How To Set An Automatic ‘I’m Away’ E-mail Reply In Outlook, Windows Mail, Thunderbird.

A few days ago I posted a tutorial on how to set up an automated “vacation” (aka “out of the office”) reply for those folks who use webmail services for email (see, How To Set An Automatic Webmail ‘I’m Away’ Response). Today I am going to provide the same tutorial, but for those folks who use an email client for managing their mail – Outlook, Windows Live Mail, and Mozilla’s Thunderbird.

If you go on vacation (or otherwise won’t have Internet access for a while) and you have a vacation responder turned on, an automatic reply – with a message you’ve pre-typed – will be sent automatically to the Sender letting them know you will get back to them, just not right away. When you get back online again, you simply turn the feature off again.

[note: you would have to have an “always on” Internet connection, and leave your computer running while you are away.]

Outlook: In Outlook, you need to create a “Rule”; and this Rule tells Outlook what to do with an incoming message. We want the Rule to tell it to ‘send this reply to the Sender’.

Click on the image to go to Step 2. (The walkthrough is on About.com)

Outlook Express/Mail/Live Mail: Again, we will need to set a Rule, but we also need to create a .txt (text) file, containing our response.. so Step 1 is to open Notepad..

Click on the image to go to step-by-step tutorial. (The walkthrough is on About.com)

Thunderbird: Basically, you do the same thing as with the other clients – create a “Rule” – but in Thunderbird, it’s called a “message filter”

Click on the image to go to step-by-step tutorial. (The walkthrough is on am-novice.com)

* My thanks to TuneUp for reminding me.

ATTENTION: You have already seen the ads. “Black Friday” sales are everywhere. I want to remind you that this is the cyber-criminal’s favorite, and most active, time of year. It is the time to redouble your “paranoid common sense” and triple your vigilance for scams, e-mails links, making sure the payment portal is https://, etc.. ATTENTION

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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TGIF | Winners Announced | Etc.

Folks, I am pleased to announce the winners of my latest software license giveaway drawing.

The folks at SPAMFighter have  donated 5 licenses for SPAMFighter Pro to me, to award to my readers. SPAMFighter is a community-based spam filtering tool for Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Thunderbird that automatically and efficiently filters spam and phishing fraud – keeping it out of your Inbox.

When a new e-mail arrives, it is automatically tested by SPAMfighter. If it’s spam, it will be instantly moved to your SPAMfighter folder. If you receive a spam mail that is not detected, click on a single button, and the spam mail is removed from the rest of the 7,258,856 7,264,984 SPAMfighters in 228 countries in seconds.

“Overall, SPAMfighter is a very simple to use product, especially for the novice. It can be setup and run with little to no user intervention and simply begins working on its own. I currently run this as my spam program and have given it an Editors Pick due to its simplicity, effectiveness and ability to keep a free version.” ~ Tim Tibbetts, review on MajorGeeks. Rating = 5/5 Stars

Benefits:

• Award winning technology to block spam
• Protects all the email accounts on your PC
• Protects against “phishing”, identity theft, and other email frauds
• Privacy Guaranteed – we don’t see any of your email
• Blacklist and block domains and emails
• Spam abuse reporting with one click – Get revenge now!
• Unique language filtering tool – Stop emails in languages you don’t understand

SPAMFighter Standard is free for personal use, but the program adds a SPAMfighter footer to your outgoing e-mails, and also displays small text advertisements in its toolbar. Purchase SPAMfighter Pro (retail $29/yr) and you get rid of the ads and footer. You also gain the ability to blacklist or whitelist unlimited domains and addresses (the free edition is limited to 100). The Pro edition can block messages written in specific foreign languages.

And the lucky winners are:

Winners, congratulations! Check your e-mail for your license key. Again, I thank the folks at SPAMFighter for making this giveaway possible. If you use an e-mail client, try it out yourself. You can get started by downloading the trial, here. (It will revert to the free version after 30 days.)

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Well, that was a nice “Friday thing”. Upbeat. Light-hearted. Kinda fun. A couple of readers have written in and asked me why I didn’t post my usual Sunday Beauty images recently.. so, I will put one up here, now, as more Friday Fun.

Today’s free download: Internet Explorer 9 (beta)
Reviewed by: Seth Rosenblatt on September 16, 2010

“First Take: After several months of teasing Internet Explorer’s upgrade with a series of feature-free developer’s previews, Microsoft has unleashed on the world an Internet Explorer 9 beta (32-bit Windows 7; 64-bit Windows 7; 32-bit Windows Vista; 64-bit Windows Vista) with some impressive new features. Like any properly named beta, though, there are also some bugs to be ironed out.

