outlook

Xobni, the popular and highly rated plugin for Microsoft Outlook has today announced the Xobni Gadget Platform and Store, which offers apps that add on to your add-on. With close to 20 big-name partners, including Dropbox, Evernote, Google Translate, Salesforce, LinkedIn, and so on, Xobni hopes to boost your productivity by souping up your Outlook inbox to yet another level.

To give you an idea of some of the platform's possibilities, the Evernote gadget puts the popular note-taking service's functionality into the Xobni sidebar. With it, you can view and take personal notes on a contact right from … Read more

Bumping up security, stability, and adding a few new features, Microsoft's Mac Team announced on their blog today that the first major update for Office for Mac 2011, dubbed Service Pack 1, will be available for download next Wednesday. The major new feature will enable syncing from Microsoft's Outlook to Apple's Sync Services.

Calendars, contacts, notes, and tasks will all be available for syncing to any Apple device, including iPads, iPhones, and iPods. One limitation to be aware of, according to the announcement on the Microsoft Mac Team blog:

Microsoft Office has always been outrageously overpriced (and probably always will be). For example, Office Home and Business 2010 has a list price of $279.99, while Office Professional goes for a whopping $499.99. Not in this lifetime, Microsoft.

Fortunately, every now and again a deal comes along--or, in this case, a "steal." Today only (the deal expires at midnight, ET), DailySteals has Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (download) for $99.99.

This version of Office comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access.

Now for the bad/weird news: after you place your order, DailySteals … Read more

Microsoft Office handles so much business that eventually two things are bound to happen: 1) critically important files will be corrupted or damaged, and 2) there will be no backup. You'll then have two choices: 1) panic, and 2) attempt to recover the file. That's where Advanced Office Repair (AOFR) from DataNumen comes in. It's an enterprise-class tool for recovering and repairing not only Word, Excel, Outlook, and Outlook Express files but also Access databases. It can repair files on damaged or corrupted media like floppies, Zip drives, and CD-ROMs and handle legacy files, including Access 95, … Read more

X1 Professional Client is an enterprise-class desktop search application that indexes and searches more than 500 file types, including all major e-mail clients, as well as local and networked drives, folders, and files. It can find e-mail messages and attachments, system files and documents, appointments and calendar entries, contacts, and even pictures, music, and Web sites. It's suitable for corporate networks in both small and large companies, including excellent support, but it's not out of the range of individuals looking for a comprehensive desktop search option.

X1's interface looks like it means business, with the familiar Windows … Read more

Microsoft has taken the training wheels off of Internet Explorer 9, debuting a full-featured browser that has proven to be the fastest, most standards-compliant IE version yet. There's a catch, though: IE 9's not for Windows XP. You'll need Windows 7 or Vista if you want this browser.

And if you're a Microsoft Outlook user prone to rash e-mailing, you might want to check out ToneCheck from Lymbix. This e-mail sentiment analysis app monitors your e-mail's composing window for potential errors of tone, just as spell-check scans for errors of spelling or grammar.

Finally, for … Read more

A Microsoft job posting has provided clues into Microsoft's strategy to make its Office Web applications more friendly to touch-screen devices.

A listing that went up over the weekend for a software development engineer touts some of the successes of Microsoft's Outlook Web App (OWA), saying it has "made a huge difference in the daily lives of millions of users all over the world" but that the company is looking for someone to take OWA to "the next level" with a "next generation" client. That client would be for both the desktop … Read more

As your e-mail inbox fills up, it can be difficult to distinguish the important messages from the ones you can read later--if at all. One way to help identify personal e-mails from impersonal ones is by the number of recipients. By highlighting messages sent only to you, you're less likely to miss mail requiring your immediate attention.

Last November I described how to merge multiple e-mail accounts and organize them by using filters and labels. This can help shuttle less-important messages out of your inbox and into folders you can peruse at your leisure.

But not all the non-filtered … Read more

When Apple released the iPhoto '11 version 9.1.1 update, one of the included features was to allow Microsoft Outlook users to send photos via e-mail through that program. Apple has in the past supported the use of Entourage, but the new Outlook e-mail client has a few different protocols and features and needed specific support. Unfortunately even though iPhoto is supposed to send e-mails through Outlook, a number of people are finding the feature broken.

Luckily the problem is not with iPhoto's coding, which would require Apple to recompile the program, but instead is with a crude … Read more