How to Install Lookout on Outlook 2007
I got another request today from an old friend for how to make Lookout run inside Outlook 2007. I’ve probably received a thousand such requests over the last few years… Since I recently installed Outlook 2007, I finally was able to test it out.
This fix should make Lookout work. However, if you have other .NET addins running in Outlook, there is a chance they will no longer work. The fix is reversible though, so don’t be too scared. But this fix is definitely for the tech savvy. Gory details:
Installing Lookout on Outlook 2007
1) First, you’ll have to find a copy of Lookout. Microsoft doesn’t distribute it anymore, but issuing this search on Google seems to find it pretty handily.
2) Next, install Lookout. You’ll need admin privileges (no difference from XP), and the install will go without a hitch.
3) When you next restart Outlook, you’ll probably get this very apologetic-yet-unhelpful error dialog:
4) The problem is that Outlook 2007 ships the Outlook 2007 Office PIAs by default. Open a command shell (as administrator), and issue the following commands:
- cd %SYSTEMROOT%\assembly\GAC
- rename Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OLD
5) Restart Outlook and you are good to go.
Reversal
If this doesn’t work for you, or it breaks some other plugin, you’ll want to restore the interop library. Just undo the command above thusly:
- rename Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OLD Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook
Why does this dialog exist?
Only read this section if you are an Outlook plugin geek!
At the time Lookout was written, Microsoft’s strategy for shipping PIAs hadn’t fully been sorted out. Prior to Outlook 10, there were no official PIAs. Outlook 10 introduced official PIAs, which you could redistribute. Outlook 11 had official PIAs as well (different ones), but Microsoft didn’t permit redistribution of them, and they weren’t backward compatible. Further, with VS2003, it was pretty easy to create your own PIAs, which were almost identical to the official ones, but not signed. There were lots of plugins out there, and some of them handled PIAs badly.
At some point, Lookout ended up requiring that it be able to find the official Outlook 10 PIA installed, or it would assume it would fail. It wasn’t smart enough to recognize that new versions of the PIA might be legit, and probably should have handled it better. Who would have guessed that Outlook 12 would introduce yet a 3rd PIA distribution strategy? OL2007 elects to install the PIAs into the GAC by default; so plugins no longer needed to redistribute them at all. I do believe this is the best strategy.
What this simple fix does is temporarily uninstall the Office 12 version of the PIA. As long as no other .NET Outlook addins are running (C++ based addins don’t use PIAs), this has absolutely zero negative impact on your system. If other .NET addins exist on your system, and those addins are Outlook 11 or 12 specific (I don’t know of any OL12 specific plugins yet?), then you might have a problem with this fix. These conflicts should be rare, but not zero.
Anyway, search on!
BTW - This fix is thanks to the Wayback Machine! The original lookoutsoft support article (http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10) is now long gone. But the Wayback Machine had it! Otherwise, there is no way I would have remembered what the heck this error was about.
Related Blog Posts:
http://pswamina.blogspot.com/2007/09/lookout-outlook-addin.html
http://odetocode.com/Blogs/scott/archive/2004/07/25/347.aspx
http://ewbi.blogs.com/develops/2006/04/outlook_lookout.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/04/19.html
UPDATE
Thanks to Rohan Deshpande for consolidating updated instructions from the comments posted here. On some systems, the above instructions need to be augmented with two more steps:
* echo ” > Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook * rename Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OLD
December 10th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Thanks so much. I would have downgraded my Outlook rather than lose ookout for Outlook. Windows Desktop search just annoy me.
December 24th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Thanks a lot! For Outlook 2003, which is what we have installed at our company, this works right out of the box, with no tinkering required.
December 24th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Thank you thank you thank you!
I fought, wrestled, kicked, screamed, and snarled rather than give up my lookout for outlook.
MS desktop search doesn’t work as well.
google search doesn’t work as well.
Outlook 2007 search…well, I reformatted my machine after installing that performance sucking vampiric monstrosity. So I can’t speak to it.
Lookout for Outlook just works. And works well. Thank you so much..!!!
December 24th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Unfortunately it did not work for me. Apparently some other plugin (either Plaxo, IMS or NOD32) was interfering with the Lookout.
Oh, well. I still have to get along with Outlook search…:-(
December 25th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I tried this and Outlook crashes each time I open it. I put the Interop rename back and Outlook opens. Anyone seen this?
December 26th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Just FYI in case anyone else has problems, i got the same message after the fix, and Outlook was re-adding the file again.
