leaving behind your old email address can be a very distressing and painful experience.  Many have been using the same email account given to them by their ISP for years and the address is known to all their friends and family.  The fear of missing messages sent to that address is a strong incentive to put up with the lousy service provided by their ISP.  Now, there are many better solutions for email but making the change can still be daunting.

Google’s GMail is a particularly good replacement for the old ISP email .  It’s free, has a lot of features including some pretty good anti-spam filtering.  GMail also gives an constantly increasing amount of storage.  Right now, it’s past 7GB which is easily twice the storage that your ISP might offer.

Please note, The following tip will only work for email accounts using POP3. It will not work for a lot of webmail accounts.

Set up Gmail to check mail on your old ISP account:

1. login to gmail and click “Settings” on the top right corner of the page.
2. Select the “Accounts and Import”” tab
3. Click the “Add POP3 email account” button from the Check mail using POP3 section.

Next type in the email address that you would like GMail to check.

Lastly all you need to do is type in the setting for the email account using the username/password and ports given by your ISP or email provider.

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The new Ribbon interface and the new Office filetypes are the most notable changes that Microsoft Office 2007 brought, but one minor change was a new default font.  In Microsoft Word 2007 11 point Calibri is the new default font as opposed to 12 point Times New Roman which was the previous default fonts.  Here is how you can change the default font back to Times New Roman or to whatever font that you like.

There are several reasons why you would want to change the default fonts other than nostalgia. You may have older computers still running older versions of Office and you would like to have the fonts consistent on them. You may want to choose a smaller font to save paper when printing, or if you print a lot of documents you can choose a font that is really easy to read.

Here’s how to do it

• On the Home tab, click on the “Expand Styles” icon in the lower right of the styles menu.
• Click on the “Manage Styles” button at the bottom of the menu that expands.  (see figure below)

• Next you need to select the “Set Defaults” tab.
• Choose the new font, font size, and any other options (like font color)
• At the bottom of this menu there two radio buttons that you can choose from.  If you select “Only on this document” the new font will only apply to the current document.  If you choose “New documents based on this template” the new font will apply to all new documents.

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Mozilla Thunderbird is a free open source alternative to proprietary email clients such as Microsoft Outlook.  However a feature is missing from Mozilla Thunderbird that is present in other email clients such as Outlook.  Thunderbird does not have a calendar module.  However the great thing about Thunderbird is that it’s functionality can be expanded with plugins.  Thunderbird is incredibly flexible and the lack of a Calendar is fixed by installing a plugin from Mozilla called Lightning.

Thunderbird With Lightning Installed

Installing Lightning

1. Download the lightning.xpi file from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/
2. Open Thunderbird
3. Click “Add-ons” from Thunderbird’s Tools Menu
4. Drag and drop the lightning.xpi file from your desktop (or whatever folder you downloaded it from) onto the add-ons window.  The result will look like this, and you will be prompted you to restart Thunderbird for the add-on to take effect.

If you don’t want to access your calendar from your email client or if you don’t use Thunderbird you can download a stand alone calendar client called Mozilla Sunbird.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/

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The Windows Disk Defragmenter is an extremely useful tool to maintain your computer’s performance.  If you have a badly Fragmented hard drive you will notice that booting Windows and loading programs are extremely slow. Taking these file fragments and combining them and cleaning up all the clutter in the hard disk can speed up load times considerably.  For computers running Windows XP and all older versions of Windows defragmenting the drive is usually the first step in speeding it up.

In Windows Vista the disk defragmenter runs automatically by default.  It only runs when the system is idle and will not effect the computers performance.  My Vista machine runs the defragmenter every Wednesday at 1am. Vista uses the Task Scheduler to schedule the weekly defragmenting and you can schedule XP to defragment automatically using XP’s task scheduler.

