Email Delivery

Email platforms are plentiful, but a few stand out from the crowd.

Exchange

Businesses use Exchange and by some accounts need to. However, instead of wasting time and resources on managing an Exchange server, small businesses should move towards a more simpler approach through Google Apps or Office 365. There is simply no need for an Exchange environment in an office size of under 10 users. With today’s full featured cloud options, Exchange can easily be replaced in a small office environment.

If your company uses proprietary software that relies on Exchange, then find a more flexible alternative. You’ll find that your business becomes less reliant on specialized software and it sends a message to the software company that they need to produce more flexible options or join the dinosaurs.

Gmail/Google Apps

Gmail is easily the most robust web based email solution available, but these same principles apply to other top email providers.

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• Use filters! For the love of all holy email, if you want to get out from under that pile of email, then use filters. Start NOW!
• Gmail has a convenient priority label to manage urgent and important messages you expect to receive. However, with a quick filter setup, priority labels can be used with other services as well.
• Star messages with the dozen or so star options to organize your priorities. After some time you’ll become accustomed to using them and even organize them around your workflow.
• For gmail specifically, users can even create a ‘Snooze‘ function to delay messages from reaching their inbox. You can set your own up by following this tutorial.

Outlook

While I’m not a fan of Outlook, it is the predominant email program. It too has filtering capabilities and if you don’t bother to use them or take time to understand how they work, then you deserve all the spam and missed emails you get.

Learn what you’re doing and continue to revise to suit your needs. Stop complaining that it’s not working the way you “want” it to. You need to teach Outlook how to handle your messages. Remember, Outlook is software not a mind-reading artificial intelligence.

Messages

Spam

For the last time – spam cannot be blocked 100% by any software or service, period. Can you manage it? Yes, but results will never be foolproof and will take time to be fully applied.

Also keep in mind that sending rapid, repeated emails to recipients can cause your own outgoing email to be flagged as potential spam on the recipient’s end. By definition, flooding someone’s inbox with emails (whether you consider them legitimate or not) is considered spamming them.

Overstuffed Inboxes

This has to be the most egregious of all email offenses and elicits some of the biggest complaints. I’ve personally seen inboxes with more than 3,000 emails and recently read a story where a user had 40,000 emails in their inbox. 40,000! That is absurd. Not because of the amount, but because those users let them get that way. There’s no excuse for that much inbox email and the blame falls squarely on the user’s shoulders.

If you’re currently in such a situation, then here’s what you do:

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• Delete all email in your inbox to start from scratch. [info]Note: If you have that many emails, there is zero chance you will actually read through all of them. Just delete them and if any of it was crucial or important, you’ll hear about it again.[/info]
• Create folders for email from senders you expect and want.
• Monitor your email closely for the next week. Create filters for everything you want to save and label junk you don’t.
• Continue that process until you no longer receive dozens of messages in your inbox. Remember, even the unwanted email should be filtered. You can mark the unwanted as junk or modify a filter later, after the inbox is cleaned up.

Tools

Addins & Plugins

These items can be incredibly handy or outrageously limiting. If a plugin requires specific integration or lacks open versatility between apps or email services, then get rid of it. That might be easier to say than do, but if you’re chained to one of those types of plugins, then you’re limiting your email freedom and hindering mobile productivity.

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The post Master Your Email Or Stop Complaining first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

Well, that’s just silly.  Why should you give out your personal or business email address just to get a promotional code for a free bag of chips?  You shouldn’t have to, so we’ve compiled a list of disposable email address generators that users can use in place of their own email address.  The addresses are real and work like any other email address.  The big difference is they are either timed or a bottomless trash can for spam email.

Disposable Email Generators

Mailinator

Mailinator is one of our favorites.  We’ve used them in the past and are reliable.  With Mailinator you simply create an email address of your choosing and add @mailinator.com to the end of it.  So as an example you could create an address of ‘IWantMyFreeBagOfChips@mailinator.com’.  If you don’t feel like thinking, just use the random email address that Mailinator generates for you.

