Thanks, Mike

Dear Mike,

I think it is a great idea to back up your files and do a clean install of Windows. HP makes this fairly easy to do, especially if you created the recovery disks when the computer was new.

Saving your favorites is easy, and saving the email is not much harder. Lets start with the favorites.

1. Insert your flash drive into a USB port, and click on “Open folder to view files” in the menu that appears.

2. Click on Start, then click on your username at the top of the right column in the start menu.

3. Arrange the two folders so that you can see both of them at the same time.

4. Drag the “Favorites” folder from your user folder, to the flash drive folder.

Once you have reformated the computer, just repeat the steps above, only drag the favorites folder from the flash drive to your user folder.

Now for the Live Mail messages.

1. Again, insert the flash drive into a USB port and click “Open Folder to View Files” in the menu that appears. Drag that window to one side of your desktop.

2. To figure out where Windows Live Mail stores the messages, open the program, and click on the tab to the left of the “Home” tab.

3. Point to “Options” in the drop down menu, then click on “Mail” in the sub menu.

4. Click on the “Advanced” tab in the Options window, then click on the “Maintenance…” button, and finally the “Store Folder…” button.

5. Highlight and copy the location of your mail files in the “Store Location” dialog box, and click the “Cancel” button to close the window. Close all of the Windows Live Mail windows.

6. Click on the “start” button and paste the location in the search box and tap the “enter” key. A window will open with all your mail files.

7. Drag the mail files and folders into the flash drive window.

Elizabeth

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Charlie

Dear Charlie,

What you need to do, is set up a signature file in Windows Live Mail.

Here is how to do that:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.

2. Click on the tab to the left of the “Home” tab.

3. Point to “Options” in the drop down menu, and click on “Mail” in the sub-menu.

4. Click on the “Signatures” tab.

5. Click on the “New” button in the Signatures section.

6. In the “Edit Signature” section, type your contact and any other information you want to include at the end of all your outgoing messages.

7. At the very top of the dialog box, click to put a check mark in front of, “Add signatures to all outgoing messages”.

8. Click the “OK” button at the bottom of the dialog box to save your changes and close the window.

Elizabeth

pat

Dear Pat,

There is a way to backup Outlook express files and folders, it is just not easy to do.

Here are the directions to make a backup copy of your Outlook
Express e-mail files:

1. First, you need to find the location of the files. To do this, open Outlook Express, click on “Tools” in the menu bar, then click Options.

2. In the Options window, click on the Maintenance tab, then click on the button that says “Store Folder”.

3. A small window will appear with the location of your e-mail files. Highlight the folder location, and then press CTRL+C to copy the location.

4. Click Cancel, and then click Cancel again to close the dialog box. Close Outlook Express.

5. Now, you want to open the folder that contains your mail files. An easy way to do this is to click Start, and then click Run.

6. In the Run window, click in the box that says “Open” and press CTRL+V to paste in the location, and then click OK. The window containing your files will now open.

7. In the window containing your mail files, go to the Edit menu, click Select All. This will highlight all the files in the window.

8. Again, click on Edit, then click Copy to copy the files, and then close the window.

9. To create a folder to store your saved files, right-click any empty space on your desktop, click New, and then click Folder.

10. Type mail backup for the folder name, and then press ENTER.

11. Double-click the Mail Backup folder to open it.

12. In the open mail backup folder, click on Edit, then click Paste. The e-mail files will appear in the window.

13. Close the Mail Backup window, and burn the whole folder to a CD, or save to a thumb drive or some other type of external media.

The next step is to save the address book. We do this by exporting it.

1. Click on “Start” then point to “All Programs”, point to Accessories, and click on the “Address Book” icon.

2. In the open address book, click on File in the menu bar, point to Export, and then click Other Address Book.

3. Click Text File (Comma Separated Values), and then click Export.

4. In the Export window, Click Browse.

5. Locate the Mail Backup folder that you created.

6. In the File Name box, type address book backup, and then click Save and then click “Next”.

7. Click to select the check boxes for the fields that you want to export, and then click Finish.

8. Click OK and then click Close. You can now backup the file, or it will open in Word or excel and you can print it.

If the Address Book is shared with Microsoft Outlook, you are not able to export from within the Address Book on the File menu. This option is dimmed or not available.

Elizabeth

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Thanks for all your tips in your newsletters. You have saved me so many times while learning to use my computer.
Thanks! Mary

Dear Mary,

Outlook does not open DBX files from Outlook Express, but it will import the messages from the files.

The easiest way, is to import your messages from the dbx files into Windows Mail, then use the following steps to import the messages from Windows Mail into Outlook.

Just open Outlook, click on the “File” tab, click on, “Open” and then click on “Import”.

The “Import and Export Wizard” window will open. Click on “Import from another program or file” and click the “Next” button.

In the next window, click on “Outlook Express 4.x, 5.x, 6.x or Windows Mail” and click the “Next” button.

