Alternative to Simplyfile for Outlook on Mac

October 27, 2014 6:43 AM

I'm helping my dad with his transition to Mac from PC, and there's one big piece of the puzzle missing. He's planning on using Outlook on the Mac (since he's used it for years on a PC), but would love a filing system like Simplyfile. While there seem to be a lot of filing systems for Apple Mail, I can't seem to find a good one for the latest version of Outlook for Mac. Any advice, hive mind?

(Notes: he's not planning on using another email client, nor is he interested in dual booting or anything like that. No need to suggest these options. Thanks again!)

posted by evadery to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I'm not aware of anything for the Mac that has the learning capability that Simplyfile appears to have; however, there's Mail Act-on, which is designed to speed up the filing process, and Mail Tags from the same company that could be used in concert with it.
posted by adamrice at 6:55 AM on October 27, 2014

FYI, Outlook 2011 for Mac is awful. It has such fun features as "randomly dumping the contents of your inbox", "search crashing the whole program after your account reaches a certain size", and "being impossible to get mail out of it, even to real outlook". Stay far, far, far away. Please.
posted by Oktober at 7:12 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ya, Outlook for Mac is not Outlook for Windows. It's Outlook in name only. You'd be better offer using Parallels or Crossover to run Outlook on Windows if he really must run Outlook.
posted by jmd82 at 9:03 AM on October 27, 2014

Yeah, chiming in that Mac version of Outlook is horrific. I actually installed Parallels and Windows 7 on my mac so I did not have to deal with it.

Other thing to know is that Mac Office 2011 is horrible as well, in comparison, to the Windows version, so be warned if he uses Office a lot.
posted by jadepearl at 6:33 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

There is nothing like Simplyfile for Outlook on Mac -- probably because Outlook on Mac is too profoundly a bad product to support development of something like that.

If your father is dead set on using Outlook on Mac, he either needs to embrace the noble work of manually sorting his email into folders or come around to the idea of no folders and searching rather than filing email. (And if he comes around to the latter, he's probably no longer committed to Outlook and can look forward to more pleasure.)

As much as I would like to proclaim that email-filers should just spend a half hour learning how to search, I acknowledge that this is a personal and hard decision. But there is no way to make Outlook for Mac behave like Outlook for Windows + Simplyfile. And that's probably good.
posted by mississippi at 8:58 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]