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ABC ~ All
'Bout Computers
The Online Web-azine for Computer
Enthusiasts
-- brought to you by
Outlook Express Tips
from
PCTechTalk's
Guitar Man
G
Man runs a free, 24-hour-a-day email tech list where you can submit any
questions you have about computer hardware & software. You can
request fixes for specific problems you're having with your computer or
just sit back and learn from the conversations of the other members.
This list is one of the only PC Groups I've found that truly caters to
newbies and nerds alike, so you can be assured that your questions will
be taken seriously. To join, either click on the PCTechTalk link above,
or click
here
and just hit the send button.
If you have any questions about any of
these OE tips, drop me a line at PC_Tech@softhome.net and I'll try to
clear things up for ya. :O)
Enjoy!
G Man
"The only dumb questions are the
ones that are never asked!"
Volume 14 Tip, July 2002
Easy Way To Make a "Template" in OE
If you have a highly formatted email message that needs to be sent out
more than once (such as a list of rules for an email list, images and
descriptions from the latest family reunion or an announcement of
someone's
birth including pictures), here's a suggestion for saving yourself a whole
lot of work.
1. Create the entire message using Rich Text (Format/Rich Text), including
all text and image formatting to get it exactly the way you want it to
look. Type in the subject line you wish to use and make sure it's
set to use the
correct email address in the From: field (this will be one of your own
email addresses). Just be sure that you don't put anyone's address in the
To: field.
2. Before sending it off to someone, click on 'File' and then 'Save As'
and save it with a descriptive name to your My Documents folder (such as
'My Grand Canyon Trip'). You might even want to create a new subfolder
under My
Documents to hold them if you expect to be making a few of these. The
resulting file will have a .eml extension once it's been saved.
3. Open up Windows Explorer, make your way to the My Documents folder and
locate the file you just saved. Use your right mouse button to drag the
file onto your desktop or QuickLaunch taskbar (I prefer the QuickLaunch
taskbar location). When you get there, let go of the mouse button and a
menu will appear. Choose "Create Shortcut(s) Here".
From now on, you can click on this shortcut to open up a new email message
that's already ready already. All you need to do is personalize it (Hi
Frank,), address it (with Frank's email address) and click on the Send
button. This method is a LOT easier than recreating the whole thing for
everyone who deserves to see the new baby/Graduation pictures/etc.
Volume
13 Tip, June 2002
Signatures
Ever wish there was a way to have your usual signature (Great big hugs
and kisses, Luv Franny) added to every message you write without you
having to type it each time? Well, guess what? You can! Every version of
Outlook Express since its inception has this ability (and so does yours).
To kick this wonderful convenience into high gear, open up OE and go to
Tools/Options and then click on the Signatures tab. If you already see a
listing called Default under the 'Signatures' area, click directly on the
word Default to select it. If it's not there, click on the New button to
create it. Next, click on the 'Text' radio button (the little circle next
to the word Text) in the 'Edit Signature' area, click anywhere inside the
white box next to it and type out your favorite signature.
I would suggest that you start by pressing the Enter key in order to add a
blank space just above the signature. I'll also suggest that you press it
again at the very end to add a space there as well. These two things will
allow your sig to stand out from the body of whatever messages you decide
to compose and send. When you're finished editing your signature, go back
up to the top of this window and place a check mark next to the statement
that reads "Add signatures to all outgoing messages". Also, make sure
there's NOT a chack mark next to the one that says "Don't add signatures
to replies and forwards". These two things will assure that the signature
is already a part of the messages you compose, even before you start to
type (you'll see what I mean when you first try it).
When you're all done, click on the OK button at the bottom of the screen
to set it in stone. Well, it's not really stone since you can come back to
this area whenever you'd like and make changes to the signature anytime
you want. From this point on, you'll never have to type out your sig ever
again.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
If you wish (and I'm pretty sure most of you will), you can go back up to
the "Signatures" area, click on that New button and create another
signature if you'd like. In fact, there's no limit to how many of these
you can create and use. Just keep in mind that the sig that's set as the
Default will automatically be applied to each and every new message, reply
and forward you make. If you'd rather use an alternate sig (one of the
others you created above), you'll have to delete the letters that make up
the sig that OE places and then go to Insert/Signature/(signame) where (signame)
denotes the name of the specific signature you wish to use.