Outlook will automatically import the messages from Windows Mail.

Elizabeth

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Thanks, Sara

Dear Sara,

Once you have sent an email, it would not show up in your “Drafts” folder, it would instead show up in your “Sent Mail” folder.

A draft is an email message that you have started, but are not yet ready to send. If you start an email message, and then close the message without sending it, or leave the computer for a while, the unfinished message will be saved in your “Drafts” folder.

When you are ready to resume work on the unfinished message, you can log into your Hotmail account, go to the “Drafts” folder, and open up the message to continue working on it, and then send it.

Once you have sent a message, a copy of that message will go into your “Sent Items” folder. This is so that you can go back and review messages that you have already sent. This comes in handy if you are old like me, and can’t remember what you have written and to whom you have sent it.

Elizabeth

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Thank you so much, Bob

Dear Bob,

Windows Live Mail does not have, “Tools” in the menu bar.

Instead, you can access most of the items that were under “Tools” in Windows Mail by clicking on the tab all the way to the left. It is to the left of the “Home” tab and has a small icon that looks like a paper.

Elizabeth

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Thank You, Constance

Dear Constance,

Hotmail has a set of folders that can’t be removed. Those folders are the Inbox, Junk, Drafts, Sent and Deleted folders.

These folders will always be there, and you don’t have the ability to delete them.

If you create more folders, however, they can be deleted, just follow these directions:

1. Go to your Hotmail account and log in so that you have your list of folders on the left.

2. With your cursor, point to the word, “Folders” and a small gear will appear just to the right of “Folders”.

3. Click on the gear, then click “Manage Folders.

4. A list of your folders will appear. Folders that can be deleted will have a small box to the left of the folder name.

5. Click to place a check mark in front of the folder you want to remove, then click the word, “Delete” at the top of the folder list.

Elizabeth

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Margaret

Dear Margaret,

You can turn off the blocking of pictures in HTML messages, but before you do, you should make sure that you have a good antivirus program installed and updated. Allowing all pictures in your email to be automatically opened, will leave you a little more at risk for a virus infection.

In Windows Mail, just follow these directions:

1. Open Windows Mail.
2. Click on “Tools” in the menu bar, then click on “Options”.
3. Click on the “Security” tab.
4. About halfway down the Security page, there is a section that says, “Download Images”. Click to remove the check mark in front of, “Block images and other external content in HTML messages”.
5. Click the “OK” button at the bottom of the window to save your changes and close the window.

If you are using Windows Live Mail, it is a little different:

1. Open Windows Live Mail.
2. Click on the tab to the left of the “Home” tab.
3. In the drop-down menu, point to “Options” and then click on “Safety Options”.
4. In the, Safety Options, dialog box, click on the “Security” tab.
5. In the “Download Images” section of the page, click to remove the check mark in front of “Block images and other external content in HTML email”.
6. Click the “OK” button at the bottom of the window to save your changes and close the window.

Elizabeth

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Thanks for your time, Flo

Dear Flo,

Thanks for your email. I added you to my weekly email list.

Unfortunately, you can’t add Gmail as your default email server in Irfanview, because Gmail is web based email, and you are not using an actual email program.

There is, however, a way you can work around this problem.

You can set up Outlook Express to work with your Gmail account.

Gmail has some great, step by step directions for this at:

https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77659

Once you have set up Gmail to work with Outlook Express, when you want to send a picture from Irfanview, your computer will use Outlook Express to send the picture through your Gmail account.

Hope this helps,

Elizabeth

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Thank you from a fan.
Marcia

Dear Marcia,

I get different variations of this question just about every week, so I am going to take another shot at trying to explain what it means and why.

When you are looking at an email, or a webpage and there is a box with nothing but a red X in the corner, this means that there is supposed to be a picture in that box, but the picture file is unavailable.

There are several reasons why the picture might be unavailable.

The most common reason is that your email program has blocked the pictures. Most email programs will do this to help protect you from malicious software. The email program will also provide a way for you to turn pictures back on though.

In Microsoft Outlook, email messages with blocked pictures will have the following text at the top of the message:

“Click here to download pictures. To help protect your privacy, Outlook has prevented automatic download of some pictures in this message.”

All you have to do to view the pictures is click on that message.

In my Gmail window, I see a message near the top that says,:

“Images are not displayed” with a link below that I can click on to display the images.

The second most common reason you will see a box with the red X is that the image is just not available. This is commonly seen with AOL email messages. For some reason, when a person with an AOL account sends an email to someone outside of AOL, the images are just not available. In this case, the recipient can’t do anything to view the images, just ask the sender to try sending the pictures in a different way.

On web pages, you might also see the little box with a red X. This indicates that there is supposed to be an image, but the image file is not where it should be. Again, this is not something you can fix, the web designer needs to either upload the image, or fix the HTML code that points to the image.

Elizabeth

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