Outlook Tools
Many PC users are still working with Microsoft Outlook as their main email application. It's rather convenient because Outlook Express ships with the Windows operating system and the retail Outlook is part of Microsoft Office which is without doubt the most popular Office suite for the Windows system.
The biggest advantage of Outlook is in my opinion that it is already there. I was never a fan of it though and recommend Thunderbird or other third party email applications instead.
Outlook Tools is a software that gives access to advanced Microsoft Outlook settings that would otherwise be hard to access. You can use it for instance to unblock file extensions which is otherwise be only possible by editing the Windows Registry directly. Five tabs are accessible at the top of the software once it is started: they are General, Startup Switches, Clear MRU, New Mail Alert and Blocked Attachments.
Note: The program is currently only supporting Outlook versions up to Outlook 2010. The last update dates back to June 2010.
Most of the options are self explanatory like the Clear MRU option which simply clears several most recently used lists in Outlook such as the Search history.
Another interesting option it makes available is to set the duration of Outlook's desktop alert. It is set to seven seconds by default, and the program allows you to change that to another value in seconds, minutes, hours or even days.
The startup switches listing may also be useful. You can use it to start Outlook in safe mode for example, or to reset or clean various program settings or features.
The general tab lists the default paths to Outlook data and an option to open them in Windows Explorer. This can be useful if you need to check out that folder for example, or make modifications to files it contains.
The software runs independently from Outlook and automatically detects the installed version. Supported are all versions of Outlook since Outlook 2000. There is no word about Outlook Express on the page and I was not able to test it, I would think that it is supported as well to a degree at least.
Outlook Tools require the Microsoft .net framework and runs on Windows 2000, XP and Vista. Here are some of the more important features it makes available:
- Change Outlook paths on the system
- Run Outlook tools like ScanPST or ScanOST
- Enable startup switches
- Configure for how long the new email desktop alert is displayed and how it is displayed
- Block or unblock file extensions so that you can access attachments that have these extensions.
Outlook Tools requires the Microsoft .Net Framework to be installed on the system to work. The latest version of Outlook it currently supports is Outlook 2010..
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