Probably the best product around that no one knows about is SERoutlookAccess. I love this handy utility but have a few caveats about it. Let’s start off by saying I have a mailbox on a busy server with about 500,000 e-mails on it and I receive up to or more than 1,000 e-mails daily. I live in Outlook so I need a powerful search utility.

I used LookOut for over a year and it was very helpful. Recently it started crashing often so I switched to Google desktop search. Google has a great product but the interface is lousy. I am in Outlook and have to go to a browser to get access to Google’s results.

What SER does that the others don’t is they return the results of your query in Outlook. You can use a viewing pane to sift through results. Both Google and LookOut require you to open the e-mails to achieve the same effect.

The one drawback is speed. The software runs too slow on my machine to be the only search mechanism I have. The reason is it autoupdates frequently on my machine. This could just be my machine – I am investigating this mystery.

The company has been great about supporting me but my schedule has been too hectic to get back to them about whether there is a setting I can modify to make the product work better on my PC.

Searching in Outlook is a nightmare and SERoutlookAccess has the makings of a killer e-mail companion. If the speed can be improved, it will be a necessary requirement on every desktop. The company offers a 30-day trial and after that the price is $99 with the potential for lower pricing in volume. Is it worth it? If you live in Outlook and it runs quickly on your machine, spend the money. It is indispensable.