Lookeen Searches Outlook Contacts, E-mail, and Appointments

Lookeen is not for everyone--not even for every Outlook user. If you exchange email only with friends and relatives, and could almost keep your appointments in your head (but are glad you don't have to do so), this Outlook add-in's benefits simply aren't worth the price tag. But if your business hinges on Outlook, with years of mission-critical e-mails, hundreds of important contacts, and more appointments than you can remember, Lookeen ($40, free limited demo) can make your life much easier.

This combination add-in and separate program provides fast, index-based, intelligent searches inside and outside of Outlook. Inside Outlook, you can type a word into the Lookeen toolbar's search field, and up will come a new window with relevant mails, contacts, and appointments. A display window shows you the contents of whatever found item you click.

Lookeen has other tricks up its sleeve. Icons on the toolbar will pull up messages that might be part of the same conversation (as well as relevant appointments). Other icons bring up statistics, items added today or this week, and update the index.

If you're not in Outlook, you can start a search from the Lookeen system tray. In addition to Outlook data, Lookeen indexes and searches the files in My Documents, as well (and yes, you can add other locations). It therefore becomes a fast and reliable data search tool.