This is the biggest overhaul to the browser since Internet Explorer 7 landed. The changes to the interface are enormous, the browser’s overall usability has greatly improved, it’s more secure, and it’s significantly faster and more standards compliant.”

I hope you all have a marvelous weekend, and thanks for stopping by.

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Transfer OE Address Book To Vista

Reader Asks How To Move Their Address Book To A New Laptop

Q: I purchased a new laptop that has Vista Home Premium. I want to move the addresses stored in Outlook Express on my old machine to the new one, but there isn’t Outlook Express on Vista, there’s something called Mail. How can I move my contacts to the new laptop?

A: Outlook Express is no more. It has been “upgraded” and renamed to “Mail” in Vista, but fear not — it’s still basically the same. What you need to do is make a copy of the .WAB file on you old machine, and then “Import” it on the new machine.

1) In the Search tool (Start >Search) search for “Files and folders”, and enter “*.wab” (no quotes) in the “What to search for” textbox.
(Or, navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local settings\App Data\Identities\{a string of numbers}\Microsoft\Outlook Express)

2) Drag the .wab file from the results window to your portable media — floppy disc, thumb drive. This will copy the file. (or.. you can attach the file to an e-mail, and e-mail it to yourself.)

3) Take the thumb drive/floppy to your new machine and plug it in.

4) Now launch (fancy talk for “open”) Windows Mail.

Click on “File”, then “Import”, and then “Windows Contacts”.

You will be prompted for what to import, and simply point the wizard to your portable media, and then click on the .wab file.

That’s it. You’re done. Now your old Address Book is installed on your new computer.

Today’s free download: Speakonia is a freeware utility that reads text out loud. Speakonia comes with about 20 voices (all with strong robotic accents) and lets you quickly change the reading speed and pitch. Speakonia can save text in WAV files for playback when you’re driving or jogging, but unfortunately it can’t save sound files in the MP3 format. The program interface is clear and straightforward; you simply select text in any document and press Ctrl C to read it aloud. Decent performance and free price make it a reasonable choice for the vision-impaired or people who’d rather do their reading with their ears than their eyes.

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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How to encrypt your e-mail, the easy way

Great! You have exchanged e-mails with Comodo, and completed the free certificate installation {and so has the person(s) with whom you want to exchange private messages} as I described in the proceeding article. That was easier than you thought, right? You are now mere clicks away from simple-and-easy private exchanges.
All we have to do is associate the new certificate with the (appropriate) e-mail account. Once that is done, the encryption will be virtually transparent.. as in “automatic”.

1) Verify install (Optional): Open an instance of Internet Explorer (if it isn’t already) and click on the “Tools” menu item in the upper-right. Select “Internet Options” from the Context Menu. Now click on the “Content” tab. Look to the middle for the “Certificates” button, as shown below.
 
Now you should see your new Certificate listed…
 
As shown here. If you don’t see this, it means that Windows did not complete the certificate installation. You will need to re-open the Comodo e-mail, and revisit the link, and repeat the Install process.
But, that’s thinking negative, so let’s proceed as if everything (so far) looks right.

2) Associate Cert with e-mail: Close IE and open your e-mail client. In my screenshots I am using Live Mail, but the process steps apply to Mail, Outlook, and OE as well. (Thunderbird and AppleMail are slightly different menu choices, but the principle is the same.) Click on “Tools”, and then select “Accounts”.
This will list your configured e-mail accounts.
 
Select the account you requested the Certificate for by clicking (once) on it, {For demonstration purposes, I am associating the Cert with this site’s e-mail account.} and then click on the “Properties” button. Select the “Security” tab.
 
Start by clicking the “Select” button for the “Signing certificate”..
 
And click on the certificate shown (if you have more than one personal Certificate showing, use the dates issued to choose the correct one) and then “OK”. Repeat this for the “Encrypting preferences” “Select” button.
Your e-mail account is now “Certified”! And you are ready for…

3) Send a “Signed” e-mail to your friend: Address a “New” e-mail to the person(s) you want to exchange encrypted messages with, and click the “Sign” button, then “Send”. By “signing” your e-mail, you are sending them your “Digital ID” and a copy of your “public key”.

4) Have the other party do #3 to you: Having the other party send a “signed” e-mail to you, gives you a copy of their DID and their public key. Now you both have the keys you need to exchange secure, private, encrypted e-mails to each other.

5) Click the “Encrypt” button before you click “Send”: That’s it.. it is now that simple. Your e-mail will appear in their Inbox like this..
 
And when they open it (no special actions needed) they will see this…

.. and visa versa. From now on, it will be so smooth and easy, you might begin to wonder if your mail really is being scrambled/unscrambled. (It is.)

To read the How to on getting the free e-mail Certificate (part 1 of this article), click here.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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