There are no sign-ups, passwords or registrations and checking your inbox is as simple as typing it into their “Check your Inbox” feature.

Visit Mailinator

10MinuteMail

Just as the name indicates, 10MinuteMail provides a timed, disposable, email address for 10 minutes.  The 10 minutes should allow you enough time to finalize registration forms or sign-up processes.  If you need more time, 10MinuteMail allows you to add more minutes in increments of 10.

If you receive an email message during that time it appears on the 10MinuteMail.com screen, handy for when you are waiting on a one time confirmation email.

Visit 10MinuteMail

Dispostable

Like Mailinator, Dispostable uses email addresses ending in their own domain (@dispostable.com).  Pick any email address you like and enter it into any online form or sign-up page, then navigate to the Dispostable website and check your inbox.  If you want a randomly generated email address, just visit the Dispostable website first and grab the one listed on the main page.

Dispostable’s website has a no fluff, clean looking display and is reminiscent of Google in its simplicity, making it great for first time users.

Visit Dispostable

GuerrillaMail

GuerrillaMail is another timed, disposable, email address generator.  The email addresses last 60 minutes and are automatically created when you visit the GuerrillaMail website.  GuerrillaMail is unique in that it starts out by sending you an email to the newly created disposable address which explains how to use the address, check for email and extended options.

GuerrillaMail provides usage data on how many email addresses have been created and how many prevented spam.  Fun stats to look at, but have no direct impact on their service or your email address.

Visit GuerrillaMail

MintEmail

Like some of the others, MintEmail allows users to create a custom email address or use a randomly generated one.  After the email address is used, you can check incoming messages by adding the username to the web url.  So for example, if you used IWantMyFreeBagOfChips as your email address username, then you would check your inbox at ‘www.mintemail.com/IWantMyFreeBagOfChips’.

Like all the others, no registration, sign-up or account creation process is needed.

Visit MintEmail

Final Thoughts

Disposable email addresses are really useful and can be a big time saver.  They can help prevent major headaches later by preventing spam from coming to your personal email inbox.  One word of caution, don’t use disposable email addresses on websites where you actually want to receive their content.  Of course it goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway, don’t use disposable email addresses for anything related to financial information because obviously you want and may need to receive those emails.

If you enjoyed or found this article useful, please show us some support by sharing us on your favorite social websites.  Thanks!

Your Thoughts

Have you used disposable email addresses in the past?  Which service do you use?  Do you have a favorite not on this list?  Let us know in the comments!

The post Disposable Email Address Generators first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

One repair issue that has repeatedly made me cringe and at times wish I hadn’t checked email or answered the call is when the issue is a problem with Outlook. To be clear, I’m talking about Outlook which comes bundled with MSOffice not ‘Outlook Express’ which was Windows’ default, free email client in previous versions. Clients describe Outlook problems that can only be classified as unique to their situation. The problems are often obscure and unreasonably complicated to resolve. What might seem like a simple one time error to users is actually not so simple to repair because many of the errors are not standard or generic email problems, but rather software related problems. Clients and users don’t always understand or comprehend the complexity involved with regards to diagnosing Outlook errors. Users just want it to work and understandably so, but the real issue usually resides in something the user has done or added to the system which makes correcting the issue or error problematic.

I think what’s most irksome about Outlook is that so many people continue to use it despite the ineffectiveness, constant problems and lack of resolution for those problems. I have to question why that is. Is it because it’s free when they buy MS Office for Word and Excel? Is it because they have no idea that other email programs exist? Is it because they don’t understand that all email can be checked through a web browser without an email program? Those are all valid questions and I’m going to address each one.

