Recommendations to others considering Lookeen:
Windows 10 search is awesome. It is very basic but integrated into the operating system and works very well. That is, until it doesn’t. After the last update to Windows 10 version 2004, my Windows Search got messed up. Windows found only a subset of Outlook emails and PDFs had corrupted index data. During my troubleshooting, I had re-indexed and ran the search troubleshooter a number of times. Nothing worked. This was especially frustrating since I had abandoned the conventional folder hierarchy of storing email years ago. Now I just filed them in one Archive folder and use Outlook’s filters to find what I am looking for. So, I started testing a few alternate desktop search software.
I was finally able to fix Windows Search, but that was after I had already purchased Lookeen. Still, if you’re looking for something more than what Windows Search does, Lookeen is a software that will search Outlook as well as all files stored on drives. It creates its own index separate from Windows Indexing so it won’t be affected by any Windows Updates. However, in my testing, I found Lookeen to experience its own index corruption as well.
I’ve broken down this review in four sections: Software Installation, usage / functionality, support and overall.
Software installation: 2 stars out of 5
The installation is straight forward and very easy if it is not your first time installing and know exactly how you will be using Lookeen. I ended up installing it three times till I figured out what it’s doing and how I want to use the software.
The standard installation is with the Outlook plugin installed (default). So naturally, you let the software do the default and install the plugin. However, that also means that you won’t be able to use the desktop app by double clicking the ctrl key. So it’s a bit misleading. There is a way to get that functionality, but that means having to delete or rename a file in the installation directory. I preferred to just reinstall the software.
The second time I installed Lookeen without the plugin, but the Outlook plugin was still working. This made it more confusing as there were two Lookeen windows with two icons in the taskbar running two separate indexing for the same files. Very confusing, and this configuration ended up crashing Outlook a few times. So I went back to the default installation without the Desktop app.
As you can see, the installation needs to be polished up a bit so I gave it 2 stars.
Usage / Functionality: 3 stars out of 5
The results from searches are great. It finds everything in Outlook and all drives and displays them in a nice color-coded window. The filters make the software stand out in front of others which help you drill down to just the set of files you are looking for. And unlike DocFetcher, double clicking an email opens that file in Outlook provided Outlook is opened.
After indexing, Lookeen finds everything fast. Really fast. It’s almost instantaneous like using the software “Everything” by David Carpenter at Voidtools that searches as you type, but for file content as well.
The initial indexing does take a long time, but you can adjust the scheduling and how much computer resources to use with a nice slider. You can pause at anytime and it will continue where it left off. It has real time indexing as well as refresh on any schedule you decide. I never experienced any computer slowdowns or resources issues while Lookeen was indexing.
This scheduled indexing will refresh all the drives that were initially selected. Unlike the initial index, it doesn’t take as much time to go through them all again. But I have archives that I keep for historical reference that won’t change. So, I would prefer that Lookeen index them only once and never touch them again. There should be an option that would allow me to search those archives without refreshing the index on the schedule with my live Outlook datafiles and drive folders. For me, Lookeen took 48 hours to index about 1 TB of email archives and files. Refreshing took about an hour. Still, with the default refresh setting at a 2-hour interval, that means that Lookeen is basically indexing ALL DAY LONG!!
Also, I found that Lookeen would not find new email if the email was received / created during the indexing process. So, depending which archive Lookeen is indexing at the time, you may need to wait till Lookeen refreshes the index before seeing new items show up in the search. This is especially true during the initial index which could take a long time to complete.
Support: 5 stars out of 5
The software support I experienced with Lookeen was very good. The service was fast and provided personalized support on my specific discrepancies. I thought that I was getting my information from the same person who sold me the software and wrote the code to it. Very knowledgeable, friendly and patience to write emails explaining exactly what I needed to do.
Overall: 3 out of 5
I would recommend Lookeen desktop search only if your Windows Search gets corrupted.
This software does what it says it will do and cheaper than its competitors. At the time of this writing, X1 desktop search was at $96, Copernic Desktop Search Pro had a subscription service of $55 a year, and Lookeen Standard edition was priced at $69. Still it’s not cheap, and coupled with all the discrepancies encountered, in the end I give it an overall rating of 3 out of 5.
Truth be told, I probably would not have been in the market for a desktop search software if Windows Search hadn’t corrupted itself. But the fact that there are so many third-party desktop search programs leads me to believe that I was not the only person experiencing this problem. For me, I’ll probably be going back to Windows Search now that I was able to fix the corruption. I do not need Lookeen’ s extra search capabilities and the constant background refreshing and re-indexing is annoying. Plus, I experienced index corruption with Lookeen as well which meant having to re-index everything again for another two more days.
Here are a few requests I sent Lookeen for future revisions:
Feature Requests
• Reword or change the installation dialog to streamline the plugin and Desktop app.
• Remove the ctrl double click option if the Desktop version is not installed.
• Have only one Lookeen search window for both Plugin and Desktop.
• Be able to prioritize the order to index the email datafiles and folders.
• Introduce a capability to re-index (not refresh) a selection of files and folders.
• Allow Lookeen to index historical email archives, files and drives once with the option to not refresh those locations on the scheduled interval.
• Selecting only a subset of files in the options menu still shows search results from everything that was indexed in the past.
• Right click context menu should have the ability to “Send To” – “mail recipient” for files in the same way Windows Search allows. Lookeen does have this in the context menu for email, but not for files. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
