Outlook

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)…

Anti-Spam Program Choices

July 29, 2008 By Terry Stockdale

Subscriber and long-time reader Scott Adler wrote to me about his experiences with three of the various anti-spam programs. I’ve used Mailwasher Pro and PopFile and like both, but they are entirely different in their approach to spam. My current choice is PopFile.

I’ve also mentioned iHateSpam, which is from the same company that offers my choice in anti-spyware and firewall programs; however, I don’t use iHateSpam because I don’t use Outlook Express or Outlook as my email program (I use Eudora).

The three anti-spam programs you speak about have quite different impact on ones PC.. I’ve been using I Hate Spam but it’s use brings a slowdown to the reaction of the computer. As the files of friends and enemies build up the computer runs slower and slower until it almost freezes up. That’s what happened to me and it took three days of agonizing trouble shooting before I recognized where the problem lay.

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Products:

MailWasher Pro full-function 30-day trial
iHateSpam full-function 30-day trial
PopFile free

Filed Under: Anti-spam, Communications, Outlook, Outlook Express, Security, Shopping Deals, 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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Try the Full Version of iHateSpam for free for 30 days

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

Compacting Email Folders

April 9, 2007 By Terry Stockdale

There is a little trick to the way POP3 email program like Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and Thunderbird store the email messages you receive. A “deleted message” is not really deleted! Did you know that?

All your email program does is to rewrite a few characters in the file in order to tell itself that a particular email has been “deleted.”

One particular marking in the file indicates that the email has been deleted, so the program shows it in the Trash folder. A different marking shows it has been deleted from the Trash folder. But, it really has not been removed from the big email.