I created an empty txt file called Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook
and then also renamed a policy file:
C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC>rename Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OLD
Then Lookout worked for me
December 26th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Thomas,
I had the same behavior. As soon as it started indexing, both Lookout and Outlook would crash (i.e. outlook.exe process would die).
I’m running Vista SP1 RC1 and Office 2007 SP1.
Oh well, I actually find the built-in Vista/Office search pretty servicable.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
The fix may be “more dangerous” to your Outlook than the post warns. The warning stating this mildly should be perhaps more strongly worded.
For one, it will not allow Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 to work — or will cause the PIA to be reloaded into the GAC at Outlook Process start — or make Outlook puke all over itself, if BCM is installed (or Small Business Accounting for that matter).
The PIAs were placed there for a reason — and we may very well not know or understand the “why’s” surrounding the decision — but I am sure it was not just done on a whim.
December 27th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Hey BD -
Sorry you had trouble. I don’t think there is any more danger than stated. This fix is just reconfiguring outlook to use a different PIA. The PIAs are not magical; they are pretty straightforward. That is why I previously cautioned that if you have apps which use them, they will not work with this configuration of Outlook.
You’ve identified one such plugin - BCM’07. You are right, the PIAs were not whimsically placed there; but if you want Outlook to work with Lookout, you’ll need to reconfigure it not to use the default PIA configuration.
As for “danger”; I haven’t heard of any real danger yet. And the steps are reversible, so risk is fairly contained. Also, as stated, this reconfiguration is for the techies out there, not for the novices.
Anyway, I suspect you are right about BCM’07. If you are using it, this change is not going to work by itself.
December 28th, 2007 at 10:31 am
I did not have trouble — just was pointing out something. Outlook Search is not as bad as people say it is (in my opinion) unless they are doing things outside the normal (the stuff that only less than 5% of users are doing), or doing things like having 10 years of mails in the PST file.
There are patches released that speed up the app (plus fix stuff that did not get fixed in time for it’s release) that make it now a good upgrade choice.
As for BCM not going to like the lookout changes in this post — this one will be for sure. One of the two (lookout or BCM) will have to be removed. I know this because I used to work at MS on BCM — through the 07 release. More and more plugins will be written in C# (it is being encouraged nowadays), so the probability of something going bad will increase.
I am glad for resources like this that “help” users in that “less than 5% category” and are able to get themselves out of trouble if they got themselves into a mess. There will always be a need that will have to be filled for those wanting to push the envelope. It is the rest of the mere mortals (95% group) that should be sternly warned away from this type of stuff.
Cheers!!
December 28th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
I think outlook instant search is missing the best feature lookout had - sort by search ranking/match. How can you parse search results if you can’t sort by the most likely results? Am I missing something?
thanks so much for this, I can’t wait to start using lookout again!
December 28th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Crashed at first, but then on next launch gave me the option of disabling the Symantec anti-virus plug-in.
December 28th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
When I try to rename the the interop file I get ‘access denied’ and i can’t seem to do anything about it. I’m logged in with admin rights…
December 31st, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Has anyone had any luck with this running on Vista? I’m having the same problem as Neal; I get an appcrash about a minute after the indexer starts running. I’m running Outlook 2007 on Vista (but not SP1 RC1).
Thanks!
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:17 am
For me too, it crashed after renaming the PIA assembly in GAC and starting outlook with lookout for the first time, but after that, it gave me wizard and started indexing..
Lets see.. how fast it is!!
(I have been using windows desktop search for emails.. and have found it significantly fast.. Is lookout more faster?? let me check!)
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I don’t think i’m one of those users that want to “push the envelop” or am asking too much to expect a search tool to “search”.
I have mixed success with Outlooks 2007 search tool, and over all would give it a -100 as a score. It might work in one case but it doesn’t work at all in the other so that makes it completely unexceptable in my book.
I have my work laptop (XP sp2) running Outlook 2007 connected to an exchange email account and search works acceptably - at least it finds the things i’m looking for.
At home I am running Outlook 2007 connected to a POP3 account on my personal laptop (XP sp2) both machines are patched the same and everything else basically the same. At home, search doesn’t search. It acts like my daughter when she’s looking for something it could be right under its nose and it comes back empty handed. I have yet to get it to return even a single match for anything. I’ve rebuilt the search indexes repointed the data files, reinstalled this and that, and basically was to the point i wanted to roll back to Outlook 2003. Although i like the calendar features in 2007. And i like using the same version at home as at work for consistancy sake.
