Email Tips N Tricks
This is the page for email tips and will updated weekly if we can find loads more for you. This page was set up for beginners, in fact there is no such thing. If you cant spend a lot of time in front of your pc then you don't get the chance to learn the little tricks that we get hold of and have mastered over the years. Some of you advanced user like myself may find this section useful as well as when I was doing the page I came across 2 additions I got hold of from a friend I was not aware of and will be using now. So alas as I say here is a few tips and I hope it is of use to you at some point. Click on the orange txt header and it will take you right the part of how to do it.
Easily identify the good stuff. Fix E-mails that come in ALL CAPS. Having trouble sending your e-mail? E-mail web pages to friends with this handy little trick. Turn off the Outlook Express preview pane. Why not just send your saved folder?
Easily identify the good stuff. If you are using a mail client like Outlook Express then you know that Message Rules are probably the most versatile and helpful feature. We've told you how to use them for blocking unwanted email, white listing, automatic forwarding, and sorting into folders. This new trick is great for helping you easily identify the good stuff when wading through a mountain of email. How would you like to just look at your inbox and be able to recognize email from business contacts, friends, or family just by the color? You could set it up so that business contacts are green, family comes in blue, your spouse comes in red, etc. Enough talk, let's get into it... In Outlook Express, follow the usual procedure for Message Rules: Go to Tools / Message Rules / Mail, then click "New". Now comes the fun part: for this example, I will select the condition "Where the From line contains people", but you could use any of the options. For the action, select "Highlight with color". Under "Rule Description", click on "contains people". You can type in addresses or domains then click "Add", or click on the Address Book and select names from there. When finished click OK. Next we want to choose a color. Click on "color" and a little box will appear. Click the arrow and a palette will appear, from there just choose a color. Now give the Message Rule a name. Fix E-mails that come in ALL CAPS. I had someone asked me how they could re-format an all caps sentence so it was in regular, lowercase format. Well, if you have WordPerfect or MS Word, you're in luck. Here's how to do it in each: MS Word: 1. Highlight the text you want to have de-capitalized. 2. Click the Format menu, Change Case... 3. A little screen will pop up that lets you select what case you want. Sentence Case is probably appropriate. WordPerfect: 1. Highlight the text you want to have de-capitalized. 2. Click the Edit menu, Convert Case. 3. A sub menu will give you some case changing options. You'll probably want "lowercase". That's it. Do you keep all of your contacts in the address book of your web-based email? What happens if you switch to a new ISP and you want to take your friends along? There is, of course, the tedious method of printing out your address book and re-entering all the info, but I like to save time whenever I can. Many web-based email address books have the option to import/export contacts into an Outlook (.CVS) or Netscape (LDIF) address book file. But if yours does not, or if you are migrating to another web-based email, here is an easy little trick. NOTE: Since every web-based email site is unique, these general procedures may need modification. Go to the address book of your web-based email account. Choose all of your personal contacts as the recipient of an email then click COMPOSE. Highlight and CUT (CTRL+X) addresses from the TO box, then PASTE (CTLR+V) into body of the email. Put each address on its own line (in other words, delete the commas and hit ENTER). Change the recipient to your NEW email address and you are ready to SEND. Seconds later you will receive an email containing all of your contact email addresses. There are as many ways of transferring these addresses as there are programs and web-based email sites. In Outlook, you can just right click each address and add to your new address book. You may need to play around to find out how to add contacts from the body of an email to your new web-based email address book. You might need to copy each address from the body of the email then paste into the address book. Whatever the process, at least you have the address list to work with. Having trouble sending your e-mail? If this hasn't already happened to you, it probably will. You have a piece of e-mail ready to go out, you try to send it, and it won't go. All you get is an error message during every send cycle. The e-mail seems like it's "stuck" in your outbox. Sometimes it can get even worse (especially with Outlook / Outlook Express). You may have a piece of e-mail come in that causes your computer or e-mail client to lock up when you select (click) it. What can you do? The first thing to try is going to the e-mail in question