Tip O'Tex Computer Club
February 2004 Newsletter
Want To Prevent Outlook Express Problems?
You're all acquainted with defragging a hard drive. Well, you need to do something a little like that in your Outlook Express. If you don't, at some point you're going to get a message saying that a "store folder" is corrupt, or that MSOE.DLL won't load. Both of those problems can be prevented.
When you delete 20 e-mails from your Sent Items folder, for example, the next e-mails that go in that folder do not fill in where the others left space. Instead, the next e-mails go to the end of the folder and the space remains empty.
This happens with the Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items and any other folders you have created, that you use a lot.
Its really easy to take care of this, so don't worry about long involved directions. Simply open Outlook Express, click on the Inbox, click on File, slide down to Folder and when the pop-up menu appears, click on Compact.
You can use Compact All Folders, but I'd suggest you do the big ones individually first. So after the Inbox is compacted, click on Sent Items and do the same thing. After you have all of your most heavily used folders compacted, you can then use Compact All Folders and the rest of the folders will be compacted.
Its probably a good idea to do this several times a year, and you might want to delete some of your Sent Items before you do it. We tend to forget that the Sent Items folder just sits there and grows and grows. We look at the Inbox and Deleted Items folders, but just ignore the Sent Items - not a good idea.
To Answer Requests For HELP
Recently I received the following: "how do I send a "copy to" and what is this purpose?"
Well, the "copy to" function in some e-mail programs is the same as CC in Outlook Express. What it means is that you want to send a "copy" of the same letter to someone other than the original recipient. You can just put more than one person's address in the To: line - you aren't held to just one e-mail address there.
One thing you want to watch out for though - don't put a bunch of e-mail addresses in either the To: or CC: (Copy to) because that will show all of those addresses to everyone. Instead try using the BCC: (the Blind Carbon Copy) as that will "hide" all of the addresses except that of the recipient. They'll know that others are getting the letter, but they won't have to see all of those addresses, and you won't be sending all that extra information all over the Internet.