Free Outlook with MS Office

This is perhaps the simplest one to address. Outlook like any other program on your computer has an alternative. Let’s face it, you probably purchased MS Office for Word not Outlook, but if you did buy Office just for the sake of having Outlook then you wasted your money. Outlook is way too heavy a program for the average user. It is completely unnecessary in a home environment and most users have no idea how to utilize the full potential of Outlook even if they’ve been using it for years. If Outlook were just email and supplied extras associated with cataloging, organizing and manipulating email then it would likely be a much better program. As it stands, it is an email, calendar and scheduling program which is why so many obscure and odd errors propagate when something goes wrong.

Email Alternatives

Yes there are alternatives to Outlook and there have been for quite some time. To be clear, I’m not talking about business environments where companies depend entirely on Outlook for their company email structure. Although, they should consider alternatives such as Groupwise, but that’s a debate for another time. For the average everyday user, free programs such as Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail are available. If you insist on something made by Microsoft then use Windows Live Mail. It’s relatively simple and functions with address book, folders and everything else you expect to come with an email client. If you want to use the best alternative, look at Mozilla Thunderbird. Thunderbird is lightning quick and can accomplish everything an average user needs in an email client.

Check Email Through Web Browser

Quite simply, this option requires absolutely no knowledge of email clients, programs, software, configuration or setup of any kind. You know your email address, simply go to the host for your email account and login to check it. For example, <username>@yahoo.com. Navigate to yahoo.com and login with your email address and password. It doesn’t get much simpler. To be fair, ISPs who provide free email accounts have probably the worst interface for checking email and in some cases require specific browsers or toolbar junk, but we’re talking about the average user here and he or she likely has a free account from Yahoo!, hotmail or gmail. The best part of having these cloud based email accounts is that you don’t have to worry about storing the messages on your computer. If your PC fails, the emails won’t be lost because they are saved in the cloud.

Wrap-up

In short I can see no legitimate reason for home users to use Outlook as their email client. It’s antiquated, slow, glitchy and an absolute nightmare to diagnose. Microsoft is of little or no help with troubleshooting this program and those little errors grow to immense problems for home users who have no idea how to diagnose them.

The point of this rant is to frankly state that users, home in particular, stop using Outlook and switch to a more simple, reliable, stable option. If you want to save yourself downtime and most importantly tech support costs, you will follow my advice.

The post Outlook Rant first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

If you read our previous post ‘Save Reply Time in Gmail with Canned Responses & Filters‘ then you already know how to setup filters for sorting your incoming email. This time around we look at something very similar but a little more on the geek side of things.

The Problem

The inbox can get cluttered and while filters do a nice job of sorting, they can become out of sight out of mind after a while. So what we need is a way to remind ourselves that a particular email is important and needs attention – just not right away.

The Solution

Google has provided us with a nice script which allows us the ability to ‘Snooze’ emails. Snooze is just as it sounds, it’s a timed feature similar to an alarm clock. When you snooze an email, it’s placed in a ‘Snooze’ folder until the snooze ends. After the snooze ends, the email is placed back in your inbox. All of that is accomplished with what’s called an Apps Script.

The Instruction

1. First login to your Google account and access Google Docs.
2. Click ‘Create New’ and select spreadsheet to create a new spreadsheet document.
   
3. Click the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Script Editor’. A new window will open.
   
4. In the right half of the window, paste the following code:
   
5. Click the save button and name it. We chose: Snooze
6. Click the dropdown box labeled ‘Select a function to run’ and select ‘setup’.  *It is located above the area where you pasted the code.
7. Click ‘Run’ or the blue arrow. You will be asked about granting access to your gmail. You need to grant the script access so that it can create the necessary labels in gmail for you.
8. Click ‘Triggers’ and select ‘current project’s triggers’. A small window will open, select ‘Add a new trigger’.
9. For the dropdown boxes, select these settings: ‘moveSnoozes’, ‘time-driven’, ‘day timer’, ‘midnight to 1am’. Click save.

The script should now be up and running in your gmail. You will likely need to refresh your gmail as well as give it several minutes before it realizes the script has been added. Once gmail recognizes the script is in place you will see the ‘Snooze’ label with sub-labels for how many days you wish to snooze an email.