and deleting it. If it's in your outbox, go to your outbox, highlight the e-mail, and hit your Delete key. What if that piece of e-mail is causing your e-mail program to lock up? Well, don't worry, there's still hope. Most of the time those lockups are due to something in the e-mail itself. It could be a bad script, corrupt sound, errant piece of coding, or any number of other problems. When you click the e-mail, it automatically opens in the preview pane and locks things up before you can get to the Delete key. The solution is to temporarily close that preview pane, then select and delete the e-mail. I've never seen that little trick not work. So, how do you close the preview pane? Easy! (instructions below are for Outlook Express) 1. Click the View menu, Layout. 2. Uncheck the "Preview Pane" checkbox (check out all the other options too :-). Hit OK and you should be able to go in and get rid of that problematic e-mail. Once it's history, just follow the steps above, but this time check the preview pane box. Do you wish there was an easier way to place attachments in your e-mail messages? I mean, every time you go to put an attachment in, you have to wade through a slew of menus and files just to get the thing attached. Well, with both MS Outlook Express & Netscape Messenger, there is an easier way. (You knew it, didn't you?) With MS Outlook, Outlook Express, & Netscape Messenger, you can drag & drop files from Windows Explorer (or anywhere else) to the message you want them attached to. Here's how: First, open Windows Explorer or My Computer and navigate to the file you want to send. Next open your e-mail program and start a new message. Finally, just drag the file to the body of the message and let go. You're all attached. If you're using a different e-mail program, it *may* support this as well. You'll have to experiment to find out. First try dragging & dropping to the body. If that doesn't work, try the subject line. E-mail web pages to friends with this handy little trick. Have you ever wanted to show a friend the web page you were at? Maybe you felt the need to share a cool recipe you just discovered or maybe it's full of swimsuit models. In any case, if you're using Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator you can. Here's how to send your homepage to a buddy: Internet Explorer: 1. Head to your homepage. 2. Click the File menu, Send, Page by e-mail. 3. Outlook Express (or Outlook) will now open and the page you were just looking at will be made into an e-mail message. All you need to do is fill in the recipient's address and send it off. To test this, use your own address and send it to yourself. Final Notes: Your friend will need an HTML compatible e-mail client to actually be able to view the page. Don't worry. Most e-mail programs are HTML capable. You can set up "message rules" or filters in most e-mail clients. These can grab an incoming message and make it history before you ever lay eyes on it. You can have the message rules set up to check for certain subject lines, e-mail addresses, or even words. Since we've been on the subject of trying to get the porn e-mail our of our lives, I'll show you how to do that using Outlook Express. Please note that most e-mail clients work in a similar way (in Netscape, you set this up using the Edit menu, Message Filters). Here's the steps - it's not at bad as it looks: 1. Click the Tools menu, Message Rules, Mail. 2. On the screen that pops up, click the New button (for newer versions of Outlook Express, you don't have to hit the New button - the screen you need pops up automatically). 3. At this point, there should be a screen that lets you set up your rules. Check the options you want to filter. As soon as you check them, you'll get a new item under the Rules Description section. Click the underlined area to set the actual stuff you're filtering for. For instance, if you're trying to filter out porn e-mail, click the checkbox in the first section, "Where the message body contains specific words". Now, click the link in the Rules Description box for "Contains specific words" (this looks just like a regular web page link). On the window that opens, type in the words you want to filter. A word of caution though. Pick your words very carefully. If you choose a word like "naked", you'll never get an e-mail that contains that word, even if it was used in a harmless way like "the naked baby streaked through the yard" or something similar. A few clicks of the OK button and you should be back to the message rules screen. 