Gravitational Pull

Google saves Outlook email search

Posted on 23 August 2005

Like many Mac users, I suppose, I must make do with a Windows XP box at work. Blah. But the true horror is being forced to use Microsoft Outlook, likely the worst email program I have ever seen. One of the very worst features is the brain-damaged search function that works like a snail in molasses, doesn’t offer simple categories like “from” unless you click through to the advanced search and generally stinks. Needless to say, I’m spoiled by Apple Mail and even the Mac version of Outlook, called Entourage, is light years ahead (how can this be? I have no idea).

In any event, my dreams have come true. I installed the new version of Google Desktop Search (download here — Windows only) yesterday which includes an Outlook search add-in. Now I have insanely fast full-text search. I only wish the integration was a little better, as the results come up a separate browser window. You can easily read all of the email results but you aren’t in Outlook so you can’t just select an email and hit reply to send a reply. None the less, I’ve become 16.43% more productive. The new sidebar feature on Google Desktop, however, couldn’t seem to work through my office’s proxy server/firewall/security. Oh well.