Productivity
12 New Year’s productivity resolution ideas
We handpicked and asked 12 experts what they're determined to accomplish in the coming year. Here are their answers.
Check the best Outlook add-ins for boosting productivity recommended by the experts. Outlook plugins: everything you need to know in 2023.
I'm from Strumica, Macedonia. It's pretty hard to find a movie I haven't already watched. An introvert who happens to be a good listener and even better team player. An economist by degree, a marketing manager at heart. Seeing my website on the first page of Google is what excites me most.
Want some apps and extensions to improve your Outlook inbox, but don’t know where to start?
AppSource can be overwhelming: there are thousands of apps, and, aside from reviews, which you never know are accurate, no surefire ways of judging their quality.
That’s why getting some great recommendations from trusted apps is a perfect way to find new extensions you know are going to help you be more productive.
We asked 20 experts to share tools they use and recommend, and here are their answers: a list of some of the best Microsoft AppSource email plugins to improve your inbox.
I use templates frequently so Mailbutler saves me from having to constantly copy & paste templates from a document.
The Email Tracking feature allows me to track ‘opens’ and ‘reads’ which is very handy. I use Tasks directly after sending emails which eases my workflow by reducing the number of apps I need to use.
The Contacts feature allows me to pull up a contact and review our email exchange history which is very intuitive and less painful than conventional email threads.
Last but not least I love the Send Later feature because I love to work early in the morning but sometimes I need to send emails later in the day, this small automation makes my life easier - it tells me when the best time to send my email is to maximize my chances of getting a response.
Ross Kernez, Founder at https://www.rossk.com
In marketing, aside from visual presentations, the words, phrases, and sentences we choose are our bread and butter.
This means before we send it to our client and target customers, we have to make sure that spelling and grammar are all on point.
And to make sure of that, we use Grammarly. This outlook add-in helps us to write better articles, newsletters, and emails. It provides accurate and real-time corrections.
Using the free version can help you with your day-to-day needs, but if you want more features, go for the paid version.
It offers vocabulary enhancement, detects plagiarism, and more which helps you to come up with better paragraphs that are rich with information but easy to understand.
Tim Clarke, Director of Sales @ SEOBlog.com
2021 was the year of the Zoom meeting--and even as people start heading back to the office, it's an application that's here to stay. That's why the Zoom add-on for Outlook is a must-have for 2023.
It allows you to schedule and start meetings instantly, leading to less fumbling around when setting up and entering meetings.
After a long day filled with client meetings on Zoom? I turn to the GIPHY add-on for Outlook, so I can brighten my employees' inboxes with funny GIFs.
Ruben Gamez, Founder & CEO - Signwell.com
My favorite add-in for outlook is Trello which allows me to generate ticket descriptions, expiration dates, and miscellaneous cards, among other things.
In a nutshell, you may read and edit any type of material in your messages to build different elements in a straightforward method. Another significant benefit is the ability to view sensitive information about the persons who send you emails.
To improve your workplace safety and efficiency.
Adam Wood, Co-Founder of RevenueGeeks
Evernote allows you to keep all of the communications that are important to you. Consider the following scenario: you receive a significant number of emails every day. What is the best way to save what is really important?
The best way to avoid getting lost in a sea of emails is to utilize Evernote.
You may organize them so that you can easily find the email you're looking for without having to go through your entire inbox.
At the same time, you'll be able to jot down different thoughts, create tasks to be completed later, and so on.
It's a basic tool for time management and organization.
If you want to learn more about this fantastic and well-known tool, remember that you can go to the official Evernote website at any moment.
Travis Lindemoen, Managing Director of Nexus IT Group
Salesforce's major goal is to make customer relationship management as simple and straightforward as possible. Salesforce collects all of your customer data, such as who they are, what products they purchase, and so on.
It then enables you to use this data to provide targeted and compassionate communications to customers.
Assume you want to be more responsive to your consumers while eliminating redundant data-entering processes.
