Email getting stuck in outbox?

A few of us have been getting emails stuck in the outbox. Here are two things to try, with a bit of graphic (made effortlessly in that nifty Word 2010).

One thing to check is to see if an email address you are sending to is bad or corrupt. Even if it looks good, remove it, maybe try a different email address or send to yourself.

Option 2: Lately moving the emails out of the outbox, into another folder (we'll use drafts folder) then opening each email and hitting the SEND button atop of the email. If the Send/Receive is still going like forever, you can click on the send/receive tab, then hit "cancel all". So here are the visual steps, with a bonus at the end.

1. If needed: Cancel All

 

2. Move files out of out box. Open the message and hit SEND

3. If needed: Open the task manager, (ctrl+alt+del). Find outlook.exe then kill it.

4. Open up outlook and cross one finger.

Push Pin Girl

Today I've dubbed Chris the Push Pin Girl. I was helping on her computer and noticed something looked strange, the ribbon was gone. Hmmm weird? The "tabs" like File and Home were still there, and when you clicked on them, the ribbon appeared, then disappeared. She had somehow turned this option on. You can turn this on by pressing the little arrow near the top, or pressing CTRL + F1 on your keyboard. This option is nice if you really want extra space. The "push pin" shows up when you have the ribbon hidden, then you click on a tab like "file" to expand the ribbon.

More pushpin news: If you start using your "recent" list in word or excel, there are push pins there as well. I never paid attention to them until yesterday. You can pin any documents that you use frequently so that it is always in your "recent list". I could see this to be useful for Dot and her eww trans xls file. You may find other files that you use often that you want to stay at the top of your list. In my case, I fill up a water tank about 1 time per week and keep track of horse pasture rental money. You can see I've pinned that to the top of my recent list.

Layouts

Outlook 2010 gives you more options for viewing folders, header info (from/subject) and the preview pane. I've noticed that the "two line" format (by default) is kinda interesting, but not for me. If you want to go back to the single line format (for the from/subject) section, you can change that. You'll see that outlook tries to be smart and make it one line if the width is greater than 100 (or whatever you change it to). TO GET TO THESE SETTINGS (see image), go to the VIEW tab, then click on VIEW SETTINGS.

Related settings: the default for 2010 is to have the folder on left, then the from/subject section, then the body of the email, ending on right with mini-calendar and todo list. You might like that, I do cuz I have a wide monitor, you might want the "old" layout, from/subject on top, body of email below that.

Office and the "X"

You all might have enough experience with the newer Word and Excel file formats, but just in case you don't here is the primer:

• Starting with office 2007 (and now 2010) the default file format for Word and Excel is docx and xlsx. You may have tried to open these with office 2000. They won't open, unless you (or I) installed the file converter.
• So, once you have office 2010, you are now on the other side of  fence. If the person you are working with, or sending a file to has 2010, then life is good, but if they have an older copy of office, they might not be able to open your files.  If you are not sure the person has office 2007 or 2010, and you want to save all the nifty formatting you created in your word docX file, then save it as a PDF -- it's easy in office 2010
• You can choose to change your default format to word 2003 (doc file format), but I think our office got onboard with the newer office formats late enough, that we don't have to worry too much about that. That being said, I think you will still have a few people who say "I can't open the file you sent me", so what do you do? Do you reboot, check cables then call Chrisman? No, you save the file as PDF or as word or excel 2003 format.

Screen shots or clippings

September 28 Update: Word is good, but Outlook is more greater when tied to inserting screen shots!

Screenshot with Outlook

If you need to send someone a screen shot via email, you can forget word, do it directly with Outlook. Same process as word. (One trick, if you need only part of a window, minimize the main Outlook window first.)

With Word open you can now do screen shots. You can capture any open window, or you can crop your own area of your computer's screen.  Have a look at the screen shot here....Any windows you have open show up as thumbnails, if you don't want any of them, you can choose screen clipping (circled in red) and then choose what you want to grab. Try it, you might like it.

Screenshot with Word

Outlook Intro

Outlook gives you the ability to search for words (in subject, from, or the text of the email). You can also quickly see all emails form a person by pulling open the "People Pane" under the body of the email. Switch from calendar and folders by clicking on the icons in bottom left of the window, or be a power user and do Ctrl+1 or Ctrl+2, or Ctrl +3. I've been using Office 2010 for a few months now and I've spent 99% of my time on the "HOME" tab, 1% on the FILE tab and 0% on the other tabs. One trick to that was to add a send/rec icon to the home tab, so I wouldn't have to switch to send/rec tab then click send/rec.  Apparently you can do a bunch of cool stuff with the "Quick Steps" wizard, for instance select an email and then click on a quick step button to fwd it to a pre-set person. I've not played with it at this point.

The Ribbon

The first thing you will have to get used to is the "Ribbon". It replaces the menus, no more File, Edit, View, etc. Most items are in logical locations. The main part of the Ribbon is called HOME.  The first screen shot shows the HOME tab, and also shows me searching for the word keyboard, note the column on the left, showing all locations of the word keyboard.

The FILE tab is where you can view recent documents, print, and save and attach to email. In the screen shot with margin info, you can see that it's a little easier or quicker to change margins. Here and with a lot of other things like pasting info (different formats), or changing styles, it is quicker because you can preview the changes live. The old way would be to make the change, maybe even close some dialog boxes, then see if the change is to your satisfaction. If not, you'd have to go back and try it all again. With office 2010, you click quick, "oh not good", then click the next option, "oh, better, but not good enough", click again (in the screen shot, you may click from narrow to wide margins and see changes real time).

Welcome To Office 2010

I'll be putting tips and tricks here that should help you use office 2010 more effectively. If you have any tips/tricks you want to share, pass them my way and I'll post. Or you can add comments to a blog post.

IF YOU NEED SOME ONE-ON-ONE OR ARE STUCK, GIVE ME A CALL