A user called in, complaining that they were unable to create a new folder in a shared mailbox. The error message they got indicated that the folder already existed. I started troubleshooting the issue, and it transpired that they had created the folder already, though it did not show up. I tried a number of fixes, including restarting Outlook, removing the mailbox from account settings, and even deleting their mail profile altogether. It was this last attempt that would lead me to the correct solution.
Category: E-mail
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Outlook 2013: BCC in meeting requests
I had a user call in, who was unfamiliar with Office 2013, having only worked with previous versions of Office, and wanting to know how they could add a BCC recipient to the meeting request.
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Outlook: Text turns to chinese characters when forwarding bounceback
Some time ago, I had a user call in with a bounceback issue. They had sent us a screenshot of the bounceback, informing us that the email became illegible when they tried to forward it to us. I called the user up, remote controlled her computer, and had her demonstrate the issue, and sure enough; when she hit forward, all text turned to chinese (or chinese-looking) characters:
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Changing primary SMTP address
A user called in, and wanted to have a different address as their primary email address. After making the change, when I tried to apply it, I encountered the following error message:
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Set up an alternate address for your Google account
Remember how, last week, we set up accepting invites sent to your non-Google address from your Google address? No? What’s that, you don’t have an Alternate email address section under Reminders and Notifications? Well, here’s the thing, you need to actually set up an alternate address for your Google account. That is easy enough, though; here’s how: (more…)
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Google Accounts: Responding to calendar invites on behalf of other email addresses
Here’s the scenario: You have set up your main email address to forward to your GMail address. Whenever you get calendar invites, you are unable to accept them, because they have been sent to your main email address, and not your GMail address. If that sounds familiar, I have good news: this can be fixed, and the fix is fairly straightforward. Here’s what you do: (more…)
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Outlook: Disable new mail notifications for all but main account
When adding extra email accounts in the regular way, Outlook will notify you of new emails in each and every account. Though this can be annoying, it is simple enough to do something about. Here’s how:
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Search, don’t sort – Using GMail search operators to the fullest
Google’s mail service GMail is built on the idea that, instead of sorting emails into different folders, you use the search functionality to find your emails. If you insist on sorting your email, GMail offers labels rather than folders, the idea being that an email may belong to more than one logical group of sorting, and you should be able to find it in both.
The system really shines when you start using the search operators that are available, both separately, and in combination. Here are the operators:
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Unmuting a conversation in GMail
Ever since I started using GMail a few years back, it’s been my primary mail service, with all my other email accounts feeding into it. A while back, I was unlucky enought to mute a conversation. The mute option, while great when getting tons of emails about updates to threads on boards, can be annoying when you manage to mute an email that you actually need to read.
The solution is fairly simple, and centres around Google’s approach when it comes to GMail; archive instead of deleting, searching instead of sorting. What the mute function actually does is automatically archiving new emails in a given conversation, bypassing the inbox altogether. To get the emails back to the inbox, you need to do the following:
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Suppressing email addresses
A few months ago, I was asked about the possibility to suppress what email addresses an email had been sent to. The case was as follows: we needed to send out an invitation to a list of over 50 recipients, but didn’t necessarily want them to get everyone elses email address.
Simply put; there are two ways. The first one is rather obvious, and also rather time consuming. It involves sending a separate email to each recipient. Now, while it would solve our problem, it would take way, way, way too much time.
BCC to the rescue! Wikipedia defines BCC as: (more…) -
Errors in week numbering – Lotus 8.*
In migrating many of our users to Lotus Notes 8, we have recently found that some of them have experienced problems with week numbering, as 2009 has 53 weeks. Week number 53 is shown as week 1. This error carries over to 2010, meaning that week 1 is shown as week 2, and so on. Users using Lotus Notes 6.* and 7.* are not experiencing the problem.
This is apparently caused by a setting in the operating system, but can be fixed in Lotus Notes. Here’s how:
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