Luckily i ran across this site and was able to use Lookout. It actually returns matches when i look for things - that earns it an A+ in my book after the experience i had with the piss poor Outlook search version.
I don’t think I’ve asked for much.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
After installing lookout, I get the message you stated. However I now have two versions of Microsoft.Interop.Office.Outlook so when I try to rename the file, it can’t do because there are duplicate names.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:30 am
[...] than previous versions, it just isn’t the same quality as Lookout. So it is great news that Lookout can be made to work in Outlook 2007. [...]
January 7th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Thanks so much for this fix, I was in the process of uninstalling Office2007 when I came across this posting on how to fix it.
Thanks again
January 9th, 2008 at 10:12 am
[...] makes search easy. Microsoft bought it, never used it and disabled it in Outlook 2007. Well the fix is out and I highly suggest anyone using Outlook as any sort of knowledge base (which means everyone) get [...]
January 9th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I wish people would stop quoting that Microsoft killed Lookout; it’s just not true. If anyone killed Lookout, it’s the people that sold Lookout to Microsoft (oh yeah, that’s Eric & me).
I went to work on Desktop Search, rewrote parts of Lookout from C# to C++ so that it could work in a larger Microsoft product. That product was MSN Search, now Windows Desktop Search. So Lookout does live; it’s inside the product that so many here are complaining about.
Anyway, I don’t believe Microsoft killed lookout and I would hate for people to think that I did feel that way.
I am very flattered that people still find value from Lookout, which hasn’t been updated for 3.5 years now, while Google and Microsoft have been trying like mad to ‘own’ this product area. I guess the C# skeptics should think twice.
January 9th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I am running Office Ultimate 2007 on XP SP2. I have the same duplicate file problem as Norbert… I would really like to use LookOut, but it seems like a pain to install.
January 10th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Works very well, thanks for that tip!
Lookout is indexing my mail right now.
January 11th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
This workaround worked for me up until the point I had to relaunch Outlook. What appears to be happening is the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook PIA is recreated after launching Outlook so that the next time, I launch Outlook I will get the same Lookout error. Therefore, I have to rename Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook PIA every time before I launch Outlook so that it doesn’t exist to have Lookout. Anyone know of a way to make it stay permanently? Maybe I am hitting the rare case Mike describes, but I am not aware of any special .Net plugins on my system.
Thanks,
Erica
January 12th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I could not get it work;
As anybody a real work out,
in my situation the folder gets all the time reinstalled again
thx
ludi from vienna
January 17th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Thanks for sharing. Lookout (i.e. Lucene.net) just rocks. I remember using the software way back in 2002/2003 and it just made life so efficient in Outlook.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:19 am
Thanks for this advice. I tried it an the second time it worked (rename to Old, rename back, rename to Old).
I can imagine that you (Mike) wish that people would stop quoting that Microsoft killed Lookout. Maybe you are right. Maybe the people are right. The way I see it: Microsoft malformed the very good product Lookout in a worse and less functional slow running product.
Windows Desktop Search: 1 out of 5, Lookout: 5 out of 5.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:21 am
Hi Floyd,
I had the same error message of “Access denied” of my first try. I then noticed that my Outlook 2007 was running. I closed it and tried again. Still got the same error. I worked on some other stuff for a while before coming back to do the renaming - it worked! Now my Lookout is working like charm…
Yiqi from Beijing, China
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
Thanks so much!
I have actually downgraded my Outlook 2007 to get back Lookout.
Now the only obstacle between Ol2007 and me is the ribbon. Once THAT is eliminated, I’ll sure go for Ol2007
Thanks again,
BigB
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I understand Mike’s position, but for me the thing Lookout does that Desktop Search does not is search through ALL my *.pst files. I am just too lazy to save all my mail into a full on database so I can pull threads out to write customer support documents from.
J.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Got Lookout to work by
rename both file to .OLD
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook
Policy.11.0.Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook
Create empty file
echo ” > Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook
reinstalled Lookout
Thanks to all for your help, as I can’t agree more about Microsoft seach
J
January 28th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I have the same problem on Vista. Outlook crashes as soon as Lookout starts indexing.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Before I found this fix for Lookout on 2007 I installed Copernic Desktop Search which I find to be much better than Desktop Search and indexes archive PSTs. Very quick and unintrusive.
Gus
January 31st, 2008 at 3:54 am
Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me. I tried the (updated) fix, but Outlook crashes on me on load, i.e. it doesn’t even finish loading
I can see that others in the comments have the same problem - no one with a fix?
