When was the last time that you checked to see if your current email or cellphone [...]]]> Losing your contact or address book is a digital catastrophe, second only to losing your photos. You can’t re-take your photos. Recreating your contact list is painful, difficult and impossible for some of the people in your list .

When was the last time that you checked to see if your current email or cellphone contact list is safely backed up? I recommend that you do this at the end of every quarter if not more frequently.

Don’t assume that your backup software will do this automatically. Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Outlook Express, Thunderbird and other email applications generally don’t install their data files to your documents folders. So they may not be backed up.

Don’t assume that if you use web-based email and you store your contacts online that you are not at risk. What happens if Google kills your Gmail account or Microsoft shutters your Hotmail account? Will you be able to get your address book? Probably not.

Here is how to backup Optimum E-mail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Windows Live Mail, and Mac OS X Address Book contacts:

Optimum Online E-mail

YOU CANNOT EXPORT CONTACTS FROM THE ADOBE FLASH VERSION
If you are using the Adobe Flash version of Optimum email you must switch to the Classic Mail version. There is a link along the top menu to do that.

1. Select the Address Book tab.
2. Click on the Import/Exportlink. A dialog window opens.
3. Click the Export button.
4. Fill in the file name, select a location, and then click on the Save button.
5. Click the Close button.

1. Go to Contacts
2. Click on the More button and select Export…
   
3. An Export contacts window opens
4. Select the All contacts radio button.
5. Select the desired export format. (If you don;’t know which one, use the default setting.)
6. Click the Export button and save the file to your computer.

1. On the Yahoo! Mail page, click on the Contacts tab.
2. Click on the Actions button and select Export All…
3. Select an export format type and click on the Export Now button.
4. If asked to verify you are not a robot, fill out the Captcha dialog and click the Export Now button. Save the file to your computer.

There are many versions of Outlook and each has different procedure. Here are links to Microsoft’s support for each major version

• Outlook 2000
• Outlook 2002/XP
• Outlook 2003
• Outlook 2007
• Outlook 2010
• Outlook 2011 (Mac OS X)

Windows Live Mail

1. Open Windows Live Mail.
2. Select Contacts from the list in the lower left-side of the window.
3. Click on the Export button and select the format you want.
   
4. Give the file a name and browse to the location you want to save your file.
5. Click the Save button, then the Next button and finally the Finish button.

Mac OS X Address Book

1. Open the application.
2. Click on File > Export in the menu bar on the top of the screen.
3. Click on your desired output format.
4. Give the file a name and a location.
5. Click the Save button.

Labels are a useful tool for filtering email. Labels can be more useful when paired with the Gmail Labs feature Multiple Inboxes.

The image below shows you the result. [...]]]> I use Gmail for both personal email and for email services on my domains, such as RHFtech.com.

Labels are a useful tool for filtering email. Labels can be more useful when paired with the Gmail Labs feature Multiple Inboxes.

The image below shows you the result. Here I have my regular inbox on the left and three other panels showing all starred messages, messages labeled WsptLibrary and another for messages labeled CASIA.

I often email myself links to articles that are germane to topics which interest me. I label these messages according one or more to topics. (You can apply multiple labels to any message.) I use these labels to filter my Gmail messages into the special panels of messages on the right side of the web page.

I will be making several public presentations in the near future. Two are on “using smartphones smarter”, based on my November 2010 Westport Library talk. Another one is about using social sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for small business marketing. This will be presented at the annual meeting of the Connecticut Alarm & Systems Integrators Association (CASIA) annual dinner in February 2011.  The labels I use for these two topics are WsptLibrary and CASIA .

The Multiple Inboxes feature lets me organize my RHFtech web email page into a more focused set of lists than just a simple view of the inbox.

If you want to do something similar you need to add the Multiple Inboxes item. Go to your Gmail Settings and select the Labs tab. Find Multiple Inboxes, enable it and make certain to save your changes.

You will now have a new Multiple inboxes tab on the Settings page. You can configure it for you needs. Remember to save your changes.

I discovered there is a [...]]]> Recent changes to Google Apps made it impossible to open both a Gmail account and a Google Apps account in a single browser, simultaneously. I didn’t like that as it would mean a major change to the way I work with my computers. So I went on a hunt and…

I discovered there is a way to sign onto both a Google Apps and a Gmail account simultaneously in a single web-browser. It requires re-configuring your Google Accounts.

