Organize Your Outlook Inbox with Xiant Filer
I am a fanatical e-mail filer -- I tend to move quite a bit of my mail to folders for safekeeping. This gets them out of the inbox and makes it easier to find what I'm looking for later. The problem, though, is that I have so many folders, it can sometimes complicate my organization. I've just found a better way to stay organized: Xiant Filer suggests folders to move your e-mail for you.
I hear what you're saying: That doesn't sound especially handy. Well, hear me out. Xiant Filer adds a toolbar to Outlook. When you click an e-mail, it displays a button for what it thinks is the right folder to move the message to, based on how you've filed similar e-mail before. It'll even offer to move the entire thread there, including sent mail. That's potentially pretty handy.
And then there's Xiant's "Topic" tool -- you can turn an e-mail into a topic, which creates a new floating window with all the messages in that e-mail's thread, including messages from Sent mail. You can show or hide all the topics, or just show the ones you're interested in, keeping an important thread right at your fingertips without affecting the way your inbox is sorted or filtered. That's pretty awesome, too.
Xiant Filer currently works only with Outlook 2007, though a version for 2003 is promised. It's free for 60 days, but the actual pricing hasn't been finalized yet. You should definitely check it out; since it leverages your existing folder structure, Xiant doesn't muck anything up if you decide not to keep using it after 60 days. And it really does make Outlook easier to organize.
While you're gussying up Outlook, don't forget about some other handy ad-ons, like Forgotten Attachment Detector, Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover, and OutlookDeck (which lets you perform multiple searches simultaneously).