In that instance, the Microsoft Outlook - Salesforce interface provides the ideal platform.
Without switching between systems, you can access all customer data, follow email discussions, and focus all your efforts to deliver business efficiency directly from Outlook.
Sep Niakan, Managing Broker at https://www.condoblackbook.com/
As a CEO, I like to add a little spice to things by using animated GIFs to describe my feelings and emotions.
It's possible to use GIPHY animations to enhance the design of promotional newsletters and other corporate communications when using this Outlook add-in.
Use a search term (such as "monkey") to find GIF images to add to your emails. Then simply drag and drop the image you like the best right into your email with a single click.
For work-related purposes, you'll want to make advantage of the GIPHY search feature to filter out images that aren't appropriate for the workplace.
Tanner Arnold, President & CEO at https://revelationmachinery.com/
Mr. Post, a service provided by security firm TrendMicro, examines parts of an email to decide whether it is safe. Click the Click For Quick Scan icon next to a message you want to check.
The add-in looks at the sender's real address, email footprint, and other information to determine whether it's safe or suspicious.
To learn more about any of the elements in the findings, simply click on it.
Clicking the Risk Highlights symbol, for example, shows why the message was flagged as suspicious.
Jason Ball, Director - Considered Content
Due to the fact that I have clients across several countries, I am constantly receiving emails that are not in a language I understand, and my email will sometimes immediately classify them as spam simply because I am unable to understand them.
I can now decipher emails sent to me in other languages using the Translator for Outlook add-in.
There is no further step required to have your emails translated.
The translator will automatically translate foreign-language emails into the language that you are most comfortable with, regardless of the language the majority of your correspondence is sent in.
The Translator for Outlook add-in simply needs to be installed once, and it will work with any and all of your Outlook client software after that.
It is never saved, sampled, or shared with anybody else because all information transmitted through the Microsoft Translator service is encrypted.
Matt Weidle, Business Development Manager - https://buyersguide.org/
I've been using Mailbutler for a while now and I absolutely love it! It's a great way to keep track of my emails and to quickly take care of tasks that need to be done, like attaching files or scheduling messages. I'm really happy with the way it's helped me manage my email workflow.
It is indeed an excellent tool for managing email productivity. It allows me to do things like create templates, schedule messages, and attach files without having to leave my inbox.
Overall, Mailbutler has saved me a lot of time and hassle, which is why I would definitely recommend giving it a try.
Krishna Rungta, Guru99 Founder
Personally, I believe this is the finest outlook Add-Ins so far. SimplyFile is an email organization solution for Outlook that is both powerful and easy to use.
You can set up one-click email filtering in a few simple steps. Its feature-rich interface allows you to create tasks, bulk folders, and delay email delivery.
One-click searching and detailed email usage reports are also useful tools. SimplyFile is ideal for both personal and enterprise-level solutions.
Samuel DeCroes, President of Stock Trend Alerts
It is intended to assist you in working smarter and harder by providing suggestions for rapid responses to most emails, allowing you to save time. You can also write responses and choose the best choice for similar queries in the future with Text Lightning.
Umair Syed, Head of Marketing - https://pcbleiterplatte.com/
This Outlook add-in acts as a personal assistant, easily transforming your inbox into a more organized productivity tool. It may be used to make a to-do list, organize emails, and create projects.
Umair Syed
It's a fantastic tool for increasing productivity, and it's especially beneficial for Outlook users who get a huge number of emails on a regular basis.
Umair Syed
My favorite Microsoft add-in is FindTime. FindTime is an organizational app that can help users collaborate online and schedule things amidst their busy schedules.
When you add something into your schedule, FindTime literally "finds the time" and schedules it so that you don't have to do the planning yourself. It even integrates that with the schedule of anyone else involved so that you can all meet at the same time.
Adam Rossi, CEO of TotalShield
If you've forgotten your password but don't want to change it, Outlook Password, an innovative password recovery tool from Thegrideon Software, will help you recover it in a matter of seconds.
