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BOOT CAMP 268 (25/03/03)
OUTLOOK EXPRESS HINTS AND TIPS
In the third of our Hints and Tips specials we focus on good
old Outlook Express. As usual most of these tips are intended for the latest
version of the program (OE6) but most of them will also work with version 5.
Despite everything Outlook Express is still one of the best
email and newsgroup ‘client’ programs, it’s free, easy to use and very flexible
but like Internet Explorer -- of which it is an integral part -- its security
features are being constantly attacked so make sure that you have the latest
updates and patches from Microsoft and ensure that your anti-virus software is
kept up to date. If you’re ultra cautious it’s worth disabling the Preview pane,
which automatically opens emails, possibly activating a virus. To do that go to
View > Layout and uncheck ‘Show Preview Pane’.
We’ll begin with a little-known feature in Outlook Express
that may be of interest to anyone wanting to keep a discrete track of the email
activity on a PC and it can also come in useful for solving connection problems.
OE has a number of ‘logging’ features that can be enabled by going to Options on
the Tools menu. Click the Maintenance tab and go to the Troubleshooting section
at the bottom. Check the activity that you want to log and click OK. The logs
are very detailed and can be read in Notepad or any text/word processor program.
You’ll find them in the main message folder, which in the case of Windows 98
will be in: C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Identities\{GUID}\Microsoft\Outlook
Express, (where GUID or Global Unique Identifier is a long string of letters and
numbers). In Windows XP the location is: C:\Documents and
Settings\<yourname>Application Data\Identities\{GUID}\Microsoft\Outlook
Express.
The folder holding all of your mail messages could be
vulnerable if you suffer a hard disc failure or you have to reinstall Windows.
Fortunately Outlook Express will let you change the location of your message
store folder. Go to Options on the Tools menu and select the Maintenance tab,
click the Store Folder button then Change and choose a folder outside of
Windows, a separate disc partition or even a second hard disc drive.
Unfortunately OE won’t allow you to move your message folder to a removable disc
or a network drive. Allegedly it can be done but it involves a lot of fiddling
with the Windows Registry.
The files contained in the Outlook Express message folder
cannot be easily read by other applications so it’s important to backup
important messages, just in case something bad happens. This is not as easy as
it sounds as OE doesn’t have any built-in archiving facilities but there is a
simple workaround. Open the message folder containing the emails you want to
backup then holding down the Ctrl key highlight them one at a time, or if you
want to archive them all, highlight one and press Ctrl + A. Next, right-click on
the highlighted messages and select Forward as Attachment and a new message
window will open with all of your selected messages attached. Enter the name of
your archive in the Subject line then go to Save As on the File menu and choose
a folder to save it in, (make sure the file has the extension’*.eml’). You can
read any message in the folder simply by clicking on your archive icon, which
will then open a new message window in Outlook Express, and you can restore
emails by dragging and dropping the attachments from the message window into the
appropriate folders.
Another way to archive messages is to use a simple little
utility called DBXtract. This program copies selected email folders from the OE
message store into any folder of your choosing. DBXtract may also be able to
read messages from a corrupted store folder, it’s certainly worth trying if OE
crashes and refuses to open messages. The program is freeware and the zip file,
which is only 68kb in size, can be downloaded from: http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtract/Default.aspx
Several readers have written in asking if there’s a way to
delete attachments from emails, without loosing the original message. There’s no
way to do this from within Outlook Express but it can be done by other means.
Open the email with the attachment you want to delete then go to SaveAs on the
File menu and save it in a Windows folder or on the Desktop. Next, Open the
email using Notepad (use Open on the File menu, don’t double-click on the email
icon as it just open an OE message window), or if it’s too large for Notepad use
WordPad or your word processor. The attachment will normally show up after the
message text as large block of characters, simply highlight and delete the block
then Save the email. To get it back into Outlook Express double-click on the
modified message icon and it will open an OE window, click the File menu, select
Move To Folder and choose the message folder it came from. You can then delete
the original message with the attachment.
Next week – Excel hints & tips
JARGON FILTER
ATTACHMENT
Data file – usually containing a photograph or text document
– sent with an email message
LOGGING
A record of the time and date of a set of actions or
activities
REGISTRY
A
large, constantly changing Windows System file containing details of how your PC
is set up and configuration information for all the programs stored on the hard
disc
TIP OF THE WEEK
The ceaseless tide of Spam junk email is a real threat to the
future of the Internet but there are plenty of programs that can help you deal
with it. My current favourite is a freeware title called Mailwasher. It has an
extremely useful facility that ‘bounces’ unwanted messages back to the sender,
marking your address as invalid in the hope that your details will be removed
from the sender’s mailing list. If we all did that Spam, might stop overnight!
Mailwasher lets you preview the contents of your mailbox
whilst it is still on the ISP’s server, you can even read emails if you wish and
then decide (or let the program choose) which ones to accept, bounce, delete or
‘blacklist, before they’re downloaded onto your PC. You’ll find it at http://www.mailwasher.net/ and if you feel
it’s worthwhile the author, who lives in New Zealand will be very grateful for a
small tip!
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