Tag Archives: Microsoft

Updating your password in Outlook 2010 tutorial

It is very simple to update your email collection (POP3) password in Outlook 2010 by following the steps below:

  1. Open Outlook
  2. Click on the ‘File’ option at the top of the page
  3. you’ll now have an option for ‘account settings’ – click here

    Open Outlook 2010, click 'file' option at the top of the screen, then click on 'account settings'

    Open Outlook 2010, click ‘file’ option at the top of the screen, then click on ‘account settings’

  4. click on the account you’d like to change then select ‘change’

    Click on the email account you's like to change then select 'change'

    Click on the email account you’s like to change then select ‘change’

  5. from the ‘account settings page, type in your new password in the ‘password’ box

    From the 'account settings' page, type in your new password into the 'password' box then press 'next'

    From the ‘account settings’ page, type in your new password into the ‘password’ box then press ‘next’

  6. click ‘next’
  7. click ‘finish’

How to use Gmail as your SMTP server using Outlook

This tutorial will show you how to use your free Gmail SMTP server to send emails from your personal email accounts using Outlook (this example uses Outlook 2007 but still applies in principle to the other versions of Outlook and other local email clients)

This has been prompted by the news that many Virginmedia customers have recently been informed that they will no longer be able to use their Virginmedia SMTP address to send emails other than from their Virginmedia email address. This tutorial will show you how to use your Gmail SMTP address instead


Step 1.

Open Outlook and select ‘tools’ (from the top menu) then select ‘account settings’

Open Outlook and select 'tools' (from the top menu) then select 'account settings'

Open Outlook and select ‘tools’ (from the top menu) then select ‘account settings’

Step 2.

Highlight the account you would like to modify then press ‘change’

Highlight the account you would like to modify then press 'change'

Highlight the account you would like to modify then press ‘change’

Step 3.

From the ‘internet email settings’ page, select ‘more settings’

From the 'internet email settings' page, select 'more settings'

From the ‘internet email settings’ page, select ‘more settings’

Step 4.

Fill in the information in the three boxes on the ‘general’ tab (the name you’d like to call this account can be anything, you can leave organisation blank and the reply-to addrsess is the address you’d like people to reply to)

Fill in the information in the three boxes on the 'general' tab

Fill in the information in the three boxes on the ‘general’ tab

Step 5.

On the outgoing server tab, fill in the following

  1. tick the box that says ‘my outgoing server requires authentication’,
  2. tick the ‘log on using…’ option
  3. in the ‘user name’ box, type in your full Gmail email address
  4. in the password box, type in your Gmail password (the same one you’d use to log into your Gmail account)
  5. un-tick the ‘require secure password authentication’ and ‘log into mail server before…’ options
On the outgoing server tab, fill in the following

On the outgoing server tab, fill in the following

Step 6.

No need to change anything on the ‘connections’ tab

Fill in the following on the ‘advanced’ tab

  1. change ‘incoming server (POP3)’ to 995
  2. tick the box ‘the server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)’
  3. change ‘outgoing server’ to 587
  4. from the drop-down options, change the ‘use the following type of encrypted connection’ to TLS
  5. leave ‘server timeouts’ as is
  6. un-tick the ‘leave copies of the messages on the server’ (…which will download the actual email to your computer as opposed to just a copy – this helps avoid duplication)
  7. tick ‘OK’ to take you back to the ‘internet e-mail settings’ page
Fill in the following on the 'advanced' tab

Fill in the following on the ‘advanced’ tab

Step 7.

Back on the ‘internet e-mail settings’ page, click next to save the changes

Back on the 'internet e-mail settings' page, click next to save the changes

Back on the ‘internet e-mail settings’ page, click next to save the changes

 

 

 

 

Short-cut to easily clear formatting from text in a Word document

Clearing formatting from a Word document

Clearing formatting from a Word document

Here is a really simple and easy way to clear formatting from text in a Microsoft Word document, for example, when you’ve cut and pasted from a website or another document

Very simply highlight the text, press and hold CTRL then press the ‘space bar’

Highlighting the text can be done easily in one of three ways:

  1. Press CTRL + A to select all
  2. place the cursor just before the text you’d like to highlight, press and hold the left-mouse button and drag the hightlighted area over the text you’d like to highlight
  3. Place the cursor at the start of the text you’d like to highlight, press and hold the ‘SHIFT’ button and use the arrow keys to move the highlighted area to the right place
Please note, if you’d like to select non-adjoining areas of text at the same time, press and hold the ‘CTRL’ key while you’re selecting text

Outlook 2007 – adding SMTP authentication

When using a laptop or mobile device, you’re potentially going to be sending emails over many different internet networks. In order to make sure that only the allowed users are using a particular SMTP to send email, they commonly require a user-name and password to log into the SMTP server every time an email is sent. This is not something you’d normally notice as your computer should do this automatically in the background, however, if that authentication fails, you’ll not be able to send emails

If your outgoing email server on Outlook 2007  requires authentication, use the following steps to add the user-name and password:

  1. Open Outlook
  2. Click the ‘tools’ tab from the top menu then click ‘account settings’
  3. Highlight the account you’d like to edit then select ‘change’
  4. On the internet e-mail settings page click ‘more settings’

    On the internet e-mail settings page click ‘more settings’

    On the internet e-mail settings page click ‘more settings’

  5. On the new window, click the ‘outgoing server’ tab

    On the new window, click the ‘outgoing server’ tab

    On the new window, click the ‘outgoing server’ tab

  6. Change the following settings:
    1. Tick the box ‘my outgoing server requires authentication’
    2. Tick the ‘log on using’ button
    3. Type in your normal username and password
    4. Tick the ‘remember password’ button
  7. Click ‘OK’ which will take you back to the main ‘email settings’ page
  8. Click ‘next’
  9. Click ‘finish’

How to create an outlook email template

How to create an outlook email template

If you use Outlook and often have to write similar emails, Instead of re-writing them every time it might be a better idea to create a template.

This is very simple to do and might save you a lot of time! Here’s how to do it:

  1. Write your email as normal including subject and content
  2. Click the Outlook button and choose ‘save as’
  3. Click the Outlook button

    Click the Outlook button

  4. When the save dialogue box appears, save the message on your computer.
  5. Choose 'save as' from the drop down menu

    Choose 'save as' from the drop down menu

Now, when you want to use your template, just double click the saved email and you can use as many times as you like

Toshiba laptop built-in webcam problems

Toshiba laptop built-in webcam problems

Problem: Toshiba laptop Camera Assistant Software on Vista (or similar) is no longer working. When you try to run the application you get an error along the lines of:

‘Access violation at address … in module ‘CEC_MAIN.exe’. Read of address …’

‘Cannot open file C:\Program Files\Camera Assistant Software for Toshiba\NewSkin1\active.bmp’

This is a problem that only applies to a small amount of people but it’s one that is also difficult to fix as most of the information you’ll find from a Google search is confusing.

As always, make sure that you have backed your computer up etc. before attempting any of the solutions listed here. If you’re unsure about your abilities, please get an expert to do it for you. Also, I can’t guarantee that anything here will work as it uses third party software.

  1. Re-install the webcam drivers: Open ‘Control Panel’ and go to ‘System’ then ‘Device Manager’.
  2. Under ‘Imaging devices’, right-click ‘Chicony USB 2.0 Camera’ and select ‘Update driver software’.
  3. Select ‘Browse my computer for driver software’ then ‘let em pick from a list of device drivers installed on my computer’.
  4. Select ‘USB video device’ then click next.

This will re-install the drivers on your computer.

If this doesn’t work, try re-installing the Chicony Camera Assistant software:

  1. Download the Camera Assistant Software from the Toshiba website: https://bds.tjpntuw.updates.toshiba.com/Downloads/Production/tjpntuw/2009/10/03/035225_20.24.43.TC40054600D.exe
  2. Install the software and then you may need to reboot (don’t forget to bookmark this page first if you need to 🙂

Everything should be working again now 🙂

How to speed up Vista instantly

How to speed up Vista instantly

If you’re using Vista, you may have noticed how heavy it is in hardware-resource terms.

