Outlook Express | Castellini on Computers - Computer help for beginners

Posts Tagged: Outlook Express

Email Tips — No Comments
18
Oct 09

Email Filters – Outlook Express

This tip gives you the tools you need to help organize your email with Outlook Express or Windows Mail. Using Filters is like having an assistant go through your email for you and sort it before you see it. Click here for a previous tip on how to use filters to keep spam out of your inbox. Continue reading →

Email Tips — 11 Comments
3
Oct 09

Backup Outlook Express Email – Video Tip

This week’s tip also applies to Windows Vista users who use Windows Mail…which is basically Outlook Express with a new name.

I still recommend that emailers save their important pictures and documents sent to them via email to a folder on their computer for easier backup (see my video tip on how to do this by clicking here), but many people also save a great deal of email and don’t want Continue reading →

Opening PPS (PowerPoint) files in Outlook Express

PPS files are PowerPoint presentation slide shows that have been saved as a file that can be viewed by anyone. If you get a PPS file and can’t see the slide show, then click here for our tip on where to find the free PowerPoint viewer.

Once you get the viewer, however, some people still can’t see the slide shows without first saving the attachment to the desktop then double-clicking it from there. It works, but requires a few more steps. Today, I had a call from a customer who was in this situation and really wanted to avoid having to first save the attachment, close email, look for the file and then double-click it to view the slide show.

I sucked it up and did some research and found a little tool that works great to correct this problem and allow Outlook Express and other email users the ability to view their PPS files from within their email.

Click here to download the PPSfix program zip file
Close all programs
Double-click the attachment you just saved.
Drag the PPSfix.exe file out to your desktop
Double-click the PPSFix file
Follow on-screen instructions

You can delete the file you downloaded and the one you just double-clicked when you finish the above steps.

Riding Shotgun with Rick / Videocasts — No Comments
1
Nov 08

Rick’s Answers his email Videocast – 018

Many good questions this week ranging from Cameroon Pet Scams to using Outlook vs. Outlook Express, Picasa printing, sound card problems, and much more. Questions this are brought to you by: Don, Irv, Margie, Rosie, David, Dave, Dave, Marcel, and Tom. Take a look!

Email Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 3 Comments
27
Oct 08

Clean your inbox

stuffed inbox Email truly revolutionized communication. The ability to retrieve a message from anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds is mind boggling. However, judging by the size of your inboxes (a poll I posted recently showed that 60% of email users had more than 100 messages in their inbox), you could benefit from some tips on how to keep your inbox clean.

I used to keep as many as many as 50 or so email stacked up in my inbox, but I always felt that I was behind in my work and consequently much of the email went unread and unanswered. A little more than a year ago, it all changed after I read an article that struck a chord with me called Email Zen. I immediately started practicing the techniques and suggestions in the article and found myself with a cleaner inbox and a better overall outlook (no pun intended) about email and my email communication. I continue to strive for the empty inbox and find that if i get more than 10, I start to get a little jumpy.

From reading that article and my own experience over the past eighteen months, here are my suggestions for reaching harmony with email:

Employ a good spam filter. The best one available for Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird is Cloudmark Desktop, hands down. Don’t even bother telling me about another one…unless it is better than this one.
Use Gmail instead of Outlook or any other email system. The tools available in Gmail make handling email a breeze, and the built-in spam filter with Gmail is phenomenal negating step 1.
Learn to use filters to sort and manage your email.
Learn to use built-in search tools in your email program to extract information from saved email.
Unsubscribe from any online newsletters, forums, or email groups that you don’t actively read and never will. Remember NOT to unsubscribe from spam, that only brings more spam.
Ask your email buddies who forward messages and jokes to you that you would like to be removed from their list…again, if you don’t actively read them.
Respond to your incoming email as quickly as possible…preferably directly after you read it so that it is handled only one time.
If you have a phone that is capable of checking your email, use it while in the bathroom, standing in line for lunch, waiting for an appointment, etc. Responding to an email on your phone will make your response brief and to the point and save you that time later when you return to your computer.

Another good article for learning how to handle email in an efficient manner is Inbox Zero over at 43folders.com If you have some other techniques that you find work well for keeping email under control, leave a comment and share it! If you are one of the 60% plus who have 50 or more email in their inbox, give these techniques a try and let me know what you think.

Photo by PatrickO’Shaughnessey

Email Tips / Internet Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 14 Comments
22
Oct 08

Import Outlook Contacts into Gmail WITH Street Addresses

Old Gmail Link

After running into this issue one to many times lately, I finally found a fast solution. Problem: Outlook users who want to export their address books (contacts) and import them into Gmail can get almost everything imported except street addresses. It’s maddening. Madness be gone, the solution is now just a few steps away.