If you decide to go ahead and make multiple signatures, I would strongly
suggest that you give each one a name that makes it easy to remember which
one is which. To do that, click directly on the name of the signature
(Default, Signature #1, Signature #2, etc.) to select it. Then, click on
it again and type in a new name. As an example, the sig that I use for my
computer tech messages is called 'PCTech' (this is also my 'Default' sig
since the majority of my email is related to my free email tech list). The
one I use for emails to family and friends is called 'Family'. The one for
the websites I run is called 'Webmaster'. With the help of these examples,
I'm sure you'll have no problem figuring out the best names for the sigs
you choose to set up.
SO, NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY???
One last thing. If you decide that you'd rather use one of the other
signatures as the default, go back into this area, click directly on the
name of that sig and then click on the Default button. From that point on,
this will be the sig that OE places in every message you write.
some assembly required
batteries not included
action figures sold separately
OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! :OÞ Volume 10 Tip, March 2002
How to Backup OE Completely
click for full article
Volume
9 Tip, February 2002
Hiding Email Addresses Using BCC
This month, I'd like to
discuss an issue that drives most of us nuts. Chain letter emails. Now,
before you start thinking that I'm gonna spend this time telling you how
bad this practice is, take heart. I'm actually here to help by showing
you how to best keep your friend's email addresses hidden from the other
folks to whom you decide to send these messages.
One of the worse
by-products of these messages is the fact that it exposes everyone's
email address to everyone else who receives a copy of the message. This
is not good for their privacy, especially if the message you're sending
contains any sort of racist or sex-related jokes/topics (the morals of
which are well beyond the scope of this tip). It's even possible that it
could get them in some sort of trouble if word gets back to their
co-workers, boss, wife, husband, kids, etc.
In order to minimize
this possibility, here's how to hide ALL of the email addresses. Open up
a new message (or click on the Forward button while viewing something
you'd like to send to several people at once). At the top of the window,
click on View and then click on the All Headers listing (only if it's
not already checked). This will bring up a new address field called Bcc:
(which stands for Blind Carbon Copy). If you click directly on the Bcc:
button, you'll see a list of everyone in your contact list (Address
Book) and you can simply double click on those whom you wish to forward
the messages you send. They will automatically be added to the list when
you finally click on the OK button at the bottom of that window. The
message will be sent to everyone listed under that field, but they will
not get to see anyone else's email address. In fact, they will not even
see their own. This is the proper way to handle sending messages to
multiple recipients.
Now, while I may have
directed this tip to folks who forward chain letter emails, it also
applies to anyone wishing to send any type of message to more than one
person at a time. Most people value their online anonymity. Help them
preserve it by hiding their email addresses from others.
Volume
8 Tip, January 2002
Making the Most of OE's Use of Hard Drive Space
First, here's the tech
side of things broken down into simple English:
As you're probably
aware, every message you download into OE is stored in a special set of
files in a single folder on your hard drive. Unfortunately, the
space this email takes up isn't automatically returned to its previously
free state (where the hard drive space is available to Windows for
storing data) once you delete the message. Instead, these files
are altered in such a way that you can no longer see or get to that
particular message from within OE. In other words, THE MESSAGE IS
STILL THERE! The only difference is that you can no longer see it
in OE.
And now, how to fix
this:
Before you panic (as the realization hits you that
all of those messages you THOUGHT you deleted will eventually fill up
your hard drive). There is a simple way that you can permanently get rid
of the garbage as well as clean these files of all this wasted
space. It involves getting yourself used to the habit of
compressing each folder the moment you decide you've finished going
through the messages they contain. Below is an example to show you
exactly what I mean.
Say you've been reading
all of the jokes your friend Cindy likes to send to you every few
days. If you followed my last two-part tip on creating folders and
Message Rules, you're probably reading them from within a folder called
Cindy (which is possible a subfolder of one called Friends).
Before you click on another folder (and leave the Cindy folder) to
continue going through unread messages from your other friends, click to
File/Folder and finally on Compact. You'll see a status bar window
open up and hear some hard drive activity. What's actually
happening is that OE is examining the special file that stores all of
the messages that are in the Cindy folder
and eliminating that wasted space I mentioned earlier. When it's
through (it could be almost instantaneous or it could take a bit of time
depending
on the number of messages stored in the folder), you will have
compressed the special file and the wasted space will have been returned
to Windows.
If you can get yourself
into the habit of doing this for EVERY OE folder as soon as you're
finished with it, you'll never have the problem of OE preventing you
from having as much free hard drive space as possible.
