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The Easy Way to Enable Disabled Addins in Outlook

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Did you know that there is a built-in feature in Outlook that disables addins automatically?

Have you come across a time when you open Outlook in the morning only to find that your favourite outlook addin is missing from the toolbar/ribbon?

There is no need to panic, this post shows you simple steps you can follow to enable the disabled addins.

The steps will differ slightly based on the version of Outlook you are using:

In Outlook 2003

Open Outlook
Click Help on the menu bar >About Microsoft Outlook
Click the Disabled Items button
Select the file related to the addin
Click Enable
Restart Outlook

In Outlook 2007:

Open Outlook
Click Help on the menu bar >Disabled items…
Select the file related to the addin
Click Enable
Restart Outlook

In Outlook 2010

Open Outlook
Click the File tab >Options
Click Addins from the right panel
From the Manage: drop-down list, select Disabled items and click the Go button
Select the file related to the addin
Click Enable
Restart Outlook

This should now enable the disabled addin.

Hope you will not panic the next time an addin is disabled, enabling it will only take you a few clicks.

Let us know if this tip is helpful by leaving a comment below

Categories : General, Outlook Installation/Setup

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Flooding in Fiji… and Easter

Posted by: standss | Comments (2)

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

A quick blog post to wish all readers a Happy Easter… and to thank you all for your support during the current natural disaster in Fiji. Many readers are aware that we are based in the beautiful tropical islands of Fiji.

Over the last week we have had very heavy rainfall that has resulted in severe flooding in many part of the country. Thousands of people have been left homeless. We will be contributing to several charities over the next few weeks to assist those in need.

We could show you many pictures of the destruction but instead we’d like to share the following images which show the strong and happy character of the people of our country… even in the most difficult of times.

...sharing kava... rain or shine

... a bathtub boat and rake paddle

We were very fortunate here in Suva that we were spared from the worst of it. However the heavy rains and flooding brought down one of the main power supply lines to the city (most of our power comes from a Hydropower station).

The authorities are doing the best to rectify the problem and it is estimated that power will be back to normal early next week. This is taking time because the problem area has been difficult to access until now.

In the meantime, they are supplying power to Suva using backup generators. Unfortunately due to demand, power is rationed to different part of the city at different times.

As a result, we have not had a constant supply of electricity for the last few days.

I would like to firstly thank my team here at Standss who have helped out in any way they can to ensure that all customers keep getting the level of support that you are used to. Various team members have worked either from their homes or from other offices (depending on where electricity was available at the time).

I would also like to thank all our customers who have been patient in the few occasions that there have been delays.

As always… thank you for your support. We wish you the best for Easter and look forward to things returning back to normal next week.

More on the flood in Fiji

Floods 3-4 times worse than 2009: PM

Record rain led to severe flood: Fiji Met

Source: Fijilive.com

Categories : General

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Ignore Conversations in Outlook 2010

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

Have you used the Ignore Conversations feature in Outlook 2010. Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 have the ability to view emails by conversations that most readers are already familiar with.

Outlook 2010 added an interesting new twist to this… you can right click over an email and then click Ignore.

The selected email (and all future emails that are part of the same thread/conversation) will automatically be Deleted (moved to the deleted items folder).

You will never be bothered by that particular conversation again!

I have to be honest… I don’t use the feature much myself but I can think of the following situations where it will be useful:

You have been CCed on an email in which you are really not interested. The email had many recipients and a “discussion” has started with everyone doing Reply-to-All
You are part of an email mailing list and a topic is being discussed in which you have little interest. In this situation, everyone in the mailing list gets a copy even though their names are not specifically in the To or CC fields. You don’t want to unsubscribe as there will be other current or future topics that you want to be part of. The solution… use Outlook to ignore just this topic.

Have you used the Ignore Conversation feature. Do you find it useful? Are there other Conversation View features that are better? Let us know by leaving a comment on the blog.

Categories : General, Outlook Email Tips

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When to BCC Emails in Outlook

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Thursday, March 29th, 2012

I saw an interesting article on using BCC on Microsoft’s Outlook blog. I am sure most readers know about BCC but when should you use BCC? Here’s what we think.

