RHFtech Help Desk (and more)

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 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 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?

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.

Gmail added a new feature, Inserting images, to its Labs, a place for testing out ideas. You can now place images into your email rather than attaching them. You first need to enable this feature in your Gmail or Google for Apps mail settings..

1. Click on the Settings link in the Gmail menu, along the upper right of the web page.
2. Next click on the Labs link.
3. Scroll down close to the bottom of the web page to locate the Inserting Images feature.
4. Click on the Enable radio button.
5. Click on the Save Changes button.

You can now embed images in your emails.

A new control for images has been added to your Compose Mail toolbar.

You can click on the control to add images from your computer or from a web address (URL).

You hit the Send button but did your email provider really get the message and send it? I always bcc myself (with a different personal email address) to see. If I get the message in my other email account, I can be assured it was sent.