Email

Why Don’t Deleted Emails Appear in the Recycle Bin?

October 20, 2011 By Terry Stockdale

Subscriber JPB had a question about deleting emails, and why they don’t get recycled:

When you delete files (normally) they go to the recycle bin. How come E-mail doesn’t work the same way. it get’s compacted? I’m using Thunderbird and Windows 7.

The reason that deleted emails don’t show up in the Recycle Bin is that the Recycle Bin stores files after you delete them (note that some programs will delete files without putting them into the Recycle Bin). This is sometimes a problem with older programs or programs that are simplistically ported from another operating system.

Most Windows email programs store emails as data in large files containing multiple emails. They’re not stored as individual files. Email “folders” are actually files, in most cases, although some email programs may not create separate files for the folders.

Thunderbird is one such…

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Filed Under: Communications, Email, Software, Terry's Computer Tips, Thunderbird

I Dumped Eudora OSE

October 19, 2011 By Terry Stockdale

I changed one of my everyday software programs this week. I wrote about a year ago concerning Eudora OSE (Open Source Edition), a new open-source version of Eudora that is based on the Thunderbird email program from the Mozilla Foundation.

After a few days of running my old Eudora program in parallel with Eudora OSE, I quickly changed to Eudora OSE for my everyday use.

It took some adjustments and took figuring out how to have multiple email accounts using multiple email servers. But, I was pretty happy with Eudora OSE.

Then, I ran into a problem with its email filters. The filters allow the user to take specific actions on an email, based on the content of the Subject, To or From lines. I’ve put up with that problem, which came from no known reason — and certainly not a buggy update (there haven’t been any updates) for a couple months, but it finally aggravated me too much.

I’d used filters for years to get control of my Inbox, and put related emails into their own folders, e.g. I set up a folder for emails from a mailing list, and set up a filter to have Eudora OSE put them in the folder automatically.

However, Eudora OSE developed a problem for some reason…

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Filed Under: Email, Eudora, Terry's Computer Tips, Thunderbird Tagged With: computing, e mail, eudora, filters, free software, message transfer agent, mozilla, mozilla thunderbird, ose, portable software, programming, software programs

How Can I Open An Email Attachment?

May 29, 2011 By Terry Stockdale

Email attachment type – the key to opening email attachments. This week, subscriber Gerry Seebach wrote:

I am having a problem opening some email attachments.

I can open anything to do with media player and you tube. I think the ones I can’t open are slide shows, not sure though.

I get a message saying "This file does not have a program associated with it.For performing this action create an association In the folder options control panel."

How do I do this? Thanks for your help.

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Filed Under: Communications, Email, Terry's Computer Tips Tagged With: attachments, e mail, e mail attachment, email, keys, media player, psychology, subscriber, typing, week

Can not reply to emails in Outlook

November 7, 2008 By Terry Stockdale

Subscriber John from Australia wrote about some problems he was having with Word 2003 and Outlook (presumably Outlook 2003). John wrote:

Cannot reply to emails in Outlook & Trouble with AutoText

1. I cannot type a reply to an email in the usual manner. When I try to type a reply, my typing does not appear on the screen.

I have to open word, type my reply to the email and then try to send it, but more often I just cannot send it even then. It guess that I must have pressed something or other to prohibit the sending of replies?

2 I use Auto Text quite frequently; however, it also seems to have gone bonkers…

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Filed Under: Email, Outlook, Terry's Computer Tips

Choosing to Send Plain Text or HTML in Outlook Emails

September 17, 2008 By Terry Stockdale

One of the first things many people do, when they find that Outlook will let them use different fonts and stationery in their emails, is to start experimenting.

While personal friends may think these are cute, we quickly realize that many others don’t want to all the glitz and glitter — they read emails and mailing lists for information. In some cases, the email programs display all the formatting codes in addition to the text we wrote, so the message effectively becomes unreadable. By he way, these emails are formatted using HTML (the language of web browsers like Internet Explorer) by default.

Fortunately, Outlook allows us to easily switch between HTML-formatted email (the default)…

Unable to Delete Email in Outlook Express

June 27, 2008 By Terry Stockdale

Sherrill Kerbaugh wrote about a major problem she and her husband were having on both of their computers:

Hi, Terry… We have a major problem…. My husband has been unable to delete daily e-mails for a few weeks now….we can’t figure out what in the world is wrong!?!?!?! Now, all of a sudden I can’t delete e-mails on my computer (same local area network and e-mail…Outlook Express)! HELP!!!!!!!!! Also, John can’t download or use Adobe Reader on his computer, but I can!?!?!?
We are going crazy here!

