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address book

Backups: Don’t try to double-click on them

I received many emails this week thanking me for the tip on how to back up your address book. Don’t forget that I also have past tips on how to print your address book as well, check out the archives below. However, I also received many questions regarding why when you try to double-click to view a back up file an error occurs.

When you backup a database from within a program (like Quicken, Quickbooks, your address book, genealogy programs, etc), using the File –> Export or Backup function, the program performs two functions. The first step transforms the original data file into a proprietary file format for storage. Secondly, the program compresses the data so it takes up less space. By performing both of these functions, the file becomes unreadable by simply double-clicking on it. At this point, it is known as an archive file.

Print Address Book – Outlook Express Revisited

Prompted by a listener, here is the procedure for printing a copy of your address book from Outlook Express with more control than the tip we discussed a few weeks ago.

1. Open your Address Book from within Outlook Express
2. Click on File
3. Click on Export
4. Click on Other Address Book
5. Click on Text File (Comma Separated Values)
6. Click on Export
7. Type in Address in the white box
8. Click on Browse
9. Click on Desktop from the “Save In” box
10. Click on Save
11. Click on Next
12. Uncheck all the boxes except Name and Email Address
13. Click on Finish

Printing your email address book – Outlook Express & AOL

As promised, here is the technique for Outlook Express and AOL users:

Outlook Express Users

1. Start Outlook Express
2. Click on Tools from the menus
3. Click on Address Book
4. In the address book window, click on File from the menus, then Print
5. The print window gives you “style” options. Choose Business card for simplicity and to save paper

AOL Users

Use the “Print” option in your address book and choose from a single user, entire address book and choose whether you want all details for just essential information…choose the latter.

Printing your email address book – Netscape/Mozilla

Many people would like to print their address books as a backup. However, a better backup is to save your address book periodically on floppy disk.

Netscape Users

1. Click on Communicator from the menus, click on Address Book.
2. Click on the File menu
3. Click on Export
4. Click in the “save in” box and choose Desktop
5. Name the file address
6. Click in the “save as type” box and choose tab delimited
7. Click on Save
8. Close the address book
9. Click on Communicator from the menus, click on Navigator
10. Click on File from the menus
11. Click on “Open Page”

The efficient way to email your digital photos

I often get emails from family or friends who have recently been on vacation or been involved in some other event and they want to share a handful of photos with everyone in their address book. Some of the email works out great, but other email doesn’t quite make it through the way sender intended.

Emailing photos can be one of the most troublesome things you can do with your email for several reasons.

1. Non-resized photos can take a long time to upload to send through email on a dialup line.
2. Non-resized photos can take a long time to download for everyone you send the email to. Nothing is more aggravating than waiting 20 minutes for a photo to download so you can read your email, only to find out that the photo is of a funny position that the cat fell asleep in.

The efficient way to email your digital photos

by Adam Cochran

I often get emails from family or friends who have recently been on vacation or been involved in some other event and they want to share a handful of photos with everyone in their address book. Some of the email works out great, but other email doesn’t quite make it through the way sender intended.

Emailing photos can be one of the most troublesome things you can do with your email for several reasons.

  1. Non-resized photos can take a long time to upload to send through email on a dialup line.

  2. Non-resized photos can take a long time to download for everyone you send the email to. Nothing is more aggravating than waiting 20 minutes for a photo to download so you can read your email, only to find out that the photo is of a funny position that the cat fell asleep in.

Flash Memory Drives

A flash memory drive (a.k.a. thumb drive or USB drive) consists of a chip of memory (flash) mounted in a plastic case with a USB interface on one end (see the illustration for some examples). With Windows Me, 2000, XP and Macintosh computers, flash memory drives automatically get recognized as another storage drive on your computer. No installation CD’s, no formatting, just fast, safe removable storage.

In addition to their instant recognition and portability, flash drives offer the BEST way to backup day-to-day information like financial data, address books, genealogy, word processing documents, and spreadsheet documents.

Two other great advantages of flash drives are their speed and durability. You can copy 200 megabytes worth of data (literally thousands of word processing documents), in less than a minute! And because there are NO moving parts, the memory is quite stable and long lasting.

To use a flash memory drive, follow these steps:

1. Insert the drive into a USB port on your computer.
2. Wait approximately a minute (first time only) for the computer to recognize and install the device (Windows 98 need to install a driver)
3. Double-Click your My Computer icon to verify that another drive shows up (usually the first letter after your CD-ROM
4. In Windows XP, you can now RIGHT click on any folder or file and then Click Send To —> Removable Drive. This will instantly make a copy of the document or folder on your flash drive.
5. In Windows Me or 2000, you can copy and paste a folder or file to the flash drive or open the flash drive in a new window and drag your files to it
6. If you use a financial program, simply use the program’s built-in backup function and have it back up to your flash drive
7. To delete information from a flash memory drive, open up its icon in My Computer, then click on the file or folder you want to delete, and push DELETE on your keyboard