If the idea presented
in this tip is completely new to you, you might want to go the extra
mile the first time you try it. Instead of choosing Compact,
choose Compact All Folders in the directions above. This command
will tell OE to go through ALL of those special files and get rid of all
of the wasted space contained within them. Just for kicks, I
HIGHLY suggest that you check your free hard drive space before and
after running it (open up My Computer and right click on your C:\
drive. from the context menu that opens up, click on Properties to
see the info on your hard drive space).
Don't be too surprised
if you regain a LOT of space. If you end up recovering more hard
drive space than you ever dreamed possible, write me a short email and
tell me about it (I just LOVE hearing success stories lol).
8^)
Volume
7 Tip, December 2001
Organizing Your Inbox, Part 2
Message Rules
Last month, we discussed how to set up
new folders to help organize all of your incoming email.
This month, we're gonna take this idea
further by setting up some Message Rules that will examine each incoming
email and direct it to specific folders.
The first step is to decide which
messages you'd like to send directly to the folders you created. If you
took my advice and set up one for each of your friends, they will
probably be near the top of your list. Here's how to set them up.
In OE, go to Tools, click on Message
Rules and then on Mail. When the Message Rules window opens, click on
the New button on the right side.
In the top section (Select the
conditions for your rule), place a check mark next to the "Where
the From line contains people" line.
In the second section (Select the actions for your rule),
click on the "Move it to the specified folder" line.
In the third
section, click directly on the blue words "contains people". Another
window will open. Type in your friend's email address and triple check it for
accuracy.
Click on the Add button and then on the OK button to set this part of
the rule (I find it much easier to just press the Enter key twice).
Next, click
directly on the blue word "Specified". Another window
will open asking you to select the folder that will accept these messages as they are
downloaded into OE.
Locate and click on the one with your friend's name and
click on the OK button to set this part of the rule.
In the last section,
give the rule a descriptive name (in this case, just call it Jack if that's
your friend's name).
Click the OK button at the bottom to set this rule
in stone and repeat the process for the rest of your friends.
When you're finished adding friends,
you may wish to add any newsletters or email groups to which you belong. Go
through the same steps, but place the top check mark next to something
that is always the same for messages from that list. In the case of this
newsletter, every message has [ABComputers] somewhere in the subject line. In that
case, place a check next to the "Where the Subject Line contains
certain words" instead of the "Where the To line contains people" line we used
in the friends example above. When you're ready to fill it in, use "[ABComputers]"
(without the quotes) as the text it should recognize. Of course,
you'll have to replace that "[ABComputers]" part with
whatever makes sense for each newsletter or email group to which you belong.
When you've finished adding all of the
rules you want, you'll find that most of your incoming messages will not
go to your Inbox. Instead, it'll be much easier to follow conversations
with friends, fellow list members and newsletters from within their own
folders. Keep in mind that Message Rules are an ongoing process. You'll find
yourself adding new rules as your subscription preferences change.
Also,
when you leave an email group or unsubscribe from a newsletter, there's
no longer a reason to keep its rule. There's a Delete button in there to
allow you to easily remove an unnecessary rule.
Volume
6 Tip, November 2001
Organizing Your Inbox
Now that we've discussed how to back up
your all-important Address Book and all of those email accounts you've
managed to accumulate (I currently use 8 of them), let's focus our
attention on cleaning things up a bit and getting
better organized.
When you first bring home a new
computer (or just after a reformat and reinstall of Windows), chances
are very good that Outlook Express is already installed on the system.
Actually, I've never seen a Windows system that lacked this highly
versatile email/newsletter program. Unfortunately, it doesn't know
anything about you or your interests. When you first set up your email
accounts, all of the messages you receive will be unceremoniously dumped
into your Inbox and you'll need to go through them one at a time while
deciding which ones are important, which ones can be deleted and which
ones you might even want to save for future reference.
If you receive a lot of email, this can
get quite tedious.
The first step to gaining some
semblance of control over this chaos is to create some new subfolders to
keep your messages better organized. To help you with this, here is the
easiest method I've found along with some organizational suggestions.
With your mouse cursor hovering
directly above the Inbox folder, right click and a context menu will
appear. Choose "New Folder" from this menu and a window will
pop open. Type in an appropriate name such as "Friends" and
then click on the OK button at the bottom of the window. Immediately, a
new folder called Friends will appear as a subfolder of your Inbox. This
would be all you need if you only have one friend who sends you
email. However, that's rarely the case, so let's create some
additional subfolders to keep our friends messages separate from each
other.