There are a lot of possibilities with this script such as changing the max number of days for snooze, starring unsnoozed emails, etc., but this tutorial gets you started with the basics.

Your Thoughts

What do you think of this gmail scripts? Are you already using this script? Do you have other scripts you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments!

The post Snooze Feature for Gmail first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

Ever wonder if you left your gmail account logged in at work or some other location? Imagine you’ve lost your gmail password. How would you get control back? Those are the topics we’ll be covering in this gmail tips article.

* For this article we will assume that you have setup your gmail account and have essentially done very little as far as configuration or manipulation with labs and settings. Note: Your colors may be different dependent upon gmail theme.

Lost Gmail Password

First we’ll look at the gmail password. Regardless of your password strength, if you lose that sticky note by the monitor, lose the file on your computer or get bumped over the head with a frying pan and lose your memory – you’re going to need to retrieve that gmail password somehow. One simple step is to add an alternate email address to your account. The alternate email address is used in case you forget the password and need to have it sent to you. The process is relatively simple and requires very little effort. The only caveat is that you will need to ensure your alternate email address is kept active. Otherwise, gmail will send the password recovery information to an address you can’t access.

To setup an alternate email address, follow these steps:

1. Sign into your gmail account.
2. Click ‘Settings’ in the top right corner of the gmail screen.
3. Click ‘Accounts and Import’.
4. Find the ‘Change account settings’ option at the bottom and click on ‘Google Account settings’.

   

5. Click ‘Change password recovery options’, listed under ‘Personal Settings’ area.

   

   In the ‘Email’ section, click ‘Add or remove email addresses’.

   

6. Enter an alternate email address (Example: Hotmail account or ISP account). Make sure the email address is of course yours, is active and you have the password in order to access it.
7. Click ‘Save’ at the bottom of the screen.

Alternate Email Address Is No Longer Valid

Next we’ll focus on a more complicated scenario. Let’s say your password is lost and your alternate email address is no longer active. Typically, you’re out of luck. There isn’t exactly a toll free hot line to call and remedy your password situation. There is however a nice feature within your account settings that allows inclusion of a phone number for password retrieval via text message. The sole caveat being that the phone number listed must be able to accept SMS text messages.

To setup a phone number for password retrieval via text message, follow these steps:

1. Sign into your gmail account.
2. Click ‘Settings’ in the top right corner of the gmail screen.
3. Click ‘Accounts and Import’.
4. Find the ‘Change account settings’ option at the bottom and click on ‘Google Account settings’.

   

5. Click ‘Add a mobile phone number’, listed under ‘SMS’ area.

   

6. Enter your mobile phone number. Make sure the phone number you enter can receive SMS text messages.
7. Make sure the ‘Use this phone number for password recovery via text message’ is selected.

   

8. Click ‘Save’ at the bottom of the screen.

I Forgot To Logout Of Gmail!

Finally, there are so many opportunities to check gmail accounts these days. Whether it be at work, a friend’s house, a public hot spot or some other means, there is the potential to unintentionally remain logged in. Obviously, you don’t want your gmail conversations available for anyone and everyone to read. So what can you do if you realize you never logged out of your account or don’t remember if you logged out? Well gmail has an answer for that too. There is a feature at the bottom of your gmail screen which lists last account activity. Alongside the activity information is a details link. The link will open a new window to illustrate a couple key activity bits of information. There is an area where gmail will inform you whether your account is open in any other location (work, friend’s house, etc.). Additionally, it will allow you to disconnect from those other locations remotely. Simply tell gmail to disconnect and you are logged out of those other sessions. The activity details also list how, where and when the account was accessed previously.

Let’s say you access gmail from home in New Jersey everyday and from work in New York occasionally during the week. Out of the blue, your gmail is accessed from Oregon. When gmail detects unusual patterns in the IP address, you will receive a notice across the top of your gmail account informing you the account has been accessed from a non-typical location. If you’re visiting Oregon, great no problem, but if not you can immediately take measures, like changing your password, to ensure your account doesn’t become compromised further.