I loved the old Lookout, hated WDS and can’t get Google to index my mails. I guess I will try to Copernic, like gus has. But I’d really prefer if I could get Lookout to work again!
- Henrik
February 15th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Johnl is right. searching personal folders is the only reason many of us loved lookout. is desktop search offering this capability?
lookeen.net offers the same capability as lookout on outlook 2007… it was free for awhile but now they charge now which sucks. i’m a cheap bastard and i’m hoping lookout will come out with an 2007 version so i’m still deliberating, but for those who are interested…
February 18th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Just for the record: There still is an “official” Microsoft Source in Austria (on a Microsoft Web site for small-and-medium enterprises), giving the opportunity to download LookOut 1.2: http://www.microsoft.com/austria/kmu/tipps-und-tricks/outlook-und-e-mail/lookout-die-schnelle-suchfunktion-fuer-outlook.mspx
[Rough Translation of the final part of the Link: lookout-the-fast-search-for-outlook.mspx]
March 17th, 2008 at 5:50 am
I am running Vista Business with Outlook 2003 and Lookout 1.3 but unfortunately when I index Outlook crashes. Any solution?
March 18th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Lookout is definitely dead. Sorry to say that, but the ’sucessor’ products are non working bullshit. After using the Vista Desktop Search for a few months on large PST files (6 GB), the indexer stopped doing anything and no emails were found. You can imagine how frustrating it can be if you are in need to QUICKLY search a specific mail. No chance to get it without the indexer! And even if the WDS works, it works damn slow. I was a big fan of Lookout, but fact is: It’s gone. And there is no working successfor available at all.
March 18th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Wow, thanks so much for this. I mourned the loss of lookout with O2007 and have spent a year trying to recreate it. I need “ACTIONABLE” searches. I was settled on Xobni and X1, both running simultaneously to get partual Lookout functionality with lots of overhead. Thanks to this article, I am now deinstalling both of these things. My computer is going to be much faster too, without all the parasitic draw of these two former applications.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Has anyone seen the issue where the Lookout toolbar loads blank without the search box and other buttons?
I’ve reinstalled and renamed the assembly several times with no luck. I’m running Outlook 2007 with SP1.
Any help would be much appreciated. Windows Desktop Search is not ideal.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I got 1.30 instead of 1.28 and now it works. Thanks!
March 28th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Hey Mike,
I followed all the instructions but I am getting a crash in the following location when it starts indexing. Any ideas on how to fix this. This is on vista sp1 64 bit, running OLK 2007 with all the above + fixes to inventures_olk.dll and lookout.dll
0ffbf194 0cd265e5 msvcr71!free+0xc3 [f:\vs70builds\3052\vc\crtbld\crt\src\free.c @ 103]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify checksum for MapiLib.dll
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for MapiLib.dll
0ffbf1d8 0cd2aa49 MapiLib!.MapiLib.UMMapiEntryId.__ctor(MapiLib.UMMapiEntryId*, MapiLib.UMMapiEntryId*)+0×5d
0ffbf230 0cd2a953 MapiLib!.MapiLib.UMMapiItem.__ctor(MapiLib.UMMapiItem*, IMAPIProp*, MapiLib.UMMapiEntryId*)+0×89
0ffbf298 0cd2a7fc MapiLib!.MapiLib.UMMapiStore.GetItemFromId(MapiLib.UMMapiStore*, UInt32, ENTRYID*)+0xe3
March 31st, 2008 at 9:30 am
I have to agree that the successor products lost a lot of what made LookOut special. I have OL2007 on both XP and Vista. The searching is “okay”on XP but does not work reliably on Vista at all. Basic searches will not find emails and they email in question is right in the INBOX!!!
The best for me about LookOut was that desktop search that was “hosted” within email. I am email-centric, but like being able to hit files systems too. I have not tried this installation yet, but i am sorely tempted.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:05 am
YES!! It works. In haste, I tried it three times (unsuccessfully) before finally doing everything in the instructions exactly right and in the correct order. I have Outlook2007 on an XP machine. And LookOut is BAAAACK! Made my month. If yours doesn’t work, you might try working through the instructions again.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Excellent! It’s beautiful, working great!
Finally thanks for taking care of this, we been waiting long time!
April 24th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Hi Mike,
Is there any way I can invoke the Lookout Search with a search string, from outside Outlook (commandline,wscript or even a wrapper dll…). I have Outlook running, and the result may also come in outlook, but I want the invocation to be done from outside. (The idea is I want to build an application like Google Searchbar that can get me to anywhere I want)
It’d be great if you can share any idea on how to do it. (I’m not aware of even simplest of .Net tricks, so anything would help).