Firstly… what is BCC?

BCC stands for blind carbon. People that you BCC on an email will receive the email but their names will not be visible to other recipients of the same email i.e. the other recipients will not know that the BCCed person also received a copy of the email.

Recommended Uses of BCC

Hide one or more recipients from others: You may need to send a copy of the email to someone without the other recipients knowing about it.
Prevent Reply-to-All Storms: You may choose to BCC many people on an email if they do need to discuss the email further amongst themselves. Using BCC instead of CC means that everyone can’t get involved in unnecessary discussions or have to receive useless one-word emails like thank you or ok.
Circulate Jokes: I know that many people do not recommend circulating jokes but some jokes just are too good to keep to yourself. Unless you are forwarding the joke to a close group of friends and want further comments to follow, email the joke to yourself and BCC everyone else.

Not Recommended Uses of BCC:

Putting down your colleagues: Don’t BCC management on a conversation to show that you are doing your work well while others are slacking off. If you need to complain about someone, don’t be sneaky about it.
Sending out sales or marketing newsletters. If you use the BCC to send to people you don’t know well, your email just looks like SPAM. Use something like Email Merge for Outlook instead.

Replying to a BCCed email

Before you reply to your next email, check to see if you were BCCed (does your name appear in the To or CC fields). If not, than the email was addressed to multiple people, think twice before replying!

Why were you BCCed? Does the sender want to hide from the others that you were sent a copy of the email too?

If you reply-to-all on an email that you were BCCed on then the secret is out. Everyone knows that you received the email as well.

If you get BCCed on a lot of emails then you may want to use something like Send Guard for Outlook… which will warn you anytime you try and reply-to-all an email that you were BCCed on.

Please share you own ideas of using BCC by leaving a comment on the blog.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Outlook Email Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool, SendGuard for Outlook

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Keep your Outlook Mailbox size smaller by Finding, Moving/Deleting Large Emails

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Do you get frustrated receiving messages like “Your mailbox is over its size limit…”

Here is a simple yet very handy tip which allows you to find large emails in your mailbox (which of course are taking up a lot of space) quickly, take quick actions on them i.e. either move or delete.

Finding, Moving/Deleting large emails

Follow these simple steps to find the large emails:

In Outlook 2007/2003, Click on the Tools menu > Find > Advanced Find
In Outlook 2010, click once on the Search box, this should now show the Search Tools tab, under this you will find Search Tools > Advanced Find. For those who prefer using shortcut keys, press CTRL+SHIFT+F to open the Advanced Find screen (Applicable to all three versions of outlook)
On the Advanced Find screen, click on the More Choices tab
At the bottom of the screen you will see Size (kilobytes). In the first drop-down menu, select greater than, in the next box enter the size for example 1000 for 1MB.
Click Find Now. This will now search your mailbox for all emails that meet the criteria and provide you a list at the bottom of the screen.
You can now browse through this list.
- To delete an email, simple right-click on it and click Delete.
- To Move an email, right-click on the email and click Move to Folder…, use the pop-up screen to select the folder you wish to move the email.

I hope you find this tip useful.

Do you have your own ways of keeping your mailbox size smaller, let us know by leaving a comment below.

Better Search with Microsoft Outlook

Categories : Outlook Email Tips, Outlook Search Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool

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Take Control of your Outlook Inbox (Not the other way around)

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

Getting overwhelmed with the numbers of emails in your inbox everyday? Do you feel overpowered by the emails in your inbox?

Stop for a second and think, does every email need my immediate attention? The answer might just be NO.

I have seen clients with hundreds and even thousands of e-mails in their Inboxes. Their Inbox is a massive filing cabinet and action-list rolled into one.

Your Inbox needs to be used like a To-Do list. It should contain only the e-mails that you still need to read or take action on.

After reading any e-mail:

Keep it in the Inbox if you still need to take action on it
File it OUT of the Inbox into another folder if you need it for future reference
Delete it if you don’t need it for future reference

Once you get into the habit of doing this, you will be amazed at what a useful tool your Inbox will suddenly become.

Don’t use the Deleted Items folder for filing old e-mails

Some users take control of their Inbox by Deleting the e-mails so that they end up in the Deleted Items folder.

