Want to search emails fast in Outlook? Give Xobni a try
If you use Microsoft Outlook on a daily basis you know how slow the search function is when you have a few thousand emails in the folder you’re searching in. Not to mention the stupidity of the algorithm that first searches in older emails (a few months old) and then begins to search in the newer ones.
Microsoft has a solution to this, called Desktop Search (now renamed to Windows Search 4.0), but that’s useless in Vista in Windows 7 as you already have the integrated search that caches and indexes various items (you can set up what you want indexed) and only occupies more resources. I’ve search for a long time for a solution to Outlook’s slow search function and found the Xobni plugin, which has a free and a paid version which offers some advanced feature, tough a regular user will only need the free version.
Xobni toolbar in Outlook
Xobni toolbar in Outlook
What Xobni does
First you have to understand that Xobni is an add-on which is installed on top of Microsoft Outlook (download it here). After install it is visible in the right part of Outlook. It can be minimized for your viewing convenience of course. At the first start it indexes your recent emails (you can then index all your email which took for me ~ 15 minutes).
The main functions performed by Xobni Free are:
- search in emails
- display someones detailed contact info with conversations (threaded view), exchanged files, mailing frequency statistics
- it integrates with LinkedIn, Facebook and Hoovers and allows you to see someone’s contacts
- auto suggest for new email recipients
Xobni Plus gets you more features:
- advanced search filters for emails
- unlimited Outlook Data files (PST), as the free version only allows for one
- it displays appointments and tasks with a certain contact
- more auto suggested persons when writing a new email
Auto suggest with Xobni
If you haven’t already tried Xobni you should as it’s free and easy to install and use. It also brings a few social media options to Outlook plus the aforementioned lightning fast search.
Hi,
thank you for this great article. I like that you also described that xobni has a plus-version which costs money.
I gave xobni a try but I´d some trouble with the performance (ok my computer is nearly 4 years old), but the things I was wondering about were the search functions.
Xobni wants to be a email searchtool, but I guess it makes everything but the search itself is not very powerful. I don´t need any contacts in facebook ect., I have my addressbook and I want just search in my emails! I want to search my attachments, contacts, mailcontents (..) not more and not less.
I hope the developers of Xobni will understand this one day and release an outlook searchtool, no messenger (and, please, a small toolbar which does not need the half space of my screen).
Wow, that’s a long comment Harry, longer than some of my posts. Thanks.
About Xobni, I couldn’t agree with you more. I would have preferred the advanced search options in the free version and the garbage in the premium version.
Xobni doesn’t look much as a business tool but more as a social media one, and that’s not what people look for in a search tool for Outlook. Those funny statistics are nice, but once you forget about them you never use them again.
Hi, I also read your article, but I particularly agree to Harry. I need a search-tool for work, I have about 30,000 mails in my Exchange account and also a lot of archived mails.
I use Lookeen for doing Outlook-Searches, this tool is really good, very fast and needs not much system resources. Perfect for me. And there are no functions which look nice but get boring after using them a few times.
Greets Dennis
I tried GetMail from http://www.searchterrain.com . Uncomplicated and fast.