What are your thoughts? We just found your website this morning….hope you are our “computer angel”! : )
Thank you!

I wrote back to tell Sherrill that Outlook Express has a problem that will creep up on you and prevent you from deleting emails. When you delete an email, it goes into the Deleted Items folder.

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Filed Under: Email, Outlook Express, Software, Terry's Computer Tips

Emails and Spam Filters

June 17, 2008 By Terry Stockdale

Several people recently have had the emails, that they sent, fall victim to spam filters somewhere before getting to their recipients.

In one case of which I know, the email was sent to a mailing list. Many mailing list programs have filtering routines that are designed to block unwanted messages — not just blocking unsolicited commercial emails, but also blocking emails that appear to be help requests to the mailing list administrators.

Mailman, one of the more popular mailing list programs, does this kind of filtering so that all the list members don’t get the messages that appear aimed at the list owner. In particular, the filter is usually triggered by one- or two-word Subject lines in the email, especially if they have words like Help, Information, Info, Lists, Options, Remove, Unsubscribe and such.

So, what’s the fix? Don’t use a one- or two-word Subject line. Take the time to write a meaningful Subject.

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Filed Under: Anti-spam, Communications, Email, Eudora, Opera, Outlook, Outlook Express, Security, Security Issues, Software, Terry's Computer Tips, Thunderbird

Outlook Express – Problem Compacting Email Folders

May 26, 2008 By Terry Stockdale

I received an email recently from a reader who was having problems with Outlook Express. As I have written several times recently, when you delete emails, they’re not really deleted — even if you “empty the deleted emails folder.” Your email program still has the email in its data file — it has only marked the email as deleted. The next time you compact the email folders, the folder would be rewritten without the deleted email. Yury, though, was having difficulties compacting one of his email folders:

Terry,

I can not compact my Sent folder. By the end of the compacting process I am getting an error message “The folder is currently in use by Outlook Express or another application”. After closing the message the whole computer slows down, and some times I have to reboot it. I have an impression, that something is running in the background. Also, lately when I am trying to back up my e-mail on the external drive, the process running continuously 2 or 3 times and volume is in gigabytes. It all indicates, that I have old unerased messages sitting somewhere in my computer. As a result, I have problems sending e-mails. The e-mail seemingly does not leave Outbox, but in fact Outlook keeps continuously send it out, and the e-mail never shows-up in the Send folder. I had this problem before, and it always because there are to many unerased e-mails in my system. Except before I was able easily to fix it by deleting and compacting files.

Please, advise. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Yury Ferkelman

I wrote back to Yury to tell him how to proceed:

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Filed Under: Email, Outlook Express, Terry's Computer Tips

Outlook Express Links Don’t Work

January 14, 2008 By Terry Stockdale

I received an interesting question from subscriber Maria. She has been using Firefox, as many people do, including me. In this case, she had just upgraded her Internet Explorer to IE7 and was having problems with Outlook Express.

Maria wrote:

Terry, I currently have Fire Fox and Internet Explorer on my computer. I just added the Internet Explorer as a browser after removing it some time ago. Outlook Express is my default email handler. The problem is that in Outlook Express the links don’t open since I added Internet Explorer. [Tech guy] at [a local computer shop] says that it seams like the two are competing I am hoping that you have some ideas as I have tried a few from a Google search.

Fortunately for Maria, I had seen this problem before and thought I knew the answer.

Internet Explorer 7 messes up Outlook Express’ settings if Internet Explorer is not the default web browser when it is installed.

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Filed Under: Email, IE, Operating System, Outlook Express, Software, System, Terry's Computer Tips, Vista, Web browsing, Windows XP

Outlook Express Links Don’t Work

December 21, 2007 By Terry Stockdale

Maria wrote:

Terry, I currently have Fire Fox and Internet Explorer on my computer. I just added the Internet Explorer as a browser after removing it some time ago. Outlook Express is my default email handler. The problem is that in Outlook Express the links don’t open since I added Internet Explorer. [Tech guy] at [a local computer shop] says that it seams like the two are competing I am hoping that you have some ideas as I have tried a few from a Google search.

Fortunately for Maria, I had seen this problem before and thought I knew the answer.

Continue reading Outlook Express Links Don’t Work

Filed Under: Bug Fixes, Communications, Email, IE, Outlook Express, Patches, Pre-installed Software, Security Fixes, Software, System, Terry's Computer Tips, Usability, Web browsing