To access your account activity area, follow these steps:

1. Login to your gmail account.
2. Locate the ‘Last account activity’ line below your gmail conversations area and click ‘Details’.

   

3. A new window will open titled: ‘Activity on this account’. This is where all login and access information can be viewed.

   

4. Near the bottom there is an ‘Alert preference’ option. Click ‘change’ and enable ‘Show an alert for unusual activity’.

   

Summary

The security preferences in this article are relatively simple and take, in most cases, less than 5 minutes to setup.  While you may already have an alternate email address setup, it would be wise to have the mobile number setup as well, just in case.  The preferences alone are good to have setup but having access to account activity details can be a tremendous tool for those of us constantly on the go and tethered to gmail.  If your gmail account is important to you, check the account activity details regularly.  Monitoring your account is a simple and painless way of ensuring the account remains yours and uncompromised.

The post Gmail Security and Password Retrieval first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

Canned responses are snippets or short phrases that you regularly write in response to routinely received emails.  They can be very useful for replies to the weekly expense report or the email containing newest family photos.  By using canned responses we can reply without having to type out the, “Thanks for the report” or “Thanks for the photos” or “Thanks for the holiday greetings!” each and every time you receive them.  Admittedly canned responses are deemed a lazy man’s way of communicating but when you receive dozens of emails every week or everyday, who has time to personally respond to all of them.

So let’s get started!  For this tutorial we will be using an email address of <anyname>@gmail.com and using attachments as our filter criteria.  The colors represented in the associated images may differ for your screen depending on your current gmail theme.

First we need to enable ‘Canned Responses’:

1. Login to your gmail account.
2. Locate and select settings in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
3. Select Labs.

   

4. Scroll down the page to ‘Canned Responses’ and choose enable. 
5. Scroll either to the bottom or top of the page and click ‘Save Changes’.

   

Now we need to create a canned response:

1. Choose Compose Mail.  Do not enter in any subject or recipient at this time.
2. Type out your ‘Canned Response’ in the composition area.
   

   Example: Thanks for sending over the attachment.

3. If you look under the ‘Subject’ area you will see the ‘Canned response’ field, click it.
   Note
   : If this is your first time setting up a canned response you will have only one option:  ‘New canned response..’.  Select that option.
4. A little popup window will appear asking you to name your canned response.  Choose something that correlates closely to what you wrote in the actual response itself.  That way you remember, or at least have an idea, of what the canned response states.

Example: Attachment_Thanks

1. Click OK.
2. If you want to test it for accuracy, click ‘Canned responses’ again and choose your canned response under the Insert heading.  In our example it would be ‘Attachment_Thanks’.

If everything was done correctly it should insert a duplicate of what you just typed in your gmail composition area.  OK, we are finished with this  so you can ‘Discard’ the new mail composition.

Create a Filter:

Now comes the fun part.  Again, select settings from the upper right hand corner of the screen.

1. Select ‘Filters’

   

2. Click ‘Create a new filter’.  There are several fields so you can get very specific or vaguely general, it all depends on your needs.  For the purposes of this example we will keep the filter specific to incoming but general in the content.
3. In the From field we enter the email address of the sender we are expecting an attachment from.  For this example we are using <anyname>@gmail.com.  All other fields are left blank but tick the ‘Has attachment’ option just above the ‘Next Step’ button.

   

4. Click ‘Next Step’
5. Now we need to choose an action to be performed when we receive an email, with an attachment, from the sender we specified in our ‘From’ field.  The last option is ‘Send canned response:’  Choose that option and from the selection box choose the canned response you created earlier.  Again, for our example it would be ‘Attachment_Thanks’.

   

6. Click ‘Create Filter’

You’re done!  Now whenever you receive an email with an attachment from <anyname>@gmail.com, gmail will automatically reply with the canned response thanking them for the attachment.

Have Fun!

The post Save Reply Time in Gmail with Canned Responses & Filters first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.