Did you know that the right add-ins can transform your Outlook experience? Here's a roundup of the best Outlook add-ins to supercharge your productivity, security, and collaboration.
Free your emails from easily-overlooked mistakes.
Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps ensure communications are accurate and error-free.
You may already use Grammarly to check your written work elsewhere, but might not know they provide a downloadable Outlook add-in.
Installing the Outlook add-in enables you to check spelling, grammar, and punctuation and refine the tone of your email messages.
Pricing: Limited free version, premium subscriptions from $15 a month.
Schedule emails to be sent at a later time or date.
Outlook already allows you to schedule messages, but Boomerang is an alternative for email delays that comes with a host of extra features.
You can insert tracking links into emails to see if they’ve been opened. You can also quickly and easily share your meeting availability.
Pricing: Limited free version, paid subscriptions from $4.99-14.99 a month.
Clean and organise your email inbox.
SimplyFile uses AI to learn your habits and predict your actions, enabling messages to be moved into separate folders with just a click.
It also supports the easy deletion of message threads, inbox task creation, and send delays on emails.
Pricing: 3 paid plans, costing between $3.99-9.99 a month.
Automatically create and update contacts.
When an email arrives in your inbox, EverContact extracts any information included in the sender’s signature to update existing contacts in your address book or to create new ones.
It also offers a one-off service, ContactRescue, that recovers contact information from archived emails received as far back as 5 years.
Pricing: 3 different paid subscriptions between $7-13 a month.
Create custom templates for your emails.
Template Phrases gives you pre-made and custom templates for answering common questions you receive through email, removing the need to type the same thing again and again.
You can arrange your snippets by category or by favourites, with a handy search bar to quickly find your required response. Templates can be shared with friends and colleagues.
Pricing: Limited free version, paid subscriptions from $3-15 a month.
Legally and securely sign and return documents.
Remove the need to manually print and sign important documents with DocuSign. Simply add your signature with your cursor.
Using the DocuSign Outlook add-in streamlines your communications and reduces your company’s carbon footprint by removing the need to print documents to sign and return.
Pricing: 3 different paid plans costing between $10-40 a month.
Add a Zoom meeting to any Outlook calendar event.
Zoom is renowned for being the go-to company for online meetings, offering users video conferencing and screen sharing capabilities.
The Zoom add-in allows you to easily add Zoom meetings to new or existing events in your Outlook calendar. This means you can insert the URL and dial-in information into the body of invitations.
Pricing: Free if you have a Zoom subscription.
Turn work that arrives by email into structured tasks.
MeisterTask is a secure project and task management software enabling teams to digitise and automate workflows, allowing for greater visibility and keeping productivity high.
The MeisterTask Outlook add-in allows users to capture task requests directly from emails and turn them into actionable to-dos.
Pricing: Limited free version, 3 paid plans from $4.19 a month.
Find a meeting time that works for all attendees.
Trying to find a date and time for a meeting when multiple people need to be available can be a nightmare.
This is why I love FindTime, an Outlook add-in that allows meeting attendees to vote on their preferred time slots, providing a visual summary to help organisers make the best choice.
Pricing: Free!
Secures your emails with encryption and ID checks.
Mailock is a secure email solution, offering businesses and individuals end-to-end encryption and recipient ID checks for their messages.
The Mailock secure email Outlook add-in protects highly sensitive information by ensuring it can only be accessed the right people.
Pricing: Free up to 5 sends a month, then £9.30/user/month.
Get alerts about risky Outlook folder actions
We've all been guilty of accidentally moving or deleting items and folders that we shouldn’t have.
Move and Delete Watchdog prevents this with warnings if you attempt to drag and drop or delete a folder within Outlook.
Pricing: Free!
Find GIFs and stickers for your messages
GIPHY is the best known online source of GIFs and animated stickers, and now you can integrate it directly with Outlook.
Browse what’s currently trending or use the search bar to find a specific GIF and drop it into your email message.
Pricing: Free!
The best Microsoft Outlook add-ins are those that meet your specific needs. Do you need to be more productive, collaborate better, or increase the security of your emails? By using some of the add-ins I cover in this list, you might just make your life a little easier.