What’s the most popular application software in the world? Most likely, Microsoft Office. You use it, your colleagues use it, your relatives use it, and just about everyone you know uses it.
You certainly aren’t getting the most out of it, though. That’s where downloads can make the difference. We’ve assembled 15 great downloads to help you use Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint more effectively. With these downloads, you’ll be able to cut through e-mail clutter, create PDF files for free, use Excel to run a business, and shrink massive PowerPoint files, among other things. And they’re all free or almost free.
It’s time to get downloading and boost your productivity.
Note: To find all of the files in this story in one convenient place, see our “Optimize Microsoft Office” downloads collection.
General Office Downloads
The following three downloads are a great place to start if you’re looking for overall help with Office. With these programs, you can recover lost product keys, kill privacy-invading information, and even replace Office with a free alternative.
ProduKey
Get ProduKey. Run the program, and it shows all product keys for every one of your Microsoft Office applications; it also displays them for Windows, Windows Server, and Microsoft SQL Server. Once you have the key, you’re ready to go. For techies or network administrators, the tool has a variety of command-line options, such as for obtaining a product key from a remote PC, and for saving product key information to a text file.
Download ProduKey | Price: Free
Metadata Analyzer
Think that doesn’t matter? Think again. In 2006, Google accidentally told the world about highly sensitive financial projections because it posted a PowerPoint presentation containing notes with the confidential information. And in 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s top communications aide, Alistair Campbell, released a Word document with hidden information that proved that the British government had used plagiarized documents as a way to justify its involvement in the Iraq war.
This free program will make sure that nothing similar happens to you. Point it at any document, and it analyzes the file, showing you all the private information lurking within. The program will then clean up the document so that the information drops out of sight.
Download Metadata Analyzer | Price: Free
OpenOffice
No need to worry about compatibility with Microsoft Office formats: OpenOffice handles all of those, as well as open-source formats. Each program in the suite offers just about all the power you’ll require.
If this free suite has any drawbacks, it’s that the interface isn’t as polished as Microsoft Office’s, and it lacks a few bells and whistles. Still, free is free, and if you’re seeking a way to avoid spending big bucks for a suite, it’s a great choice.
Download Open Office | Price: Free
Outlook Downloads
Outlook is the program everyone loves to hate. It’s bulky, and it can be slow, but it also gets the job done. Plenty of tools promise to improve Outlook–the following are our favorites. You’ll cut through e-mail clutter, find Outlook information quickly, shrink the size of this bloated application, handle attachments better, and more.
Xobni
The program runs as an Outlook sidebar. For each e-mail, it shows information about the person with whom you’re communicating, including all the “conversations” you’ve had with them; in essence, it sets up a threaded list of every e-mail between the two of you. You’ll also see a list of every file you’ve exchanged, as well as the person’s phone number and “social network,” a list of people with whom that person has exchanged messages. It includes icons for sending an e-mail to the person and scheduling a meeting via Outlook, as well. For anyone who lives for statistics, the total number of messages you’ve exchanged appears at the top of the screen, along with more information that isn’t of much practical use but is interesting regardless.
The add-on offers plenty more, too, including a Xobni Analytics utility that gives you more information than you need about your e-mail use. Want to know the average amount of time you take to respond to people by day, month, and week? It’s in there. So is the median time you take to respond to specific people, and to people at a particular domain.
Those statistics, though, aren’t the real reason for using this program: It’s the only Outlook add-on I’ve ever tried that actually lives up to the promise of solving e-mail overload.
Download Xobni | Price: Free
Lookeen
It integrates directly into Outlook, so you don’t have to fumble with a separate program when doing searches. Thanks to its various organizational tools, you can list all conversations with a specific contact, for example, and show all e-mail messages for a given day, week, or month. The program also automatically summarizes messages.
Lookeen does its job by indexing your files and then searching that index, rather than your entire data store. Because of that, you’ll have to wait a little while before you can start using it; the program may take up to 20 minutes to finish its initial indexing.
