Good advice for AOL users, and soon-to-be former AOL users, and more computer tips.

Monday, March 24th, 2003

* Please be assured that I will never sell or share your email addresses with anyone else! I respect your privacy!*

It's been a while since I've sent this out, and I need to amend my newsletter to quarterly instead of monthly. I just don't seem to have the time to send it to you all as regularly as I had intended. So, you certainly won't be spammed by me. :)

I have some great tips for AOL users, and those leaving the AOL flock. I also have some great tips for general computer information. Here they are...

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To subscribe to a great newsletter that lets you in' on all the newest hoax and legend email:

Click here http://www.snopes.com/ And then click on "mailing lists" and then choose the text version (no frills) or the colorful html version. I get it weekly, and it keeps me informed and not sending bogus email forwards.

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Many people are leaving AOL, and good for you to leave the AOL trap. It's been overpriced and obsolete for years. Many are emailing me to ask for advice on setting up their email and favorites in Outlook Express and Internet Explorer. There is no direct way, but the best workaround is to open an AOL e-mail, drag the list of Favorite Places to it and send it to your new Outlook or Outlook Express e-mail account, when you change internet providers. Do this before you get rid of AOL completely so you can send yourself an email from AOL to your new address with your new provider to Outlook Express. The list will show up either as Web hyperlinks or text addresses, and can be pasted into your Internet Explorer favorites list.

Here are the steps to take for the address mess of changing from AOL to another ISP that allows you to use Outlook or Outlook Express:

Before you abandon AOL make sure that you can export your address book and contact lists to your new ISP. And don't cancel AOL until you have your new ISP working. There's no easy way to export AOL's Address Book to Outlook Express or Netscape Mail, but I've found a workaround that will do the job.

Log on to AOL and send a message to everyone in your address book with your new email info. Copy yourself on this message with your new email address, Be sure you have to have the new service ordered and activated. Close AOL for good. When you are sure that all is well with this procedure, uninstall AOL.

Log on to your new ISP. Launch Outlook Express (which comes preinstalled with Windows), open the message you sent to yourself, select the Tools menu from inside that message, click on one of the addresses, click on edit, select all, and then right-click on one of the highlighted addresses, and in the menu, click on "Add to Address Book" . Like magic, all your old addresses will be safe in your new address book. If for some reason, you can't select all, you may need to just right-click on each of the addresses in the address area, and click on "add to address book", still better than retyping each.

Hope this helps you with your transition... :)

One more big tip for all of you AOL users, Call AOL and tell them that you are switching to another internet provider, and I guarantee that they will drop your monthly rate. I've seen this in action the last couple of weeks when I have worked with other clients that are making the big switch. They call AOL, deliver the message that they want to terminate their account, and immediately, AOL dropped the rate to 12.95 per month, if they'd "just stay with them". So try it, you won't be sorry. You might as well get the reasonable rate if you're going to stay with them.

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Another tip: New Mail notification, and sound:

Open Outlook Express, click on the Inbox, if it doesn't already open there, click on tools, options, and where it shows the option to check for new mail, put in the minutes you want to have between warnings, and then also click in the box just below, and you can choose one of two options, I always use "check for new mail only when NOT working offline". That way it is not constantly restarting your internet connection trying to check for new mail while you're doing something else.

You can assign a sound to this process, too. Click on start settings, control panel, and click on sound icon. In the events area, scroll through to find the New Mail Notification, click on it. Then, where it shows the sound names, I like to scroll through there and find tadaa, click on it, and then click OK, and it will give you a tadaa whenever you have new mail.

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Opening PDF files:

PDF files are opened and read with Adobe Acrobat, and you can associate the files with the program. Find a PDF file on your computer or save one to the desktop from a webpage, put your mouse cursor on the file, hold down the shift button and right-click with the mouse to get the menu that has the "open with" option. Click on open with, and when the box pops up, be sure the box is checked to "always open this type of file with this program", and find the Adobe Acrobat reader on your drive C:. Click Ok, and it should work, if the Adobe program is working properly. Another solution would be to reinstall the Adobe Acrobat reader program. It's on many printer and scanner installation disks. It's also free to download from their website:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

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Steps to open any program window to maximum size every time:

Next time you open Outlook Express, or any window that is opening in a minimized size, you need to manually enlarge the window by putting your mouse cursor on the sides and the corners to get the double arrow to pull the box to the larger size. This will make the window open to maximum size from then on.

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Steps to set Outlook Express to be your default email program:

Right click on Internet Explorer icon, click properties, click on programs, and by the email click to change that to Outlook Express, click apply, and OK.

That should make Outlook Express your default email program again. To further cement the program, open Outlook Express, click on tools, options, and click at the bottom: "Make default " by both email and news categories.

http://www.abf-soft.com/

Outlook Express backup or Outlook backup, wow!!!!! Try this program to backup all categories and restore them just as you backed them up every time. It's free to evaluate, but you must pay the full price (just 25.00) to restore anything except your messages. It's worth every penny to me, because I have to back up many Outlook and Outlook Express programs and restore them to other's computers. It's an amazing program.

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Tips for buying a scanner:

No compatibility problem for any brand of scanner by name, just be sure your computer has the system requirements to support the scanner. Like, USB connections, if it's a USB scanner, or windows 98 if it needs that. The "minimum system requirements" will be on the box. It will also specify hard drive space, ram (memory), processor speed (like 500mhz). I also suggest that you get a USB scanner, especially if you have a printer (Parallel port). This way you won't have to hook up the scanner and the printer together because they need the same Parallel port (LPT) to function. It is always better if they have their own connection.

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I hope these tips have been interesting to you all. I appreciate all of you. Remember that I will have all these monthly issues of my newsletter available at my websites, along with other information:

http://www.rockyreport.com

And

http://www.internetguideandmore.com

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