Exporting your contacts from Outlook:

Open Outlook (note this is NOT Outlook Express)
Click File –> Import/Export
Click Export to a file
Click Next
Click Comma Separated Values (Windows) option
Click Next
Click Contacts from the list of your Outlook items on the next screen
Click Next
Click Browser and choose My Documents or the Desktop as the destination for your file
Type a name for the file (why not Contacts for Gmail)
Click OK
Click Next
Click Finish

Importing your Outlook contacts into Gmail

Log into your Gmail account
At the top right of the screen near the sign out option, click Older version (see image above)
Click Contacts on the left of the screen
Click Import
Click Browse
Find and click the file you exported from Outlook
Click Open
Click Import Contacts

After the import finishes, remember to click back to the Newer Version of Gmail in the upper right of the screen.

Gmail should now have all your contacts from Outlook complete with street addresses. Come on Google, fix the import function on the newer version of Gmail!

Riding Shotgun with Rick — No Comments
16
Oct 08

My first year with Gmail

Mailbox I closed Outlook and started using Gmail exclusively one year ago. At first, I thought it would be a good experiment to see what Gmail was really all about, but I was also fed up with Outlook and its limitations. It took me two or three weeks to wean myself of thinking of my email in the same way that I used to with Outlook. For the experiment to work, Gmail had to satisfactorily accomplish 3 key functions of email that I handled pretty well with Outlook:

Spam filtering (I used Cloudmark Desktop with Outlook for years and am convinced that for Outlook/Outlook Express or Thunderbird users there is no equal).
Aggregate all of my email addresses (5) in one system.
Organize my email with categories (folders) and automated filtering for shifting email to their appropriate category/folder.

If Gmail could equal or exceed what I could do with Outlook, then I would consider it a success. Gmail’s spam filtering quickly impressed me. In fact, one year later, I can say confidently that Gmail’s spam filtering is superior to that of the Cloudmark system that kept me sane for years with Outlook. Feature #1, check!

I learned to use the Accounts feature in Gmail to successfully and seamlessly pull all my email addresses (and sort them) into my Gmail account. Beautiful; Feature #2, check!

Organizing my email, without the use of folders, proved to be the biggest learning curve. One year later, however, I am happy to report that the learning curve was worth it. Gmail’s Label system for organizing email becomes an astonishingly superior method of organizing email compared to folders once you get the hang of it. Combining the use of Gmail Labels and Gmail Filters makes organizing and managing email almost painless. Feature #3 check.

Since Gmail handled all my key elements of email use with aplomb, I stayed with Gmail and for the time being have no interest in changing. I’m always on the look out for a quicker, easier, and more intuitive to accomplish any technology task, but when it comes to email, every other service, in my opinion, has much to learn from Gmail. In addition to accomplishing all the things I need email to do, I find that the two other features that keep me tied to Gmail are the superior and quick searching ability and the fact that I have access to my email from any computer or phone in the world. Using Gmail made me start to enjoy email again and I know that I’m much more organized and responsive to my email than I was just one year ago.

To learn more about email, read my tip and watch my 3 how-to Gmail videos by clicking here. Do you have a Gmail story to share? If so, please post it below…good or bad.

Story photo by Tim Norris

Email Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 1 Comment
18
Aug 08

Create a Permanent Email Address for Yourself

Are you tired of having to change your email address when your Internet provider goes out of business or gets gobbled up by another provider, or you move, or you just want to change Internet providers?

Informing everyone in your address book that you have changed email addresses doesn’t take a great deal of time, but it is annoying nonetheless. In today’s Shotgun article, I explain how you can create an address that is permanently yours regardless of who you use for an Internet provider.

Any time you type in a www address or visit a www address, you visit that company’s, organization’s or person’s domain. In Internet terms, a domain equates to an online trademark. As long as you pay for it, you retain the right to use its name. The main company for handling domain registrations is Network Solutions.

Network Solutions has a service where you can register a unique domain name and get a permanent email address for less than $2 per month. Here’s how:

Visit the Network Solutions web site
Click the email tab
Select how many email addresses you want and click Add to Cart
Fill in the form that asks you what domain name (the part of your email address after teh @ symbol) you would like to use (ex: myfamilyname.com)
Choose possible alternative extensions ( .tv, .us, .org, etc)
Click the Search button

Network Solutions will go to work searching to see if your chosen domain name is available. If it isn’t, it returns some alternate suggestions. If it is, just follow the rest of the on-screen instructions to pay for and start utilizing your new permanent, personalized address. Additional email addressing using the same domain can also be obtained.

Two other good email hosting and domain registrat sites are NameSecure.com and Register.com that may offer better rates than Network Solutions.

Registering a domain name also gives you the opportunity to start your own web site with the name you registered at any time in the future.One last benefit of having a permanent address is the ease of which you can use almost any email program made (Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc) and have access to your email via a web mail account.