It can both restore and delete Outlook.pst files if you don't need them any longer.
Outlook Password not only recovers passwords, but it also recovers email passwords, server settings, and logins from your Outlook account's current information.
This plugin supports all encryption methods and does not need the installation of any extra frameworks or libraries. It works with all versions of Outlook from 97 to 2019 and Windows XP to Windows 10.
Callum Dooley, Managing Director - https://www.elitefridges.co.uk/
As a user, I recommend The Tilkee extension as it is one of the most effective ways to keep track of your business proposals while also predicting the tax implications.
The best part is that Tilkee analyses your prospects' reading habits and tells you whether they'll sign the contract or if you need to make adjustments. You will, however, require a Tilkee account to do so.
Dan Scalco, Owner of Food Box HQ
If you want to include an information snapshot of a restaurant, coffee shop, or any other place near your meeting, as well as the meeting itself, Bing Nearby is a useful add-in.
For example, if you want to meet a coworker at Dunkin donuts, just use Bing Nearby to find the closest Dunkin donuts and then drag and drop it onto your Outlook appointment.
All of the information, such as the address, phone number, name, and user ratings, will be included in the info snapshot.
Jacob Sherman, Sales Development Executive at New Reach Agency
Every time we send out the coordinates of a meeting location, we use digital maps. Maps for Outlook is an extension that seeks to make the process easier by providing access to a map creator.
All that is required of the user is to launch the map generator (all without exiting the Outlook app.)
Also, if your email has an address, the contextual address feature will instantly recognize it and look it up.
Harry Hughes, CEO, and Co-founder https://www.dangler.co.uk/
Wrike is my favorite add-in for Outlook. It makes project tracking and management incredibly easy for me and now that it's a part of Outlook, it just makes my life even easier.
Wrike allows me to keep tabs on multiple projects that my team is working on.
It also allows me to see the workload of each team member so I can ensure I'm not overloading one employee and not giving another enough work.
James Green, Owner Build A Head
I love Hightail for Outlook. It helps with sending large email attachments.
You can send 2GB files or larger without needing to use WeTranfer, for example. The attachments are also saved for you.
It also saves your contacts and has a number of security features so that your files are only shared with your chosen recipient, and you can also control what they can do with the files.
Dan Troha, Founder at https://draftsim.com
To begin with, I believe SpamBayes is an excellent add-in that Microsoft Outlook needs because of the increasing issue of phishing emails.
The greatest complication with phishing emails comes with the fact that they are a facsimile of the legitimate ones when in reality, they aren’t.
Hence, SpamBayes utilizes statistical analysis to segregate spam mails from the usual ones and solve this issue.
Apart from this, for busy users who unconsciously end up deleting important files, Outlook’s Move and Delete Watchdog add-in helps solve this problem by alerting the user using a pop-up window that they are about to delete a file.
Rajeev Kumar, Co-Founder at DocuCollab
TokaiMail is an email security extension for Microsoft Outlook, developed by security experts to help small and medium enterprises protect their work environment at a reasonable cost.
TokaiMail is extremely simple and intuitive to use.
Once the add-in is installed, users can easily scan URLs in emails to detect phishing attacks or malwares, as well as upload attachments to our cloud antivirus sandbox to identify threats before these infiltrate the user’s machine and network.
It is built on a unique combination of features enabling end-users to flag incoming emails and dispose of them before they make any harm to the user’s office IT system.
Mathieu Ploton, CTO at GDMS
If your Outlook is running slow, you can speed it up by:
Each Outlook add-in mentioned in this blog post is safe and widely used. For example, Mailbutler is a feature-packed productivity extension made in compliance with European data regulations.
This means that Mailbutler handles your information in line with the strictest privacy and security laws in the EU.
Think we’ve missed anything from this list? Got an app, extension, or plugin in mind that you think just has to be included here?
Get in touch with us in the comments or through our social media channels and let us know!