They are using Outlook’s built in Trash Can to store their important e-mails???

Please don’t do this!

It is very easy to accidentally clear out your Deleted Items folder and lose all your e-mails. In fact there are automated tools that do this for you to reclaim space on your hard-disk.

Delete item’s that you don’t want to keep! File your important e-mails in project folders created inside Outlook!

Get started NOW with a “Still to File” folder

If you have hundreds of e-mails sitting in your Inbox, here is a quick way to get started.

Create a folder inside your Inbox and call it “Still to File”. (Right Click on your Inbox and click New Folder)
Drag all e-mails that you have already worked on out of the Inbox into this new folder.

You will now only have e-mails in the Inbox that still need your attention.

Doesn’t it feel good to be able to easily see only your still-to-action e-mails in one place?

When you get a bit of time, remember to clear out the e-mails from the Still To File folder into dedicated folders for each project or case that you are working on.

Tip 4 in our e-book shows you how to create a Project based E-mail Filing System in Outlook…
Click Here to download your own copy of the special report.

Move E-mails out of your Inbox at the click of a button

You can greatly reduce the time it takes to clear your Inbox while increasing the chances that your e-mails are filed in the correct folders using a special Outlook add-on…

QuickFile for Outlook is an inexpensive user-friendly Outlook add-on that greatly simplifies the filing of e-mails to the correct folders.

Find out more about how QuickFile can simplify your e-mail filing by Clicking Here.

There is a fully functional demo version that you can download and try out for yourself.

Do you have your own ways to take control of your Inbox, let us know by leaving a comment below.

Categories : Outlook Email Filing & Management Tip, Outlook Email Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool, QuickFile for Outlook

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Use Google to get the last tee-off time for golf in your city

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

A non-Outlook tip. Want to get in 9 or 18 holes before darkness. Google can tell you what time the sun will set?

Go to Google and type “sunset” followed by the name of your city (don’t type the quotes), Google will give you the time of the next sunset in that city and how many hours and minutes until it arrives. Eg. sunset suva

(You can also find the time of the next sunrise by replacing sunset with sunrise)

Thank you to tips.slaw.ca for bringing this to my attention

Categories : General

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Where is your Outlook Data File?

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

I recently read an interesting article on TechRepublic about the 10 most important things to teach Outlook users.

One of the point refers to… backing up your Outlook data. I am frequently surprised by how many Outlook users just assume that their Outlook data is backed up when they backup their Documents folder. Guess what… your Outlook data is not in your Documents folder.

Unless you are part of a corporate network using MS Exchange, all your Outlook data is stored in one Personal Folder file.

This file has a .pst extension and is saved somewhere on your computer.
This one file probably contains all your Outlook folders, e-mails, contacts, tasks, calendar items, journal entries and notes inside it.
(Unfortunately) This file is NOT saved to your Documents folder (at least not by default) so chances are you are not backing it up.

So let me show you how to find out where your Outlook Data File is stored:

The exact location depends on the version of Outlook and Windows. To find out where your Outlook data is:

Go to your Inbox and make sure that the list of folders is displayed
Right-click the top-level folder and select Properties
Click the Advanced button. The full path to where your Data file is stored will provided in the box labeled Filename:

It would be a good idea to include that file as part of your normal computer backup plan. This ensures that your Outlook data is also getting backed up along with other things.

If you are using more than one PST (e.g. a separate file for archives), then you need to do the above for each of your Outlook data files.

I hope that this little tip helps keep your Outlook data protected.

Do you have your own tips on how to better use Outlook, share it with us and our readers by leaving a comment below.

How to maintain Outlook data (PST) Files

How to protect your Outlook Data from data loss

Categories : Outlook Installation/Setup, Outlook Performance

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Changing the Font of Email Notes in Outlook

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

Don’t like the font of your email notes in Outlook? Here’s a quick tip on how to change it.

Yesterday we received a feedback from an existing Email Notes for Outlook user:

“…my biggest complaint is that I do not like the typeface on Email Notes.”

We chose the default font because it looks (a little) like hand written notes but several users have told us that they don’t like it.

