Look for IT over here

Do you have a lot of email clogging up your inbox and have trouble organizing it all? I’ve found this great (and best part free) plugin for Outlook that does it all for you.

It’s called Xobni, and works with Outlook 2003/2007 on XP and Vista Operating Systems.

One of the many features it has is when you open an email, the Xobni sidebar will show you all related emails from the sender, how many emails you send receive the them, and even a trend graph of what time you get emails from him/her.

That is one of many. Check out the Youtube video below for a tour of this plugin:

Ever found that Outlook (in particular 2003) will close with errors with that annoying window?

Most of the time if you restart you won’t have any problems but you would like to know what caused it, and how to stop it happening again.

Fortunately you don’t have to look for a program on the net to but, download and install. Your have the solution on the computer right now.

On you PC there is a program called scanpst.exe.

It is generally located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033\SCANPST.EXE (or somewhere very similar - if you can’t find it search for the file in Windows Explorer).

Simply run the file and follow the prompts. You will be advised if any problems have been found and asked if you want to fix them. Sometimes you will have the program twice.

Hopefully that will solve your problems.

Add maps, routes, driving directions, and more to Outlook with the new Windows Live Local Outlook plug-in.

This is a handy app for anyone who gets tired of switching back and forth between the web and Outlook to email directions; plus, you can totally integrate it with your task planner so your travel time is nicely aligned with your meetings, schedule, outings, etc. Windows Live Local for Outlook is a free download from here.

Do you want to change the default file folder Outlook 2003 uses for attachments? While you can’t set a folder for attachments you send, you can set one for storing received attachments. You need to navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options

and add a string value called DefaultPath then enter the folder path.

The next time you use the File, Save attachment menu, Outlook’s save explorer opens to that folder.

Disclaimer: Changing registry entries is done at the user’s own risk. I take no responsibility for any problems relating to the regaistry change mentioned above - but I have tried it and it works!