Following the same procedure above,
right click directly on the Friends folder, choose New Folder from the
menu and give the folder the name of one of your friends. Repeat
the process until you've given all of your current email-sending friends
their own special folder.
Now that you have all of these folders
set up, go back to your inbox and move their messages into the
appropriate folders. You'll find it much easier to do this if you click
on the thin "From" bar along the very top of the Preview pane
(where you actually read the messages they send) since this groups all
of the messages by the sender's name in alphabetical order. Click
it again to reverse the order if you prefer. Now, click once on the top
message from one of your friends to highlight it. Hold down the Shift
key on your keyboard while you click once on the last message from the
same person. This procedure will select ALL of the message from that
person. Now, it's just a simple matter of using the left mouse
button to grab and drag any of that person's messages to the proper
subfolder. If done correctly, you'll see that you've actually moved ALL
of that person's messages at once. Now, go and do the same thing for all
of your other friends' emails.
After cleaning up stuff you've received
from your friends, you can make other folders under the Inbox to help
you organize stuff ranging from email lists (such as my PCTechTalk
group) to newsletters to jokes to whatever else you need.
Just remember that even if you make a mistake, you can always Rename a
folder or even Move it to another location after it's been created.
Next month, we'll discuss how to set up
Message Rules so that new email will automatically filter into the
folders you decide to create.
Volume
5 Tip, October 2001
Backing Up Your Email Account Info
Last time we talked about the best way
to back up your Address Book. This month, let's take a look at
backing up your email account information.
This is especially handy if you have
more than one account set up within OE.
With Outlook Express open, go to
Tools/Accounts and then click on the Mail tab at the top of the window
(in most cases, this will already be selected).
Click on one of your accounts to
highlight it and then click on the Export button on the right side. This
will open up the "Export Internet Settings" box which works
just like a normal "Save As" box.
I highly recommend that you create a
new folder to hold these account settings files (I called mine "OE
Email Accounts" to make it easy to remember what's in there).
Once you make the folder (or decide on
what existing folder you want to use for this) and then enter it by
double clicking on the folder's name, click on the "Save"
button to create a file that contains that account's info.
This will also take you right back to
the main window where you can repeat the process for each of your email
accounts.
Volume
4 Tip, September 2001
Backing Up Your Address Book
If you're like most folks, your Address
Book is your lifeline to the world of email. As such, it's EXTREMELY
important that you back up the info it contains on a regular basis.
To back it up, open up Outlook Express
and go to File/Export/Address Book.
When the Export Wizard opens, select
the "Text File (Comma Separated Values)" option and click on
the Export button. The wizard will ask you to give the file a name. I
suggest using something like "OE Address Book 8_26_01" to help
you to remember what it is and when you created it.
After giving it a name, click on the
Browse button and show the wizard where you'd like to store this file
(the My Documents folder works great for this).
Click on the Next button to continue
creating the back up. Select the fields you want to export (unless you
have a good reason for not allowing some of them, I suggest selecting
all of them). When you're finished, click on the Finish button to
complete the creation of the back up.
While the default My Documents folder
works fine for storing the backup on your hard drive, I recommend that
you now copy the resulting file onto a floppy or some other form of
storage outside of your computer. This is necessary in case of a full
hard drive crash or if the need for a hard drive format ever comes up.
Volume 3 Tip, August
2001
Spell Checker
If your system has certain programs installed such as MS Office, MS
Word and others that include spell checking options, Outlook Express (OE)
can take advantage of that feature whenever you send a message or reply.
Unfortunately, it's not fully enabled by default. To make it work, open
up OE, click on Tools and then Options. Click on the Spelling tab
(you'll only see it if one of the programs listed above is installed)
and place a check mark next to "Always check spelling before
sending". While you're in there, you may wish to enable or disable
some of the other options presented.
Volume 2 Tip, July
2001
Organizing Mail by "Conversation"
Many people don't realize that they can make reading their email
easier on themselves in many ways. One such way is
to group together all of the messages that form a conversation (which is
also called a thread). To group them together, open up Outlook Express
and go to the 'View' menu, click on 'Current View' and then on 'Group
Messages by Conversation'. From now on, any messages that form a thread
(conversation) will be grouped together in order of their date
received." |
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