I suspect that there many users who have been “putting up” with our font selection. Here’s how you can change the font to something you like.

Start Outlook
On the EmailNotes Toolbar/Ribbon > click More > Click Settings…

Email notes settings screen

On the Settings screen as shown above, you can select the Font, the Font-size and the default color of the note you wish to use. (You can see a preview of your selections just below it)
Click OK

Alternatively, you can access the Settings straight from the Notes screen:

Select a email you want to add notes too > click on the Add Notes button on the EmailNotes toolbar/Ribbon

Emailnotes settings from notes

Right-click anywhere on the notes screen > select EmailNotes Settings
Make the changes as preferred and click OK

These settings will now be applied to all the notes that you create.

If you haven’t tried Email Notes for Outlook yet, you can download a fully functional 30 day trial of Email Notes for Outlook here.

If you are an existing Email Notes user and have any suggestions or ideas to further improve EmailNotes, please let us know by leaving a comment below or email us at news@addins4outlook.com

Customer Story: How I use Email Notes for Outlook in my business

Categories : Email Notes for Outlook, Outlook Email Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool

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How EmailMerge for Outlook handles Unsubscribes

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

We had a user ask us a question regarding EmailMerge for Outlook yesterday:

“How does your Email Merge Software work with unsubscribing from the mailshot?”

We replied to the user mentioning about one of the new features we added to the latest version of EmailMerge called the “Do Not Send List”.

For all existing users of EmailMerge for Outlook and also who are currently trialing it, this post highlights what the “Do not Send List” feature is and how you can use it to handle Unsubscribes.

Before we get into using the Do Not Send To list, here’s a small quote from a happy user of this feature.

“I just found the function to update the do not send list from email responses in the current folder with Unsubscribed in the subject line and the ability to change the Subject word being searched for. Awesome! I lost my unsubscribe list, but keep all my responses in one folder.”
Marge

I’d like to say a Special Thanks to Marge for the positive feedback.

What is the “Do not Send To” list?

The Do Not Send list allows you to maintain a list of email addresses to which EmailMerge will NEVER send emails (even if they are in your mailing list).

Why? Certain contacts may request to not be part of your mailings. Accidentally emailing them could result in annoyed prospects or customers… or complaints against you to spam authorities.

Adding these contacts to the Do Not Send list ensures that EmailMerge will not send emails to them.

How to Use it?

To Open the Do not Send List:

In Outlook go to your Inbox, click on the little arrow beside(below) the EmailMerge button on the Toolbar/Ribbon.

Select Do not Send To List

Click Do not Send List. The application will open the following screen:

Do Not Send to List Screen

1. Add an email-address to Do not Send List:

Click Add, the application will display the following screen:

Add Email to Do Not Send List

You can add email address(s) to the Do not Sent list using 1 of the 3 options below:
- Manually add the new items to the list
  Select this option if you would like to type-in the email addresses manually. (Enter 1 email address per line)
- Email address (sender) of currently selected email(s) Select this option if you want Email Merge to automatically add email addresses for the emails you have already selected in the current folder. The email address of the sender will be added to the Do not Sent List.
- Emails in current folder with unsubscribe/bounce back words in subject

People can unsubscribe from receiving emails from you by having certain words in the subject of the email they sent to you. (Normally they would reply to your email and add the word Unsubscribe)

You may also find that certain emails addresses on your list are no longer valid as emails you send are bounced back. EmailMerge can automatically add addresses of the above to the Do not Send List by comparing words in the Subject fields.

You can edit the list of words by clicking on Maintain Word List to add, delete or reset the Word list to default.

2. Edit Do not Send List:

Select the email-address and click Edit
Make the necessary changes to the email-address
Click OK to save your changes

3. Remove an email-address from Do not Send List:

Select the email-address you want to remove
Click Delete and the application will display a prompt to confirm the removal of the indicated email address from the list.
Select Yes to remove the email-address from the Do not Send List.

So… are you using the Do Not Send To feature of Email Merge PRO for Outlook. Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

Not a user of Email Merge PRO for Outlook yet? Find out how you can keep customers informed using EmailMerge PRO for Outlook.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Sales and Marketing with Outlook

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