A very handy feature in Outlook Express is the ability to ‘watch’ or ‘ignore’ messages. Select the ‘Inbox’ folder in Outlook Express, then go to the ‘View’ menu > ‘Columns’. Tick ‘Watch / Ignore’ and click OK. You will notice a new column has been inserted, with a heading row of a set of glasses. If you select a message, then click in this column that message will become ‘watched’. This will highlight the row for that message. Clicking the watch/ignore column again will make the message ignored. This will grey-out that message row. This is an excellent feature to categorise messages into those requiring attention and others which do not require attention. Clicking the watch/ignore column again will restore the message to its normal state. (more…)

When cutting-and-pasting formatted text (e.g. from a webpage or document) into an Outlook Express email, generally the formatting of the text is also carried over. This makes the pasted text in the email look out of sync with the typed text in the message. Unfortunately, Outlook Express does not have the option to paste as ‘Unformatted Text’ (like Microsoft Word). However, you can remove all formatting from the message (so all text looks the same) by going to the ‘Format’ menu > ‘Plain Text’. This will convert the message from HTML (formatted) format, into plain text format (no formatting). Then, convert the message back to HTML format by going to the ‘Format’ menu > ‘Rich Text (HTML)’. The message will be converted back to HTML format, but without any text formatting (as we removed all the formatting during the first conversion from HTML to Plain Text). So, all the text will look the same! (more…)

When saving Word documents as HTML, for publishing as web pages, you will notice the file sizes are quite large. This is because Word inserts a lot of Word-specific tags in the HTML source, to enable the document to be re-opened in Word for editing. To remove these Word-specific tags (and make the resulting HTML file size much smaller), open the file in Word, then go to the ‘File’ menu > ‘Save As’. Type the file name you wish to save the file as, and for the ‘Save as type’ select ‘Web Page, Filtered’. Click ‘Save’. (more…)

Opera (www.opera.com) is an alternative browser, which includes advanced features such as pop-up blocking, integrated RSS reader, integrated search functions, and tabbed browsing. In fact, Opera was one of the first browsers to offer tabbed browsing. One of the main disadvantages of using Opera in the past, was it had integrated advertisements. However, Opera has now been released for free without advertisements! So if you are looking for an alternative to your current browser, check out Opera. (more…)

There are multiple ways to view the contents of folders: details, list, icons, etc. A neat feature of Windows XP is the option to specify different view settings for different folders. For example, you may define your My Pictures folder to display using the ‘Thumbnail’ setting and define the My Documents folder to display using ‘Details’. However, sometimes you want to make all folders display using the same view setting. To do this, open any folder and select the view type you would like to use from the ‘View’ menu. Then, go to the ‘Tools’ menu > ‘Folder Options’. In the window that appears, click the ‘View’ tab. Click the button ‘Apply to All Folders’. Just be aware, this will make all your folders display using that particular view type, overriding specifically defined views for any folders. (more…)