Lookout for Outlook replaces Outlook's so-called "Advanced Find" with a truly advanced search facility. This past summer Microsoft bought Lookout Software with an eye toward incorporating its technology in MSN Search. At that time they cut off new downloads of Lookout. Recently Microsoft has relented, allowing Lookout Software to offer the work-in-process product for download. Two versions are available, a "stable" version and an "experimental" version with more features; we looked at the latter. Lookout supports Outlook 2000 or later and requires Windows 2000 or XP.

Where Google Desktop gives equal emphasis to files, e-mails, and other content, Lookout focuses strongly on e-mail messages, appointments, and contacts. In fact, its default settings don't include indexing files at all. Checking a box indexes My Documents; you must manually add any other folders you want to be indexed. Lookout's parser specifically handles text and HTML files; other file types (like DOC and XLS files) may not be indexed accurately, because, as the company admits, "the Lookout parser is primitive." Despite this disclaimer, we found the parser effective at locating files based on their content.

The initial indexing pass for our 4,500 Outlook e-mails didn't take long—less than ten minutes—and Lookout clearly displayed its progress. However, when we reconfigured the product to index all of the files on drive C:, it required more than 12 hours. The index occupied about 85MB. By default, Lookout rebuilds its index from scratch once a week, presumably to keep index size under control.

When it comes to e-mail searching, Lookout really shines. You can search in any of 20 fields including To, From, Subject, and even Attachment Filename. Like Google Desktop, it supports phrase search and exclusion of specific terms. Unlike Google, it supports word stemming and allows wildcards; the question mark represents any character and the asterisk represents any string of characters at the start or end of a search term. It can also search for pairs of words near each other, or for words that are similar to the search term. You can specify fields and other criteria by typing them in, or use the handy Search Builder. You can even give particular keywords more weight than others. For example, "mars venus^5" (no quotes) would search on the keywords Mars and Venus but give Venus five times the emphasis in determining relevance. Slick, and powerful.

Lookout for Outlook in it current incarnation is a handy tool for finding messages, contacts, and appointments in Outlook. It may not be quite as fast as competing Outlook utilities such as X1, but it has significantly more search options, and it's conveniently integrated with Outlook. Its file-searching ability is functional but not central. We look forward to seeing what Microsoft will create by merging this power into MSN Search.

< back to