These steps are all available at Microsoft’s Knowledge Base Article 555098
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555098

You can open the task scheduler from the Start Menu –> Accessories –> System Tools.  Or you can access it from the Control Panel under “Scheduled Tasks”.  When you open the Task Scheduler click on “Add Scheduled Task” to open the new task wizard. When you are presented with a list of programs to run automatically, click the “Browse” button and navigate to and open the file C:/Windows/System32/defrag.exe.

Over the next few steps you will select the time and frequency of the new scheduled task.  You don’t need to run it every day but you can schedule it to run late at night every couple of weeks when you are not using the computer.  After you set the schedule be sure that you check “Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish” before you click the finish button.

In order to run the defragmenter automatically you need specify the drive that needs to be defragmented.  Simply type “C:” at the end of the Run field and click “ok”.

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In a previous post I went over exporting email contacts from a webmail account and importing them into Mozilla Thunderbird.  However, what if you want to add extra contacts directly into the .csv (comma separated value) file that you exported?   What if you have a list of contacts on an Microsoft Excel file that you would like to import into Thunderbird.  Any spreadsheet program, such as outlook (but also openoffice.org and even Google Docs)will be able to read, edit, and save .csv files.  I can easily open the contacts.csv file that I exported from Hotmail and edit it in Excel.

Then I can type in the new contacts.  One limitation of Thunderbird is that they only import the first 36 or so fields of the csv and the Hotmail .csv file has a lot of unnecessary field.  You need to make sure that you eliminate all but 36 of the fields.

If you have an Excel file (.xls) containing contacts that you would like to add to your Thunderbird Address book, No problem.  Open the spreadsheet and click on “save as”.  Then select CSV (Comma Delimited) as the document type and its ready to import into thunderbird.

Lastly, Whenever you are importing your .csv file make sure that all the fields in Thunderbirds Address Book match up with the fields that you are importing.  You may need to move a couple fields up or down to match.

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Part I. Moving your contacts from hotmail to thunderbird

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Everyone will agree that backing up your data is incredibly important.  Except people often don’t realize how important it is until they lose a file that they need. SyncToy2.0 is a free utility from Microsoft that will Sync two folders and it is useful for backing up your data.

Backing up to an external hard drive can be tedious and requires a lot of planning and thinking.  SyncToy does a great job in automating the process.  In SyncToy you will specify “folder pairs” and when you run SyncToy it will copy all changes from one folder to the other.  You can get SyncToy 2.0 here.

The first step is to create the folder pairs in SyncToy.  This is so SyncToy knows which folders need to be synchronized.  This step is fairly straightforward as you simply browse for the folders.  I select my “documents” folder and a corresponding “documents” folder on my 150 GB Western Digital External hard drive.

Then you need to chose how you want to copy files between the two folders.

• Synchronize:  The copying works in both directions.  All new files, changes, deletions on one folder is copied over to the other and vice-versa.
• Echo:  The copying only works in one direction.  New files, changes, deletions, and renames are moved from the first folder to the second.  However changes, new files, and deletions are not copied from the second folder to the first.
• Contribute:  Works in a similar way as Echo, but deletions are not copied over from one folder to another.

SyncToy 2.0 External Link

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c26efa36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&DisplayLang=en

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Free webmail services such as Microsoft’s Hotmail, Yahoo mail, and Google Gmail are inexpensive, easy to use, and accessible anywhere that you have a browser.  Over time you may collect many email addresses and contacts that you would like to share with other email addresses.  This tip is for exporting contacts from Hotmail and importing them into the Mozilla Thunderbird email client.  However, the process is similar for most other mail services.