Download Lookeen | Price: Free
SendShield
Download SendShield | Price: Trial; price not currently set
Outlook Duplicate Items Remover
The free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover solves the problem handily, adding a new Outlook menu option that will eliminate duplicates for you. Click the ODIR menu option, choose Remove Duplicate Items, and select a folder. Then click Remove Duplicate Items. The program will kill the copies, but it will also keep a backup, in case you want to restore anything.
Download Outlook Duplicate Items Remover | Price: Free
Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover
What if you want to keep your attachments, but you don’t want the .pst file to balloon? Try this clever program, which saves the attachments to your PC and deletes them from your .pst file. It then links your e-mail directly to the attachment, so the attachment still appears to exist in Outlook.
The program can go through entire directories, but if you prefer, you can have it operate on a message-by-message basis.
Download Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover | Price: Free
OutlookTools
This free utility does an excellent job of simplifying Outlook’s configuration. In a flash, you’ll be able to access all of your Outlook settings and file folders, as well as to run troubleshooting tools, such as one that fixes corrupt .pst files. You can also solve one of the more annoying problems with Outlook: the program’s insistence on blocking certain file types because it considers them insecure. This app will unblock any file type you want.
In addition, it lets you start Outlook with any one of numerous switches, and permits you to customize when and how Desktop Alerts appear to tell you that new mail has arrived. You can change the transparency of alerts, as well as determine how long they should stay visible.
Download OutlookTools | Price: Free
MAPILab Toolbox for Outlook
It integrates directly into Outlook, and you can easily turn components on and off. It’s particularly well suited for anyone who runs their own business.
Download MAPILab Toolbox for Outlook | Price: $24 (Trial)
PowerPoint and Microsoft Word Downloads
PowerPoint and Word don’t have nearly as many helpful downloads as Outlook does, but some useful ones are around. Whether you want to slim down file sizes, find PowerPoint slides fast, or print to PDF, there’s something here for you.
Slideboxx
When you do a search, the program shows all results as thumbnails, so you can immediately spot the slides you want. Once you find them, you can drag them to a presentation pane on the right side of the screen and then build entirely new presentations from those existing slides. It’s a great time-saver for anyone who reuses PowerPoint slides.
Download Slideboxx | Price: $99 (Trial)
PPTminimizer
PPTminimizer is a great solution for the problem. It shrinks the size of PowerPoint or Word files, leaving their appearance and original format intact.
With its help, you can save plenty of space. In my tests, it shrank files by about 25 percent to almost 84 percent. The program leaves your originals alone and creates smaller copies. Just select any files you want to shrink and tell the program to go about its work. It integrates with Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Windows Explorer, too, so you can even shrink files from directly within the applications.
The program costs $40 to register, and has trial limitations. You can do only 5 optimizations before paying if you don’t register, and 12 optimizations before paying if you do register.
Download PPTminimizer | Price: $40 (Demo)
PrimoPDF
Here’s the problem: Word, by default, doesn’t create files in PDF. If you have Word 2007, you’re in luck, because you can download Microsoft’s free PDF add-in. But if you have other versions of Word, you have to pay plenty for the capability.
Unless you use this free program, that is. It lets you create PDF files from any Word document–and from any Office document, in fact, as well as documents created in many other applications. It runs as a printer driver, so all you need to do is select Print and then choose PrimoPDF as your printer. After that you can choose from a variety of options for creating PDF files, such as including document properties like keywords and the author name, or encrypting the document.
Download PrimoPDF | Price: Free
Excel Downloads
You don’t need to be a spreadsheet pro if you want to get more out of Excel. With the following downloads, you can create a calendar, and get hundreds of new functions for managing your business.
Excel Calendar Template
You can customize the calendar’s look by changing the color scheme. In addition to a month-by-month calendar, you also get a year at a glance, including a space for notes.
Download Excel Calendar Template | Price: Free
Business Functions
No need to run this program separately; it integrates directly with Excel, and is available as menu options. No matter what you desire for your business, it probably has something for you, including a nifty time-chart creator and much more.
Download Business Functions | Price: Free