Most spam and phish-bait emails are easy to spot, but once in a while, some creative subject can leave you guessing whether a message is legitimate or not. If you're an Outlook user, the Productivity Portfolio blog recommends never opening those messages (and potentially proving your existence to said spammers); instead, use the "Message Options" dialogue, available with a right-click on any message, and check the reply-to address and header information for signs of fakery, such as slightly-spoofed email addresses (wa1mart.com, paypaI.com, and the like) and odd entries in the To: and X-Mailer field. You'll get a better chance of stopping the spam flow, and the satisfaction of not getting fooled again.

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Make it seem like you're sending email when you're really playing hooky with Outlook's built-in "defer delivery" rule. Tech blogger Dennis O'Reilly runs down how to set up Outlook to delay sending messages for a certain amount of time (like half an hour) automatically. You can also set individual messages to be sent on certain days at certain times in Outlook—good for scheduling future messages ahead of time.

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A slow or error-prone Outlook might mean your Personal Folders—the place where all your appointments, messages, and other data are kept—are corrupt and in need of some fixin'. The How-To Geek shows you the ins and outs of using a built-in Outlook tool to back up and repair your data, and hopefully get Outlook moving a little swifter once again. The Geek's tutorial should work for most any running version of Outlook. For a backup-only solution, try another free Microsoft tool.

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If you're a Googlehead but you're in a Microsoft environment at work, you will be happy to know that Google's come up with a synching tool for GCal and Microsoft Outlook. The GCal product manager wrote about the tool on the Google blog today.

Google Calendar Synch is a two-way syching tool which lets you add events in either calendar. You can download it here.

You can choose 1 way or 2 way synching, and specify how often it should synch (every 10 minutes is the minimum).

Once you've set up Google Calendar Synch, you'll be able to access the settings window by double-clicking on the calendar icon in the Windows System Tray.

Sounds great. I'm not running Outlook, but if you try it out please let us know how it works for you in comments.

Microsoft Outlook user and GTDer Scott Hanselman uses flags and search folders to clear his inbox. Scott writes:

I also try to get to ZEB (Zero Email Bounce) every day or so. This is when you "bounce" up against zero emails in your inbox... This doesn't mean that you've done all your tasks, instead it means you know what your tasks are. [...] Remember that your inbox is not storage, it's a list of what hasn't been categorized yet.

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Windows with Outlook only: The auto-completion feature in Outlook can be a time-saver, but only if you don't have to spend extra time making sure your message goes to the right John Smith. N2KView, a free Outlook modification utility, lets you jump into Outlook's auto-complete settings and view and delete entries, letting you free up those names you don't want to pop up when typing in addresses. Better still, using the guidance of the How-To Geek, you can pull off a quick export/import trick to actually edit your items, so you can assign whatever quick-type name you want to a contact. NK2View is a free download for Windows systems only. For more auto-complete wisdom, check out tips on avoiding auto-complete mix-ups.

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Lifehacker alumnus Rick Broida posts a quick fix at the BNET blog for a quirk of Outlook 2003 that (still) hasn't really been addressed—compressed .ZIP files don't show up in the standard "Insert File" chooser used for email attachments. Rather than manually drag and drop every .ZIP file, Rick has this quick registry-tweaking fix:

• In Windows XP, click Start > Run, then type Command and hit Enter. In Vista, click Start, type Command and hit Enter.
• Type regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll
• Wait for a confirmation box to appear. Click OK, then type Exit into the Command window to close it.

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Microsoft Outlook 2007 only: If there are certain phrases or images you put in email messages, Outlook 2007's Quick Parts feature saves those up for easy reuse. The Productivity Portfolio blog explains how to save email bits—like a company logo, directions, company policy or signatures—to your Quick Parts gallery and drop them in email messages quickly to save typing. Of course, our homegrown application Texter can do global text snippet insertion (not just in Outlook), but Quick Parts sounds like a nice solution for quick image reuse in Outlook.

Outlook users who want to move to Gmail—or just back up their existing Outlook mail there—can do so using Gmail's IMAP access. Tech blog Digital Inspiration covers how. In a nutshell, set up IMAP access to Gmail in Outlook, and drag and drop your folders onto Google's servers. Simple.

The Productivity Portfolio blog covers how to email your calendar in Outlook 2007 in a format that anyone—even non-Outlook users—can open. Everyone's got wacky work and life schedules around the holidays, so you may want to dash off your calendar to a co-worker or client before you go. In short, Outlook attaches an .ISC file to the outgoing email, which the recipient can open in iCal, Google Calendar, or any app that supports iCalendar files. Handy.