Part of the reason for Outlook's popularity is because of it's programmability. Not only can you use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and Visual Basic Scripting (VBS) to create macros and scripts to extend the capabilities of Outlook, you can also create COM add-ins which allow you to do more with Outlook.

I can hear most of you saying, "Not me, I can't write code." With some 500 addins readily available for Outlook, you won't need to write anything. You won't even have to search to find them, a list of known add-ins is at http://www.slipstick.com/addins/.

My most favorite utility is an oldie but goodie -- Chilton Preview. While Outlook now includes a perfectly acceptable preview pane, Chilton Preview allows me to preview all messages as plain text, which prevents viruses from executing. If you're using Outlook 2002 or Outlook 2000 with the email security update that blocks attachments, you can access them easily, right from the preview pane too.

Another favorite add-in that also reduces security risks in Outlook is Watch Your Back (WYB). Its original purpose was to give users control over the return of read receipts but it now includes a number of security related features, including removing scripts from HTML messages and converting HTML to plain text.

Outlook's Rules Wizard has improved a lot since Outlook 98, but if you need powerful filtering capabilities, try ExLife. With ExLife, you can easily run rules offline or create several different groups of rules. If you don't need the power of ExLife, some of the features found in ExLife are available as custom actions for Rules Wizard. These and similar utilities are in the Auto handling section of Slipstick.com.

Keeping your mailbox small can be a chore, especially if you receive many attachments. The Housekeeping section at Slipstick has several utilities, like CleanMail, that will quickly and easily save attachments to your hard drive and delete the attachment from the message. If you send many attachments, utilities such as ZipOut will automatically zip the attachments as you send the message. ZipOut can also scan your mailbox folders and zip existing attachments to reduce the message size.

Many users discover that Outlook's calendar leaves much to be desired, lacking features such as reminders from alternate calendar folders and a yearly planner view. If you like to print your calendar, calendar templates for Word do a much better job. Look for Extended Reminders, Word templates and other useful utilities in the Calendar tools section at Slipstick.

Advanced Find does okay at finding things in your mailbox, but it wasn't good enough for several Outlook developers. Nelson Email Organizer and 80-20 Retriever are two of several search utilities available and they do it much faster. If you want improved message archiving and the ability to read messages from a CDR, try ArchivER or WN MailKeeper.