: If you aren’t using Internet Explorer or Outlook as a feed reader, you could simply delete all of the RSS feeds.

Disable Outlook Common Feed RSS Sync

To turn this off, go to Tools –> Options from the menu and click the Advanced Options button on the Other tab.

Outlook Options

Now you can uncheck the item “Sync RSS Feeds to the Common Feed List”.

Now that you’ve disabled the Sync feature, you can delete all of the feeds from under the RSS Feeds folder.

You’ll probably want to also empty your Deleted Items folder after removing the feeds.

If Microsoft Outlook loads slower than dirt and hangs every time you try to do anything, there’s a very good chance that your problem is an Outlook plug-in gone haywire—but we can easily disable them.

You’ll want to be careful not to disable an add-in that you actually need, but I’ve used this technique many times over the years to make Outlook run much faster.

Disable Outlook Add-ons

Open up the Trust Center by navigating to Tools –> Trust Center on the menu.

Outlook Menu

On the left-hand pane, choose Add-ins, and then near the bottom of the window you’ll see a button that will let you manage your COM Add-ins.

From this window, you can disable anything that you aren’t using. My recommendation would be to start off by only disabling non-Microsoft add-ins, restart Outlook and see if that solves your slowdown problems.

You’ll notice that some of the add-ins in the list won’t let you remove them under Windows 7 or Vista—for instance, if you want to remove Microsoft Outlook Mobile Service, which lets you send text messages to cell phones—you will need to close Outlook and re-open it as administrator.

If you are using Windows 7 and have it pinned to your taskbar, you can close Outlook and then hold down the Ctrl+Shift keys while you click on the taskbar icon. Repeat the steps above, and you should be able to remove the other Add-ins without problems.

If you followed the steps in my post from August on merging your Outlook and Gmail contacts, you may have ended up with duplicates in your contact lists. Microsoft’s advice for deleting duplicate contacts is to sort them by the date modified, Ctrl-select the ones you want to remove, and press delete.

The problem is, the duplicate entries probably aren’t identical, so you’re almost certain to delete some data along with the dupe. What you need is a way to merge the information in the duplicate contacts. There’s no such feature in Outlook, but if you’re willing to spend $30, you can make short work of your extraneous Outlook entries by running 4Team’s Duplicate Killer for Outlook.

The program deletes or merges duplicate e-mail messages, calendar entries, tasks, and notes in addition to contacts. I tested the program with Outlook 2007 but, according to the vendor, it works with Outlook 2000, XP, and 2003 as well. The new version, 3, is said to work with “Microsoft Exchange type folders including public folders,” according to the vendor’s Web site, but I ran it on a standalone Outlook installation.

After you install Duplicate Killer, you’ll find three new items on Outlook’s Actions menu: Duplicate Killer Advanced Wizard, Duplicate Killer Quick Wizard, and Merge. When in your Contacts list, you also have the option to “Search for duplicates in distribution lists.”

The Advanced Wizard lets you specify the folders to search for duplicates, the fields to compare, and various actions you can take when duplicates are found. You can also save your selections as a profile and send the profile to an e-mail address.

The Quick Wizard provided all the options I needed without having to work through as many option screens. The current folder is selected by default, as is the option to compare and merge, so you simply click Start and let the program do the work.

The program made quick work of my duplicate Outlook data: the process took about a minute in a list of about 75 contacts, 27 of which were dupes. I didn’t notice any missing information in the resulting merged entries. The only downside to Duplicate Killer is that the trial version will merge only five records. That’s not sufficient to get a real feel for its capabilities. Still, if you have dozens of duplicate contacts—not to mention e-mails, notes, tasks, and calendar entries—the program can save your hours of manual data entry and cleanup.