RealAccount - freeware plugin to enhance accounts handling with MS Outlook

RealAccount is a freeware plug-in for Microsoft Outlook versions XP and 2003. Its purpose is to enhance Outlook accounts handling, with the ability to choose preferred account, signature and email format for each defined mail folder.

RealAccount is focused on people who want to maintain different profiles for each user account, thus having separate message folders to store both incoming and outgoing emails.However, it comes with features useful for most users overall. in Outlook, by default, user has to manually select preferred account and signature when composing an email.

RealAccount works by enabling a set of options at folder level, which can be inherited from the parent, such as preferred Account, preferred Signature, signature on top or bottom, message format (text, html) as well as the ability to mark all folder messages as read.

How it works

In a word, RealAccount works by combining an Outlook mail folder with an options set. These are mainly focused on accounts handling, such as selecting an account and a signature. once installed, RealAccount adds its own page to the Outlook folder properties pane. by default RealAccount is disabled, so nothing changes. to take advantage of it, setup your Outlook environment like the following:
· define your accounts by using standard Outlook dialogs in tools®email accounts. define your signatures in tools®options®mail format®signature;
· disable the automatic signature insertion at tools®options®mail format®signature both for new and reply/forward emails (with Office Outlook 2003, you have to disable them for each defined account). also, disable Word as editor: RealAccount works with the Outlook internal editor only ;
· define rules to move incoming emails to specific folder based on - say - account used, specific words in topic, etc. the same for outgoing emails.
now, you are ready to define RealAccount behavior: use its tab on specific folder's properties and define which account and which signature to use when composing new mail, reply, etc.

Here are some key features of "RealAccount":

· Use specified account - if checked, RealAccount will instruct Outlook to use selected account when you're composing an email while the folder is selected. if grayed, feature settings are inherited from parent folder.

· Use specified signature - if checked, RealAccount will add selected signature to the email you're composing while the folder is selected. if grayed, feature settings are inherited from parent folder.

· Insert signature on top - if checked, the signature will be inserted on top of your message, otherwise it will appear at the bottom.

· Mark all messages read - if checked, RealAccount will instruct Outlook to mark any messages of the folder as read. this option helps when you setup different Sent Items folders and create rules to route sent items there: since Outlook marks sent items as unread, and there is no available rule to mark them as read, you'll take advantage of RealAccount. I use this option for trashed items, also. yes, there's a rule to mark messages as read, but it's for incoming messages not for outgoing ones. if grayed, feature setting is inherited from parent folder.

· Update child folders to inherit above settings - this option will set all child folders options to the grayed state, thus inheriting current folder settings. use it carefully as it overwrites any setting you made for child folders.

· ClickYes feature - starting from Outlook XP SP3, the Outlook Security Guard prompts you to give permission for a thirdy party application to access specific Outlook properties, such as email html body. since RealAccount must access such info every time, the dialog could be annoying. if you trust RealAccount, then enable this option and the plug-in will automatically grant its permission by pressing the Yes button for you.

· Log type - this option controls which kind of information will be logged on Windows system events (use the Event Viewer to look at). debug info may fill up your logging space, so enabled it when needed (and remember to uncheck it once done).


Requirements:

· RealAccount needs the CDO - collaborative data objects - library to work properly. the CDO is available as Outlook optional component in Office setup tool. if you encounter an OCX registering error, you may need to install Outlook itself :) or the VB6 runtimes .