4. Now, you'll need to decide what you want done to the message once it gets filtered. This is done in the second section of the screen, "Select the actions you want to rule". In this case, you're probably best to scroll down to the Delete From Server checkbox. That should prevent it from downloading. Or you can just send it to the Deleted Items folder, that works too. That should help you keep the porn spam out of your inbox, but keep in mind that you can also use message filters to send stuff to specific folders you create. For example, if you have 3 e-mail accounts, you can set up a filter that sends each address to a different folder. You've accidentally blocked a sender with Outlook Express. Now you want to know how can I unblock him - here's how. First, for those who don't know, you can block senders with most e-mail software (when you "block" someone all their e-mail gets deleted as it comes in). When you block a sender, it automatically deletes any e-mail coming from them. In Outlook Express, just hit the Messages menu, Block Sender to block the currently selected e-mail - don't try this now though, or you'll accidentally block me! OK, so how do you unblock someone you've accidentally blocked? In Outlook Express, hit the Tools menu, Message Rules, Blocked Senders. Just highlight the person you want to unblock and hit the "remove" button. PS - Most other e-mail software will allow you to block people - either using a similar method or by using "filters". You can set these filters to automatically send messages to the recycle bin if you like. Turn off the Outlook Express preview pane. You have Outlook Express and would like to know if there's a way to delete an e-mail before opening it. As soon as you click on the e-mail in question, it displays in the preview area and locks up your computer. What should you do? Want an
easy way to turn off (or on) your Outlook Express preview pane? You can add a
button to your toolbar for it! Here's how: 1. Right-click the Toolbar in Outlook Express and select Customize from the resulting menu. 2. Scroll down the "Available toolbar buttons" list until you find a button labeled" Preview". Click the button (to select it) and then click the "Add" button to add it to your toolbar. That's it. Close the screen and click the Preview pane button on your toolbar to toggle the preview pane on and off. Why not just send your saved folder? Do you use folders in Outlook Express to keep your e-mail organized? Maybe you have a whole slew of information in one of those folders you'd like to share with a friend. Should you just forward each piece of e-mail to them? Maybe do a printout? How about just sending them your entire folder? Didn't know you could do that, did you? Here's how to get them the info. In part 2, we'll show you how to get it into their folder list (there's a trick to it). 1. First, you're going to need the location that Outlook Express is using to store your information (folders). You can get that by hitting the Tools menu, Options. 2. Click the Maintenance tab and then the "Store Folder" button 3. A screen will pop up that gives you the secret location of where Outlook Express is keeping your e-mail. If your memory is short, or the path is long, you may want to write that info down. 4. OK, now close out the Store folder and Options screens. You have what ya came for. 5. Next, open the My Computer icon on your desktop (XP users, hit Start, My Computer). 6. Navigate to the location where Outlook Express is keeping your e-mail. Once you're there, you should see your Outlook Express folders listed. Note that if you have your computer set up to view file extensions, the files will end with ".dbx" (like Inbox.dbx). To send this file to a friend, just right-click it and select "Send to, Mail Recipient". Of course, you can copy it to a disk (if it fits) or a CD-R if you like. OK, that's how you find and send it. Now, how does the person who gets this file integrate it into their mailbox? OK, we did the first part of this tip where we learned how to save (or send) an outlook express folder. Now, we're going to go over what to do with that saved (or sent) folder once you get it to the computer you want it on. So... 1. Follow the procedure we did in part 1 on the recipient's computer to figure out where it's storing its Outlook Express mail. 2. Save the stored folder to that location. If it was e-mailed, double-click the attachment and do a "Save As". If you have it on a disk or CD, you'll need to copy and paste it into the store folder. Note that if you're using a CD you may need to take off the "read only" attribute (right-click the file, Properties. Then uncheck the "Read only" checkbox if it's checked). 3. OK your file should be sitting in the "Store" folder now. However, that's just not going to be enough. You'll need to go to that location and delete the "Folders" file (note that Outlook Express will need to be shut off for you to do this). Your "Folders" file keeps track of what folders you have in Outlook Express. However, it's not smart enough to look for new folders each time you load the program. It only lists what it "knows" are there. When you delete it, Outlook Express is forced to create a new "Folders" file. This new one will include the ALL the folders in the directory (including the new one you just added). After you've deleted the file, start Outlook Express again. The new folder should be listed. That should do it. I know it seems long and involved, but it really isn't all that hard. Oh, and yes, this would be a great way to backup and restore Outlook Express mail when you get a new computer or need to reformat the old one.
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