Thanks,
Krishna
May 6th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
none of this worked for me. Going into ‘Tools” then “trust center” I noticed that the Add-ins listed Lookout as being ‘disabled’
I checked the box next to ‘Apply macros security settings to installed add-ins (with ‘Disabled items’ selected), then went to the macro security section of the trust center and changed it from ‘Warnings for signed macros; all unsigned macros are disabled’ to ‘warnings for all macros’.
Now I had to click OK on a bunch of warnings going into Outlook, but at least I had LookOut search tool again!!!
Now that it was working again, I returned to the trust center and under add-ins I removed the check box next to ‘ Apply macro security settings to installed add-ins.’ Now outlook starts without warnings and lookout is available after a few seconds.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:09 am
lookout problem - every start is the 1st! can anyone help?
this is the 2nd time i’m experiencing this problem, and i can’t for the death of me remember how i sorted it out on the 1st round a few years back - namely - lookout keeps losing its custom location for index files, and ignores any user settings that i try to enter in the settings tabs.
i’ve found the
C:\Documents and Settings\john doe\Local Settings\Application Data\Lookout Software\Lookout\Options.Outlook.xml
file that contains what i need to manipulate, but even if i restore a backup of this file & make it read-only the program still uses default settings from somewhere else, just compaining about the read-only.
and as far as i can see, lookout doesn’t store anythinng of substance in the registry. but i am also wondering if this would have to do with an outlook user profile - it seems that something funky is going on with my custom forms as well.
(yes, i’ve already emailed this to mike but maybe someone else knows something, too…)
cheers.
May 16th, 2008 at 1:19 am
I am under the impression that this week’s Office update disabled Lookout again
Any ideas what to do against it?
May 16th, 2008 at 11:09 am
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Office_Productivity/Groupware/Outlook/Q_23403732.html
see the link - sorted.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I installed Outlook 3.0 after working with it for 3 yrs in outlook 2003.
Its rock solid program
My env is Windows Vista SP1 - 64 bit
Outlook 2007
Then I saw Mike’s post about renaming
cd %SYSTEMROOT%\assembly\GAC
rename Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OLD
The above error did not come - but everytime I start outlook it crashed…..
Then I searched this same site and somebody posted to rename
Inventures_Olk.dll (84kb) - this file and replace with
Inventures_Olk.dll (80 ) .
This time, it did not crash, but indexing started but giving error
Finished Indexing but 1 error
!Failed : storeid and entryid cannot be null
If somebody interested to see bug coding and files, I can sent that as well…
Please help !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Regds
Uddhav
http://www.netfisco.com/myfiler/
May 31st, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Tried to make lookout 1.30 work on outlook 2007 and vista and failed: installation is fine and warning is gone, but indexer crashes every time it starts. Anyone sorted a similar setup out?
June 5th, 2008 at 12:33 am
I loved Lookout, and Microsofts search is 3 times the work and often too slow. I can’t run multiple constraints on searchs.
The workaround mentioned appear to not be working for a number of people.
Please bring lookout back for Outlook 2007!
June 24th, 2008 at 8:54 am
LookOut was wonderful - searching in Outlook 2007 is a nightmare - Totally agree “Please bring lookout back for Outlook 2007!”
July 1st, 2008 at 9:10 pm
I am sorry, but Microsoft killed Lookout. It worked in 2003, but it was prevented from working in 2007. Just the suggested fix implies that code, not vital to the operation of Outlook, was implanted to disable Lookout.
What we see here is how money trumps anti-competitiveness. Instead of doing this to a third-party product and risk the wrath of a Justice Department investigation into its anti-competitive practices, Microsoft threw money at the developers, bought the working product and buried it out back in Redmond - the home of buried innovation - in favor of an in-house solution that simply does not work.
That is classic Killing the Product, with a twist. (No, not a twist of the knife in my back - that’s yet another twist.)
A unhappy Office 2007 user.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Is the problem just the explicit check on the PIA version? i.e. If someone found a way to edit the binary to NOP the IF statement that checks the PIA version, do you think the rest of Lookout would work okay with the new PIA installed?
July 29th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
[...] I’ve been limping along with Lookout because it beats the pants off of Outlook’s built-in search (or, more appropriately, “blind grope in the dark”). But I’ve run into some conflicts with Lookout because you have to hack a bit to get it to work. [...]