1. Enable Sign in to Multiple Google Accounts for each account, for example both johndoe@gmail.com and support@rhftech.

   Do this at https://www.google.com/accounts/b/0/MultipleSessions for each account.

2. Sign out and then sign in to one of the accounts. You should see a dropdown arrow next to your account name that lets you select the account to display in that tab or window.

It is now possible to have two browser tabs or browser windows open that point to each of the accounts’ inbox.

I suspect that the reason Google created this convoluted process is that they are trying to use the same log in screen for both Gmail and Google Apps. I would guess the underlying reason is to tie our personal and corporate browsing histories together to better data mine information (from Google’s perspective.)

Don’t forget Bob

Got the Wrong Bob?

Enable them in Gmail by clicking on the Settings link in the upper right of the web page and clicking on the Labs tab or click on the beaker icon. The [...]]]> Gmail Labs has two features that may save you embarrassment:

Don’t forget Bob

Got the Wrong Bob?

Enable them in Gmail by clicking on the Settings link in the upper right of the web page and clicking on the Labs tab or click on the beaker icon. The two Labs features are located next to each other near the bottom of the Labs list. Don’t forget to click the Save Changes button before leaving the Labs tab.

My inbox had 323 messages from my sister with the subject “NEED HELP”. My poor BlackBerry was buzzing itself to death.

My sister uses Outlook Express on a Windows XP Home notebook. She has a business consulting with high school students and their families preparing them for SATs and helping with the [...]]]>

My inbox had 323 messages from my sister with the subject “NEED HELP”. My poor BlackBerry was buzzing itself to death.

My sister uses Outlook Express on a Windows XP Home notebook. She has a business consulting with high school students and their families preparing them for SATs and helping with the college selection and admission process.

Yesterday a student called her asking her to stop sending the same message over and over. They figured out the email message was getting stuck in the outbox. She found that manually deleting the message from the outbox fixed the immediate issue but did not solve the problem.

She didn’t know what to do so she emailed me, over and over and over…

We had a long remote desktop control session this morning. The Outlook Express file had become too large and was corrupted. My solution was to install Windows Live Mail and migrate her to it. Fortunately, her email is with Gmail so all of her email history was preserved on Google’s email servers. If we can fix the email address autocompletion which is missing from the newly installed Windows Live Mail, she will be back in business.

Thunderbird is the Rodney Dangerfield of email clients. It shouldn’t be.

I use it as my main business email application for many reasons, not the least of which is that it handles HTML code much better than any of the major alternatives, such as Microsoft Outlook or Gmail’s [...]]]>

Thunderbird is the Rodney Dangerfield of email clients. It shouldn’t be.

I use it as my main business email application for many reasons, not the least of which is that it handles HTML code much better than any of the major alternatives, such as Microsoft Outlook or Gmail’s and Yahoo’s web clients. It is also multiplatform. I can use it on Windows and Mac machines, simplifying an otherwise overly complex life.

I have been using the Thunderbird 3.0 beta 3 version on Windows 7 RTM for several weeks. Except for the fact that the current Lightning (calendar) add-on is incompatible, I have found it to be much better than the stable 2.0 version.

A new feature in Thunderbird 3.0 is the Tools —> Options… —> Composition —> General (tab) Check for missing attachments built-in function.

Here is an example of this feature in action.

This is quite useful. It saves us from the embarrassing reply email: Did you forget the attachment?

Thunderbird’s default font is Times New Roman, a serif font I dislike. I want my default font to be a sans-serif font like Arial. I have wrestled with [...]]]> I use Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client application for my business email needs. I do this because it handles HTML much better than Outlook.

Thunderbird’s default font is Times New Roman, a serif font I dislike. I want my default font to be a sans-serif font like Arial. I have wrestled with trying to change all instances of default fonts in Thunderbird for years, trying to do away with Times New Roman, unless I really want to use it. I never fully succeeded, until now. There were always annoying instances where Thunderbird displays or changes the font to Times New Roman.

Today the light bulb in my head went off that it was simple to solve this.  To fix the problem all I need do is change the Thunderbird default serif font from Times New Roman to a sans-serif font like Arial. I can still use serif fonts by selecting them in the email composition window.

To make this change:

1. Select Thunderbird’s Tools > Options menu.
2. Select the Display tab.
3. Click the Fonts… button in the Fonts & Encodings panel.
4. Change the Serif font to something other than Times New Roman. I selected Arial.
5. Click the OK button twice.