Email Junkies (Hoarders)

I admit it, I am an email junkie or to put it bluntly, an email hoarder.

I don’t keep email on servers or in email clients. I keep them in an amazing free (for home users) program called MailStore Home.

So simple to use, backup and move to a new computer.



You just enter the information on the setup screen, click the profile and then click Run. MailStore Home will archive all your email, just Like that. You can search for emails very easily, using the really good search.

If you are an email junkie like me, the first time you run the program, it may take a long time to backup all those hoarded missives. But once they are all safely downloaded, subsequent backups won't take all that long.

Run on a daily, weekly or whenever basis and MailStore will search for new emails and add them to your archive.

With all of the uncertainty about what will happen to Yahoo mail with the sell to Verizon, you may want to use MailStore Home to backup your Yahoo mail now.  Since Yahoo has been servicing some sbcglobal accounts, you may want to back up that email as well.

This is a really good way to backup your email. You never know what might happen to stuff on the web, and emails have been known to go missing when providers just suddenly close for no warning.

I know you'd hate to lose all those emails with links to cat videos!

Be safe, backup!

Outlook Has Defeated Me, At Least For Now

Somewhere in the hidden depths of Outlook is a hidden file for a recipient. This file is not letting me send an HTML file to this recipient.

I thought I had fixed it, because the fix worked for a bit. Then it reverted back to refusing to let me send HTML to that one person.

Searches show that the auto-complete cache can cause an issue like this,  I have deleted the auto-complete cache (more than once). I have removed the recipient’s email and added it back numerous times, all to no avail.

I downloaded and installed a utility to clear the auto-complete cache .

Didn’t work.

I created a new Outlook profile, still didn’t work.

Every search told me to check the properties by right clicking recipient’s email address, but there are no options for properties in the email address. All that shows up are these options:

No Properties.

Someone said to right click on the email address in a message. I did get 'Properties' so clicked properties and got the original form with the recipient's name and email address and nothing else.

So somewhere lurking in my Outlook there is a ‘Property’ that tells Outlook to send emails to this recipient’s address as RTF instead of HTML.

I usually keep  trying to fix problems until I succeed, but so far after almost 10 days I am not having any success.

But, I keep trying!

Not so Funny Business with Outlook

When Microsoft converted my Outlook.com email to Outlook Mail, I had to reinstall my email Account. Not sure why, but I followed the instructions here and everything seemed to be working ok, except for my rules.

I had to delete them all and redo them. I had a lot of rules so that wasn’t fun.

Then a odd problem occurred.

I forward some emails on a daily basis to two people. Ever since my Outlook.com email was changed to Outlook Mail, one of my recipients did not get the message in graphics mode but in text with links.

Before the transition from Outlook.com to Outlook Mail, the emails were just fine.

If I forwarded the email from Outlook on the web, the mail went through as it should. But if I sent it through my Outlook client (Outlook 2016) it was received as text and links.

Since the recipient uses Gmail, I sent the same email that was sent to the recipient to my Gmail account and it went just fine.

I checked the settings in the other g-mail account, they were just like in mine.

I sent the email from Outlook Mail on the web, it was received as intended.

It had to be Outlook on my computer, but what?

How I solved it just goes to show sometimes stuff can get corrupted, changed or altered during an update.

I deleted the misbehaving senders email and re-added it. Once I re-added it, I got a popup saying something about another connection. (I don't remember the exact wording). So I opened the contact and there was a very old email address listed in addition to the current address. So I removed that address and resent the email and now the email was received as intended to the recipient.

Since my contacts list have been imported to each new version of Outlook there is really no way to know exactly when this happened, but because of the old email address listed, it must have been there for years. Apparently Microsoft Exchange didn't like it

Of course it could have been caused by  Microsoft by a glitch that picked up the old email address, but who knows?

Now I just have to find out what is causing this error when I try to send to a group contact.



Lots of other folks are getting this error as well, but haven’t found where anyone has solved it!

I solved the email address problem myself, guess I will just have to see if I can fix this one myself. Doesn’t happen online!

Windows 7 Searches and Searches for Updates

Because my HP computer crashed and couldn't recover, I reinstalled Windows 7. (See my previous post). But I still had a big problem!

Windows update couldn't find new updates. It kept saying 'No updates available for this computer'.  Since it was restored to way back in 2015, I knew there had to be updates, a lot of them! But everything I tried just didn't seem to work.

I just couldn't seem to give up that I couldn't fix this problem.

I searched and searched and while I found a lot (and I do mean a lot!) of folks had this problem as well. There were a lot of fixes found in my searching, but none of them worked. I kept getting the same message 'no updates available'.

I tried KB971058, Windows update Troubleshooter for Windows 8.1 Windows 8 and Windows 7.

Fixed several things, but not the one I really needed.

Downloaded Windows update Standalone Installer, now it is 'Searching for updates on this computer'. Searching and searching. I ( think I did this before!) I changed the Internet time server to nist.gov.

I checked services, windows update services was running, windows modules was not, started it.

Finally I just got too frustrated and turned the computer off. Lo and behold, there was over 100 updates waiting to install!

I have no idea which of the many (fixes) made Windows 7 updates finally work, but it is all updated and now donated.

Before I donated this computer I wanted to make sure there were none of my files accessible.

First I uninstalled all the programs and deleted the folders and files.

I created a new profile, logged out of the old profile, logged into the new profile and deleted the old profile. I told Windows to delete all of the old files and folders just to be sure.

Then I ran the cipher command to overwrite all the free space.

Windows 7: Cipher Command - Overwrite Deleted Data in Windows

That took quite a while as the drive was nearly empty, but now I can be reasonable sure my deleted data is gone.

Hopefully someone else will get some good use from this restored (and updated!) computer.

HP with Windows 10 is now HP with Windows 7

After the Windows 10 Anniversary update, the HP always hung at Restart. I could not find any reason for the  HP to hang, but there was a message saying something about a memory exception when it shut down. It went by so fast I couldn't really read it.

Since I was planning to donate the computer I wanted it to be in good working order.

I decided to put it back to Windows 7. I used Macrium Reflect to restore it back to Windows 7. The restore worked just fine, but the reason I upgraded to Windows 10 was still there. It would not update! I tried all of the so-called fixes I could find on the Internet, but nothing worked, it would just search and search and search. I let it search all night, no go, still searching when I gave up.

After seeing so many other frustrated users trying to update Windows 7, I wonder if it was a ploy on Microsoft to get folks to update to Windows 10. I did update, but eventually the update broke the computer.

Sad!