Finding stuff is one of the most important things in our day and age. This also applies to MS Outlook where one needs to find that old information hidden away in email messages, calendar appointment and tasks. The build in search is limited and the add on solutions desktop search solutions from Microsoft and Google are to massive. Unfortunately there aren't many alternative and therefore Lookout, an antique program (in computer time) that hasn't been supported for quite a while, is still one of the top choices. Other alternatives are Xobni, a Web 2.0 like app that misses the point by focusing on "social netowrking" and taking way to much realestate of the Outlook. There are other commercial options (for pay) such as Lookeen but I haven't tried them out yet.

The latest/last version of lookout 1.3 will work with Outlook 2000, Outlook XP/2002, Outlook 2003 and with Outlook 2007. Outlook 2007 needs a small fix though.

The Lookout toolbar is the bottom tool bar with the red "OO" icon. I keep the Lookout toolbar to the left of the standard toolbar, but that would have made the screen shot much larger. Notice how huge the Xobni interface is. Yes it can be resized but then Xobni becomes even less useful.

The search results of on Lookout search.

Download:

There is not much point to go to the orignial website of Lookout. So it's somewhat difficult to find the last Lookout 1.3 release. Major Geeks seems to be quite consistent to providing the download. Otherwise you can always try search for it or download it from me.

With Outlook 2007 you will get the following warning and Lookout will be disabled:

Thanks to this blog post we know that the following simple direcotry rename will fix the issue:

   cmd> rename %SYSTEMROOT%\assembly\GAC\Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook %SYSTEMROOT%\assembly\GAC\Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OLD
   cmd> rename %SYSTEMROOT%\assembly\GAC\Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook %SYSTEMROOT%\assembly\GAC\Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OLD
 	

• Blog from the creator of Lookout.
• Internet archive from the Wayback Machine of the old Lookout website.