Step 1: Export your contacts from Hotmail

1. login to your Hotmail (or Windows Live Mail as it is now called)
2. Click on the “Contacts” button on the left of the screen
   
3. Click on the options button on the top right corner of the next screen to pull up the options for contacts
   
4. Select Export Contacts
   
5. Click the Export Contacts button and it will save you contacts as a .csv (Comma Separated Values) file

The Comma Separated Values file that you export can be read by Microsoft Excel.  You can use this same process to move all your contacts over to an excel spreadsheet.  If you are using a different webmail then hotmail, you may export your contacts as a Tab delimited file (.tab) and this file type functions in pretty much the same way as a .csv

Step 2: Import contacts into Thunderbird

1. From the Thunderbird  tools, click on Import.
2. Select “Address Book” as the type of material to import.
3. Choose “Text file (LDIF, .tab, .csv, .txt)” as the format and click on Next
   
4. From There you can browse for the contacts file  which you previously exported.

Related Posts:
Part II: Edit your contacts using Microsoft Excel and import them into Thunderbird
(added Oct. 7, 2008)

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Mozilla Thunderbird is a wonderful and free alternative to Microsoft Outlook.  Stationary is a useful plugin for Thunderbird that will allow you to use pre-made HTML files as templates for your email messages.  Normally email is simple text, but using HTML allows you to create colorful and dynamic looking emails.  In the small business worlds there are many uses for html mail.

• Professional looking Letterhead for your formal communications
• Attractive Advertisements/Newsletters (Be sure that any advertisements are solicited by the recipient.  You don’t want to spam people).
• Gives you greater control over the look and feel of your messages

There are some disadvantages to HTML email.  The first is that it can be a security and privacy risk.  A maliciously formed HTML page can be used to install malware on your machine(although this is usually done through a flaw in windows.  Note: Keep you computer patched).  This is why many email programs block the loading of images and many users disable the receipt of HTML email.  Regardless it still can be useful.

For these instructions to work, you need to use Mozilla Thunderbird.  You can get Thunderbird here:  http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

You will also need the Stationary Plugin.  You can get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4394

Part 1: Install Stationary

1. Open Thuderbird
2. Click “Add-ons” from the Tools Menu
3. Drag and drop the stationary.xpi file you downloaded on to the resulting add-ons window.

Step 2: Create message using HTML Template

1. You should create your HTML Template in advance using your HTML editor or notepad (if you don’t have an HTML editor).
2. Click on the arrow to the right of the Write icon in thunderbird.  Select “Other Stationary”.  Then just browse to the template.  In the future this file will be added to the dropdown list.
   
3. Compose your email and send it.  In case the recipient has disabled HTML mail you should be sure and send your message in both plaintext and HTML.

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Step 1. Access Regional and Language Options

Open up the control panel and Click on “Change keyboard or other input methods”.  Or you can type Regional and language Options in the Vista instant search bar.

Click on the “Change Keyboards…” button.

Step 2. Select and add new keyboard inputs

Click on the “Add” button and then select the language input that you would like to add.  I selected Japanese and Japanese Microsoft IME.

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I’m going to show how to disable the startup programs using Windows Defender.  Previously with Windows XP you would do this by running a utility in windows called msconfig.exe (msconfig is still present in Vista and you can run it by typing “msconfig” in search bar built into your start menu)

Step 1. Open up Windows Defender

You can find Windows Defender by opening the control panel and clink on “Security”.  Windows Defender is one of the options in the next screen.  Or you could simply type in “Defender” or “Windows Defender” in Vista’s start menu search.

Step 2. Open up Software Explorer

Windows Defenders main purpose is an Antispyware program so this screen is mostly related to that.  Click on “tools”.

Select “Software Explorer”.  From here you will be able to manage the startup programs.

Step 3. Show for all users

If you are running as an limited user you will not be able to make any changes to the startup programs.  So in order to disable startup programs you will need to push the “Show for all users” button.  This will trigger a UAC prompt.  This will also apply the setting to all other accounts.  Often you will need to push the button as an administrator (because as we all know running as an admin on Vista is not really running as an admin).

Step 4. Disable Programs

Go down the list and disable all the programs you don’t want to run at startup.  Be sure that “Startup Programs” is the selected category.

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