How to make Outlook 2011 for Mac sound like Apple Mail

I'm currently toying with alternatives to Apple Mail for my email reader. I want something more powerful and more flexible. I've got Office for Mac 2011 so I figured I'd give Outlook a go especially as it's my email client on my work machine which has Windows 7. The only downside is I really don't like the default sounds provided by Microsoft for Outlook, and I can't get used to them. I don't have sound on at work, so they are alien to me.

Thankfully, someone has made a sound set for Outlook 2011 from the Apple Mail sounds, which is great because I love the ‘whoosh’ sound. It’s funny how sound adds a whole level of extra polish to a desktop application if it’s done right, and it’s one of my favourite things about Apple Mail. Adding this to Outlook makes the world of difference. I don’t know if this will work directly for Outlook on Windows but I guess it would be possible to convert the .aiff files if you needed to. I’m not 100% on Outlook yet, so I might convert this to a Mozilla Thunderbird theme and try that instead.

It’s available as a .zip download with instructions here – http://www.imroot.com/2010/10/29/mac-outlook-2011-mac-mail-sounds/

Comments

[Marc]

Hi,

That link is now dead, so you still have the ZIP file by any chance?

Marc

[Antony]

Thanks for spotting this; the file has moved, it's now at http://www.imroot.com/macmail.zip . It looks like something has gone wrong with the original article on the imroot website, hopefully they will fix it soon. I've got a copy just in case it disappears completely.

[Gill]

Hi

I've downloaded zip file - how do I install the sounds?

Thanks, Gill

[Gill]

It's OK I've figured it out. It works brilliantly, thanks Anthony. I love the'whoosh' sound too!

[Antony]

It's great you managed to install it - there's something just right about that whoosh... so much so that without the sound it doesn't quite feel like the message has been sent. If only Thunderbird had the option to add a 'send mail' sound...