Gwabbit for Outlook

CNET Editors' review

by: Jessica Dolcourt on March 17, 2009

At the end of the day, Gwabbit's Outlook add-on application is a good idea that doesn't work as well as it should. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try it. When in top form, Gwabbit added contacts' names, titles, phone numbers, and Web sites to the Outlook address book using information gleaned from an incoming e-mail. When it failed, Gwabbit didn't recognize anything apart from the contact's name and e-mail address, which Outlook can also do. It then prompted us to fill in the rest by scrolling through the e-mail in a separate window and highlight the signature block. Even then, the data transfer wasn't always successful.

Gwabbit's algorithm has difficulty separating the wheat from the chaff in the presence of images, security stamps of the sort that AVG Anti-Virus leaves to OK an incoming e-mail, and contact details that are scattered throughout the e-mail. It's also sensitive to the order of the information and doesn't seem to recognize individual words. As a result, a Twitter username became one colleague's official title in Outlook after using Gwabbit.

Still, those with more straightforward circumstances may yet benefit from Gwabbit's one-click address recording. It's worth a download of the trial software to see which category you fit into. For instance, if your antivirus application doesn't stamp every incoming e-mail and if you meet a sizable number of business contacts via e-mail, Gwabbit could become a favorite time-saving tool.