E-mail Issues
Outlook Problems
1) Too much e-mail? There is a 2 Gig limit on email pst files
How do you check on the size?
First find the file. This can be done via the find file command found by clicking
start/search and look for *.pst
Which might find it in a locations such as:
C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst
Where YourUserName is the name you sign on to Windows as. It is sometimes given
a default of owner.
2) File is under the 2 gig limit and you are still wonky?
When in Outlook go to help/detect & repair
-- this might help.
3) When all else fails you can try going to the start button/settings/control
panel/add remove programs
Reinstall Office - This will probably require
an office disk.
Other e-mail problems
You get an e-mail that was forwarded from a Macintosh and it comes
all busted up into a zillion files.
Request that the sender resend the message
from a new message not a forwarded message. They can usually do this by copying
from the original message and pasting into a brand new message. This problems
stems from OS/X Mail inability to convert HTML files into Rich Text when forwarding.
OS/X Mail reads HTML but doesn't send HTML files well. We are
hoping that Apple programmers will repair this soon.
Here are some recommendations for adapting to the ever-frequent outings of e-mail servers
1) If you haven't already done so sign up for at least one external e-mail account. Gmail and Yahoo are commonly used sources for free accounts.
2) If you are running out of space on your e-mail server get a gmail.com account. Need to send large files? Not a problem! They give you a gigabyte of space. I have one of these accounts and it has saved me all kinds of grief. Gordon or I are happy to help you setting this up.
3) Learn how to use more than one account. Outlook, Mozilla and Thunderbird all support multiple accounts.
4) If you are confident that the problem is with UAA/IT e-mail infrastructure call 786-4646 and log your problem. They need to know where and when things aren't right.
5) If you want to insure that your message is readable by everyone use plain text formatting if possible. UAA Webmail does not render html. In fact it has issues with non-text anything. It might not look as pretty but at least text is readable by the rest of those e-mail users who are not as fortunate as us.
Here is an excellent explanation from Gordon on the intricacies of Outlook's outgoing formatting and some of its shortcomings and some great suggestions for working with these problems.
---------UAA E-mail Problems and Workarounds, by Gordon Nelson----------
When an e-mail is sent from Outlook or Outlook Express in either Rich Text
or HTML format it includes additional instructions on how the mail client is
to parse the information in the e-mail. Some of these instructions include
the attachment or in the case of HTML it includes attachment, text colors and
backgrounds.
While the body of the message will be readable, the attachment and any HTML
instruction get locked in a particularly unhelpful file called "winmail.dat."
Unfortunately, our new webmail system cannot parse this information, so if
someone sends you an attachment in an HTML or Rich Text format you will not
be able to read it from the webmail interface. The good news is if they send
it as a Plain Text, the attachment displays just fine.
There are two work-arounds to this problem.
1. Get the sender to resend the message in plain text format. Depending on
the skill level of the user this might not be something the know how to do.
When you create a new message in outlook, after you've addressed it click
on "Format" in the title bar and then "Plain Text"
2. Use this free application to extract the attachment from the winmail.dat,
note that you have to install save the winmail.dat file to your machine and
then run the Winmail Parser on it.
http://www.magicwinmail.net/wmparser/
2a. there was a free website that supposedly let you do this without running
an application on you machine but the website appears to be down.
More information on this problem can be found in this article:
http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/112904drinternet.html
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Last updated April 20, 2006