Somedays, I just want to scream when things that did work, no longer work. This happened this week when I needed to contact a vendor by email. This is usually a simple task where you click an email link and it opens in your default application. Instead of getting Gmail to open up in Chrome, I was staring at the Microsoft Store email app.
Email Tips & Tutorials
This section contains email tips and tutorials. Topics range from how to research suspicious URLs to quickly deleting Gmail items.
You may also jump to a specific subject by clicking the FILED UNDER links.
How to Find Out More about Suspicious URLs
I’m sure this experience has happened to many of us. You see an email come in from a friend, but something just doesn’t look right based on the preview. Parts look normal, but some stuff was suspect. This happened to me this weekend and I decided to research it more.
How to Learn Gmail Shortcuts with TinyCards
Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to enhance your productivity. The benefits are compounded the more you use a program like Gmail. The problem is learning them and committing them to memory. In the case of Gmail, there are quite a few and some don’t seem intuitive to me. I decided to test the TinyCards system and build a card deck to help me learn them faster. And you can get it too.
How to Clean Your Gmail Autocomplete List
Back in the old internet days, people rarely changed email addresses. Today is a different story with people changing jobs and having multiple email addresses. Sometimes email programs don’t want to let go of the old addresses and keep displaying them for us, which can present problems. I’ll skip the embarrassing parts and show you an easy way to remove stale addresses from the Google’s auto-complete list.
How to Quickly Mass Delete Gmail
One bad habit I have is letting my Gmail inbox get too big. I don’t always delete emails as fast as I should. These accrued items tend to be non-urgent items I get on a recurring basis that I haven’t flagged as a priority. Eventually, I reach that tipping point and want to delete these Google emails in mass. There are many ways to delete Gmail items, but here’s one tutorial that requires minimal effort and you can do at your own pace.
Misbehaving Outlook Email
Some say that computer problems happen at the worst times. I’m not sure that is true, but I won’t argue. Without warning, my Outlook email stopped working last week. I could receive email, but I couldn’t open any items. Instead, I saw an error message that read “Cannot open this item. The text formatting command is not available. It may not be installed correctly. Install Microsoft Office Outlook again.”
When Microsoft Outlook Links Fail to Open
Sometimes you don’t realize how much you appreciate a feature until it breaks. One example is Outlook hyperlinks in an email. It’s so convenient to click the link in the email and have the correct web page open. What I dislike is when a hyperlink in Outlook doesn’t work and I get some error or no action. Below, I’ve listed 4 solutions to this link problem.
Create Image Signatures in Windows Mail or Live Mail
The default email signatures for Windows Mail is plain text. With a little time, you can spice up the emails to include an image as well.
Using Outlook to Document Calls
Do you ever wish that you had a good record of the times when you talked to a company? Maybe you needed to make notes about a support call to your PC manufacturer or a call to your insurance company. Regardless of whom you’re calling, Outlook’s Journal can help you keep good records and even dial the number in some cases.
Reusing Text and Images with Outlook Quick Parts
If you encounter email requests where the answers could share common elements, then you’re a great candidate for Outlook Quick Parts. It’s a feature of Microsoft Office that allows you to build mini templates. You can then insert these blocks into Microsoft Outlook emails, tasks, and calendar events. They are reusable blocks.