There are no lack of suggestions on the Internet for improvements to be made to Microsoft Outlook. Here are some of the major and minor suggestions we feel make the most sense.

• Number one on the list has to be the elimination of one large .PST file. The problems associated to Microsoft going from ASCII based .INI file to a single large Registry depository and moving to a single large .PST file has caused nothing but headaches for millions of users. The .PST file needs to be broken up so emails, contacts and schedules all reside in their own files. And those files formats need to be made publically available.

• Disclose the file format of the PST files so 3rd party vendors can write utilities for the product. An example would be a command line tool that can extract information from Outlook. This could be used to automate the posting of recently received email or updated appointment calendars on the web. All sorts of customized features could be implemented only making the Outlook product more powerful.

• One of the nicest and cleanest products Microsoft has is Outlook Express which only contains the email client and newsreader. Since Outlook does not have it's own newsreader, it already uses the Outlook Express client. Why not have Outlook use the Outlook Express email client as well. Port the few additional features Outlook has into Outlook Express and that way there will only be a single software product to maintain. The Outlook Express .DBX files are so much cleaner and maintainable then the large .PST file. Or at the very least allow for Outlook and Outlook Express to use the identical files structure. What remains in Outlook such as calendaring, scheduling and contacts can then remain in the pay product.

• The problems associated to Microsoft going from ASCII based .INI file to a single large Registry depository and moving to a single large .PST file has caused nothing but headaches for millions of users. The .PST file needs to be broken up so emails, contacts and schedules all reside in their own files. And those files formats need to be made publically available.

• Publish an API for allowing 3rd party devices to become an Export option within Outlook. Tired of having to export and then import data into a 3rd party software package inorder to get your device updated with contact information. This would allow vendors to write device drivers that could allow one to accept the same data multiple times and check for duplication and synchronize data.

• Make the Junk Mail Box built in rules selectable. Ever have good email going into the Junk Mail Box and not know why?

• Remember the nice feature in Outlook 2000 showing the exact number of e-mail messages to download and the progress being made in that download? Put it back! And for that case, never remove features again without replacing it with a selectable feature or one that is superior. Like to meet the person at Microsoft who thought a percentage readout is more accurate and informative.

• Fix mail merge. Though the bigger issue here is that when you break a feature with a new release, which is a fact of life in the software industry, and you get 1000's of complaints about it, have it fixed in the 1st Service Pack. Check out Google newsgroups, searching for "outlook mail merge".

• How many messages do you get a day from people stating the link you sent them does not work. Tired of explaining to people how the link wrapped onto a second line. Maybe Microsoft could fix this so the email reader could fix these broken links onto multiple lines.

• One of the nice features in Internet Explorer is that you can hold down the SHIFT key, click on a link, and have the link open up in a new browser. Unfortuantely this trick does not work in Outlook. Therefore there is no way to access a link in an email message without using an existing browser that is already open.

• Outlook has a nice feature where you can press Ctrl-F to duplicate an e-mail message you are about to send. Great if you want to customize similar e-mails to multiple people. Too bad Outlooks puts a carriage return on the top of each new email when using this feature.

• Add ability to send out an email to many receipients should your ISP place limits on the number of addresses in an email message. Allow this to be a setting that when a message would be sent it would be sent as several email messages with the allowed number of addresses on each message. ISP's place these limits on outgoing mail servers to limit spamming, though by adding this capability it would make sending email much easier for legitimate uses.

• No one is in a better position to fight the spamming issue then Microsoft. Anything that could be done to not allow spammers to send email from unknown locations would be helpful. Not sure what is possible, but any features addressing this problem would be well accepted by the majority.

• Have spell check look at the Subject Line as well as the document.

• When sending an email it would be very useful to be able to click a checkbox to indicate that 'I will be sending an attachment with this email'. Setting this flag would cause a warning to be shown if send was pressed without any attachment being included. This would go a long way to stopping the very common error of sending emails without the intended attachments. Often an email is created to send a document, but the document is forgotten by the time the covering email is completed.