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Email Tips

Dial-up users: Are you tired of waiting for email with large attachments?

I have been utilizing this tip much more lately as dial-up users get pummeled with email containing pictures that haven't been resized and an endless parade of forward spam with large attachments from friends and family with high speed connections. For every one megabyte of space an attachment contains, it takes 5-8 minutes for a dial-up user to download it. Many joke emails, slide shows or movies being passed around today can be 5mb or larger…tying up the dial-up users phone line for an hour or more!  If you don't want to tell the offending parties to take you off their list, you can do one or both of the following procedures to gain some control over you email again.

Email Preview Button in Outlook Express – Video Tip

This tip evaded me for many years, but now you can benefit from its use. The tip works in any versions of Windows including Windows Vista's Windows Mail.

When asked how to delete a message without opening it in Microsoft Outlook Express, I traditionally answered by directing the computer user to the View menu (See Tip #156). This works, but if you want to turn the Preview back on you have to go through the same number of steps.

Why would you want to delete emails without opening them? A couple of reasons include not wanting to open an email that advertises how to enlarge certain private parts or see an ad of Jolene's sorority web site and you may not want to open a potentially dangerous email that might have a virus.

GoDaddy.com email snafu

Ran across a strange situation today that I hadn't seen before. The customer has domain (your own personal name) email hosted through the popular godaddy.com service. Often times they can't receive emails from each other or from customers because the emails were getting returned to the sender saying "this user does not accept non-Western character sets or encoding". 

A character set in computing contains letters, numerals, and symbols that make up a font. Every character has a corresponding number that the computer tracks it with. This is a simplistic explanation of how character sets work in the computer world, but the best I can do for this article. 

A word for our Dial-up readers (and our high speed Internet emailers)

Lately, I have helped many dial-up computer users get their email unclogged. It became clogged because their friends and family who have high speed Internet sent them messages that were way too big for email. Usually these messages contained either large digital photos or video jokes or messages that bring dial-up users email to screeching halt. 

DIAL-UP USERS:

  • You absolutely need to know how to check your email using your web browser (this tip explains how ).
  • When email stops coming in or you see messages repeating themselves, it is time to check your email as above and then delete any messages that are larger than 500 kilobytes (kb). This will allow your email to flow again into your email program
  • Inform the offending parties that send these overly large messages that your system can't handle the volume and to please remove you from their forward lists.

HIGH SPEED USERS:

Quick Access to Outlook Express Addresses

Outlook Express users can quickly access their address books by enabling the Contact view. Here's how:

 

  1. In Outlook Express, click View from the menus

     

  2. Click Layout
  3. Check the "Contacts" box
  4. Click OK

Now with this mode enabled, you can simply double-click on an address book entry to pull up a new email addressed to that person.

Remember that you can also quickly get to your address book in the new email composition window by clicking on the TO button (see picture).

Fix a slow loading Thunderbird (email) program

This happens when an e-mail file that gets built each time you open e-mail gets corrupted. It is: {inbox.msf}. Here's how to fix it:

  1. Close Thunderbird.
  2. Click Start –> Search (or Find –> Files and Folders in Windows 98/Me).
  3. Type: inbox.msf in the search box.
  4. Make sure you have the box checked to search hidden and system files.
  5. When it finds it, click one time on in and then delete it.
  6. Start Thunderbird again and a new, uncorrupted inbox.msf file will be created.

This may take a little while the first time. To test all is well, close Thunderbird and re-open it and it should open quickly

Solving email problems

When you are having trouble receiving or sending email, here are a few tips to help keep the mail flowing.

  • Never assume the problem is on your end. If you were sending email perfectly a few hours earlier or even yesterday, DO NOT CHANGE ANY SETTINGS on your computer. Instead, shut the computer off and try again. If nothing still, shut off the computer and wait until the next day. When you have tried these two steps and still have a problem, then call your email provider to ask what may be happening.
  • If you are receiving email, but are unable to send, check to make sure that your email didn't get stuck in the Outbox. Sometimes we mistype an address and that will stall the email.
  • If you use dial-up and get disconnected from the Internet every time you check email with Outlook Express, click Tools –> Options from the menus. Click the Connection tab and uncheck the box that says "hang up after sending and receiving.
  • Attached pictures are too big when viewing/printing. Use this tip .
  • You receive a Red X where a picture should be. Read our Red X tip here .
  • Again for dial-up users especially, if you get the same email over and over, and no new ones come through, it usually means a 'stuck' email. This occurs when an email is too large to come through quickly and you disconnect before it finishes downloading the email. In this situation, learn to use your email service's web mail function so you can view your email on the web based interface. Then delete any email that is more than 1000 kilobytes (1 megabyte). Or you can read the message via the web based interface.

Take out the garbage in one step!

I thought that this piece of information was pretty common knowledge, but apparently it isn't so I'm discussing it today. When you delete an email, it gets moved to the Deleted Items folder and accumulates there. When you delete any type of file or document on your computer, it goes to the Recycle Bil and accumulates there unti you empty it.

For email in almost any email program (except AOL), you can RIGHT click on the Deleted Items (Trash) folder and click "Empty Deleted Iterms (Trash)" option. You will then be asked if you are 'sure' that you want to delete all of the trash…click Yes. In Outlook Express, you find this function in the Edit menu as well. Outlook users will find it in the Tools menu, and Mozilla or Thunderbird users will find a similar funciton in the File menu.