If you’d like a faster computer and are prepared to compromise on the aesthetics, here is a very simple and quick way to get things moving more quickly. This method will also give you the reassurance of knowing that you can undo any changes you make by following the same instructions:

  1. Click on the windows button at the bottom left of the screen
  2. Right-click on ‘Computer’ in the right-hand column on the start menu
  3. Select ‘properties’ from the new pop-up menu

    Click the Windows button then right-click 'Computer' and select 'properties'

    Click the Windows button then right-click 'Computer' and select 'properties'

  4. From the new ‘system’ window select ‘advanced system settings’ from the left-hand column

    Select advanced settings from the left-hand column

    Select advanced settings from the left-hand column

  5. From the new system properties window select the third tab labelled ‘Advanced’

    From the new system properties window select the third tab labelled ‘Advanced’. Select the ‘settings’ button under ‘performance’

    From the new system properties window select the third tab labelled ‘Advanced’. Select the ‘settings’ button under ‘performance’

  6. Select the ‘settings’ button under ‘performance’
  7. From the new window, under the ‘visual effects’ tab, you now have the options to:
  • ‘Let Windows choose what is best for my computer
  • ‘Adjust for best appearance’
  • ‘Adjust for best performance’
  • Or select the options individually yourself (‘Custom’)
Choose your performance options

Choose your performance options

Select the ‘Adjust for best performance’ then click OK. This may take a few moments while your computer applies the new settings. To revert to the original or default settings, follow the same instructions above but choose option ‘b’ in step 7

Convert text to lower-case, upper-case or capitalised the easy way!

CAPS-LOCK

CAPS-LOCK = SHOUTING

This tutorial is specifically for Microsoft Word and Outlook, however, as with many keyboard shortcuts, they’ll often be supported by many other applications

Ever accidentally hit the CAPS LOCK button and written a whole paragraph in capitals? Or how about got one of those shouty emails all in caps that are difficult to read?

Good news – there is an ultra-simple way to swap between capitals and lowercase! It’ll even capitalise the starts of paragraphs for you!

Simply, highlight the offending text, hold down ‘SHIFT’ and press ‘F3’. That’s it!

In Outlook, you’ll have to click reply or forward first to make the text area editable but it still works!

Very handy!

Sales and marketing optimisation

Consider the alternatives

If you were in any doubt that offline advertising spend had fallen in 2009, this physical comparison between the Yellow Pages directories from 2009 and 2010 should convince you. The 2010/11 edition is literally 40% thinner than the 2009/10 edition.

According to IAB (2010), in the UK, the entire advertising sector contracted by 16.6% in the first half of 2009, however, the online advertising share grew by 4.6% to a record 23.5% share of the market.

Obviously, in the midst of a recession, you’d expect advertising spend to decline, however, it seems as if many companies are realising that the traditional forms of advertising and marketing may not be the best way to reach customers and deciding rather to look towards the internet.

Google dominates the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising world with a 65.4% market share (AFP, Feb 2010) and for most people, they’re the only place they’ll ever think of advertising online.

There is, however, another way!

The primary objective, when deciding your marketing approach, will be to give you the best return-on-investment (a.k.a. ROI) which, to put it another way, basically means get the most customers for the least spend.

Google advertising is great for some businesses, but for others, it’ll never work – potential customers simply don’t use the internet to find some kinds of suppliers. Even for the businesses where it potentially works well, so much money is sometimes wasted through poorly researched and implemented key-phrases and badly-planned campaigns that they never reach their potential. Besides this, as the main player in the PPC world, competition for key words and phrases can be fierce!

Social network advertising, on the other hand, has shown some fantastic results with campaigns we’ve run recently. One of the main problems with Google PPC  is you are only able to target customers geographically. Social Network Marketing, on the other hand, allows you to also target customers demographically and psychographically!  As a relatively new avenue, the current costs can be much lower than Google PPC and you have the option to also pay by impression if you’d prefer.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as another way to boost your organic search engine rakings. Whereas the results can sometimes be much less tangible than the PPC campaigns; a well optimised web site can give a much better ROI over time.

If you’re certain that traditional Search Engine PPC is the one for you, consider Bing, Microsoft’s search engine competitor to Google and Yahoo. Bing is currently gaining search engine market share from Google and Yahoo remains a force in the market.

Whichever you choose, as ever, the key to getting it right is good planning.

More information

With many years experience of online and offline advertising campaign planning, setup and management, Seven Creative are perfectly placed to help your business get the best ROI by optimising your sales and marketing activity

If you’d like Seven creative to help you with your marketing strategy, give us a call on 0114 383 0711 (international: +44  114 383 0711) or contact us through the website