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Xobni Organizes Your Outlook Email

As a web designer and coder, I collect tons of emails and attachments from clients that have to be carefully tracked and easily found. And many projects have three, four, or more people attached. Often I have to dig out their contact information to make calls.

Awhile back, I found Xobni, a software tool with an odd name that should be in every version of any email software. Now they have a Plus version, for $29.95, that solves the major issue I had with the software. Both the free and paid versions are a huge value if you collect a lot of email for projects.

Xobni works as a plugin to Outlook. When you set up, it can take a few hours for the software to index thousands of emails. But that is a small price to pay for the features. Once indexed, Xobni sits on the right side of Outlook or it appears when you call it. Typing in part or all of a name or search term in Xobni calls up all your emails from that person or emails that contain that term. You also get the contact information from your address book. And attachments. And email threads, the chains of email by email subject line, nested and sorted by date. The ability to dig out ancient and obscure emails in seconds floored me the first time I used it.

Xobni also is useful in going back to tell your clients the exact email, by date and subject line, that had the information you sent them months ago. You know the phone call: the client calls up and says, “Did you ever do this?” Lawyers and anyone who needs backup often months later will find Xobni extremely easy and helpful.

While I religiously create project and client folders in Outlook and sort email every day, Xobni makes it possible to avoid that chore. Indeed, Xobni really is a totally different way to look at your email and work with it. Which is the reason every email client should have a current email view and the Xobni view.

The only issue I’ve found happens after I archive my emails, when my Outlook file goes over 2GB which happens every year. Happily, Xobni keeps a copy of the text of emails, and contact information, but not the attachments. Often that’s all I need.

Their new Plus version, however, includes the ability to search across multiple Outlook files. So I can have old archived emails as easily found as the ones in my current email file. The Free version still is limited to one Outlook file which may be fine for most people because it keeps the actual email text of archived emails (assuming you run Xobni before you archive your emails, of course).

Bottomline, Xobni is well worth a try if you have to manage large amounts of email. And even if you don’t the ability to quickly find any email based on author or content is amazing and valuable. The free version has a lot of capability. The Plus version, at $29.95, is a huge value even if you only use it to search across your archived email files with their attachments. It’s a small price to pay to support useful innovative software.

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