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Don Edrington - Computer Columnist for The Californian and San Diego's North County Times

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Email Envelope Logo Email Basics - Outlook Express, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Juno

Email Envelope Logo Moving Outlook Express DBX Files to a New PC

Email Envelope Logo Moving Email Address Book Names from one PC to Another

Email Envelope Logo Using BCCs (Blind Carbon Copies) to Protect Privacy


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Special Folders for Email

Carol Tupper wrote that she had accidentally moved all of her Outlook Express Inbox messages into the Deleted Items folder and asked how to retrieve them. When I said they could be simply dragged back to the Inbox she asked if they could all be moved at once.

Yes, any group of contiguous messages in Outlook Express or Windows Mail can be manipulated as a block by clicking the top message, pressing and holding down SHIFT, and then clicking the bottom message. This will select the first, last, and all messages in between for moving to another folder or for deleting or for dragging into a Desktop folder that you created for backups.

Non-contiguous messages can be highlighted for group-manipulation by holding down CTRL as you click them.

Email Backup Folders

Messages moved between folders within Outlook Express or Windows Mail are physically relocated. However, dragging them into a Desktop folder makes a copy of each email and leaves the originals in place.

Create a backup folder by right-clicking your Desktop, choosing New>Folder, and giving it a name.

Such a backup folder can then be easily dragged onto a flash-memory drive or other external storage device.

Hard Drive Backup & Online Backup –
Have the Best of Both Worlds

Web-based messages, such as those in Hotmail, can NOT be dragged onto a Desktop folder. However, Google's Gmail lets you send copies of messages to your Outlook Express or Windows Mail account so that you can have the best of both worlds. Gmail offers virtually unlimited online storage of your messages, while you can manipulate your PC-based copies as described above.

Within a Gmail account click on Settings>Forwarding and POP/IMAP>Forward a Copy of Incoming Mail to: (type in your Outlook Express or Windows Mail address).

Protect Your Privacy
Use Blind Carbon Copies!


I receive dozens of messages every day from well-meaning people who click FORWARD to send copies of cute jokes or inspirational stories they just received. In almost every case the messages contain multiple email addresses of people who added their friends' names to the CC (carbon copy) field.

With this kind of forwarding we should always use the BCC (blind carbon copy) field, and NOT the CC (carbon copy) field, which displays ALL the accumulated addresses that a message gathers along the way.

Allowing your email address to be endlessly replicated in this manner can cause it to be seen on literally hundreds of computers and/or print-outs. Using the CC box is a sure way of having your email address ending up on multiple SPAM lists.

Most email programs have an easily-seen BCC option, but Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail have their BCC fields hidden. (Don't ask me why. This, in my humble opinion, is one of Microsoft's major goofs!)

How to Display the BCC Field in Outlook Express & Windows Live Mail

Launch the program and then click on Create Mail.
Next click on View>All Headers and the BCC field will appear below the CC field.
You only have to do this once – all future outgoing messages will automatically display the BCC field.

Yellow Stickies change case





IF YOU RECEIVE AN EMAIL IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
and you'd prefer it to me in upper and lower case, you can copy and paste it into Microsoft Word, where you can use SHIFT+F3 to cycle selected text from:
    ALL CAPITALS
    to
    all lower case
    to
    Traditional Title Case
    to
    Standard sentence case.
What's even easier is using the Free Yellow Stickies program found at www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies, that lets you right-click selected text and choose: Case>UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, or Sentence case.

Yellow Stickies change case


Speaking of Word, I've used every version that has come out since Word 3 for DOS in the mid-1980s and have been reasonably happy with every version except 2007.

I have Word 2007, but prefer using OpenOffice Writer, the word processor that comes with the free office suite at www.openoffice.org.

Make sure you go to www.openoffice.org and NOT to www.openoffice.com
.

The only Word-2007 feature I like is a sliding scale for adjusting the page view size. Now OpenOffice has the same feature.

The illustration below shows how 10 pt. Verdana looks when the page view has been temporarily increased to 120%.

OpenOffice Enlarge View 120 percent

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