Adrian Trenholm

Organise your Outlook e-mail with NEO Free

October 6th, 2005

This is great news for Outlook users: NEO (short for Nelson Email Organizer) is now available for free .

NEO works with Outlook to index your e-mail and gives you several new ways to categorise and work with your contacts and messages. Your mail is still sent and received by Outlook, but you handle it in NEO. On installation, NEO syncs with Outlook to categorise your existing messages, then automatically stays in sync as you send and receive. Any plug-ins that you use in Outlook still work - I use SpamBayes , for example, to filter spam.

NEO works with Outlook’s folder system, so I have now set up a folder for each of my projects. This means that I can have mails from person X stored in more than one folder (because X is working with me on more than one project) and I can have mails from several different people stored in folder Y because all those people are working on that one project. If mail is not specific to a project, I file it in a single Reference folder, which I have nominated in NEO as my “Quick File” - I simply press ctrl-i and the message is filed.

Of course all that sounds like a recipe for disaster when it comes to finding mail again later, and it would be if I was relying on Outlook alone. But NEO provides not just a folder view, but a Correspondent view as well. Using Outlook Folders, I can view all messages related to a given project, regardless of who sent them. Using Correspondent view, I can view all messages to and from a given person, regardless of project.

If NEO doesn’t recognise an incoming or outgoing email address, it automatically creates a new Correspondent “file,” which it keeps in the New section of the Correspondent view. Periodically, you can check and amend the properties of New Correspondents before making them Current. Correspondent “files” can handle multiple email addresses too - it’s a simple drag and drop to set that up.

If you don’t send or receive mail from someone for a while, the Correspondent is moved into the Dormant part of the view. You can specify how long any Correspondent should be held in New or Current, before being moved. Bulk mail - newsletters and such - are similarly dealt with. It’s a real time saver to be able to “Quick File” all my newsletters into Reference, but still see each newsletter individually in the Bulk Mail view.

If that’s not enough, NEO’s search, unlike Outlook’s, is lightning fast.

If you are used to Outlook, this is a slightly different way of thinking about email, but the learning curve is not steep and NEO provides truly excellent demos and tutorials .

, take note: I now feel much more confident about filing e-mail and I find myself far less resistant to processing my inbox. The other surprise benefit is, now I no longer use Outlook for email handling, I have been able to make it a far more productive space for managing projects and tasks (hint: close Outlook’s distracting folder explorer and remove all e-mail-related icons from the Outlook Bar).

How good is NEO? Since I downloaded NEO Free at the weekend, it has become indispensable. The only thing I miss about the Outlook email interface is the ability to tickle email . In every other respect, NEO is superior. I have joined the referral programme, so I make a few dollars if you click a link here and buy the souped up PRO version, but to be honest I can’t see myself making a great deal of money when the Free version is so good. Seriously, if you are an Outlook user, download NEO Free now .

Entry Filed under: Getting Things Done , Workflow