5 Email Tips to keep your sanity

By Aysë Stenabaugh

Webmail vs. Software

There is a huge difference between accessing your e-mail online through your e-mail providers website and using a program such as Outlook or Thunderbird to check your e-mail. When you are using webmail and login into your hosts website (aol.com, yahoo.com etc.) you rely on their website to perform well and function as expected and, many times this is not the case. Unless you are paying for premium e-mail you are likely being bombarded by advertisements that are annoying and can greatly decrease your experience because the website is busy loading all those ads before it gets to loading your e-mails.

Even if you are using a public e-mail provider like Gmail or Outlook.com you can utilize software to download your e-mails while avoiding your hosts website. For Windows the best free option is Thunderbird which is made by Mozilla, the makers of Firefox. PC or Mac users will find that Microsoft’s Outlook is a good option If you already own Microsoft Office 365 or a version that includes Outlook. Mac users will find that the built-in mail program is a sufficient mail program on its own.

Choosing an e-mail provider

All e-mail providers are not created equally. If you were to send the same e-mail to both a Centurylink account and a Gmail account at the same time the Gmail account would likely receive the e-mail right away whereas the Centurylink account may have to wait a bit longer. Different providers have invested different amounts of money into the technology that supports e-mail services. Other factors such as spam filters, accounts settings and program settings can have an effect. Some settings can be changed by the end-user but many cannot be altered at the user level.

Avoiding junk or SPAM e-mails

Completely avoiding spam or junk is a virtually impossible task. If you created a new e-mail account using a public domain such as gmail.com, and never gave your e-mail address out to anyone or signed up for anything, you would more than likely still end up with junk e-mails. This is because software has been created to automatically generate “e-mail address” just by randomly e-mailing out generated e-mail addresses using a mixture of numbers and letters. So for example if your e-mail address were iloveart234@gmail.com this robot could be sending out e-mails to iloveart232 then iloveart233 and then bingo your e-mail address is valid iloveart234 and you get sent spam e-mail and you never had to do a thing.

There are a few ways that you can help to avoid these unwanted e-mails. Most obviously don’t give your e-mail address out to those you don’t trust. If you are going to sign up for websites or newsletters, provide a secondary e-mail address for those instances and keep a personal private e-mail that you only give out to living breathing humans! If you signed up for a newsletter that you no longer wish to subscribe to follow the links in the e-mail to unsubscribe but ONLY if you legitimately subscribed. If you try to unsubscribe or reply to e-mails from spammers or unwanted junk you could just be confirming that you are a real person which could lead to you receiving more garbage e-mails.

Syncing e-mail & Contacts

Once upon a time POP was the only option that we had to send and receive e-mails but today IMAP is the standard. Don’t worry for those of you that don’t know what these protocols mean, I’m going to take a moment to explain. When you use a third-party application like Outlook, Thunderbird or an app on your phone, your e-mail uses one of these protocols to send and receive e-mails. The POP protocol only works in one direction. When you send an e-mail, it sends it out to the person you sent it to and keeps a copy only on the device it was sent from (in your sent folder). When using the IMAP protocol, it sends a copy to the intended recipient and it keeps a copy on your email providers sever. This means that no matter where your logging into your email from, you will always be able to see any emails that were sent or received from any devices. POP settings can be configured to keep a copy of RECEIVED emails on the server, allowing any emails you receive to be accessed on multiple devices, but only IMAP supports bi-directional sent support on multiple devices.

Contacts are a different story. If you are using a smart phone to send and receive emails, you can setup your device to store your contacts in the cloud which is very handy if you need to access a contacts information without your phone, or in the event that you need to replace a lost or stolen device. Contacts will not automatically appear in an email program, but they can usually be exported from your address book or account settings, and then they can be imported into your email software.

Customizing your e-mail

There are things you can do to make your email work smarter, so you don’t have to work harder. For example, you can setup email filters so that when you receive emails from specific senders, they go directly into a designated folder or the trash. You can setup filters to have emails with certain keyworks or text to perform a selected action such as forwarding a copy to another email address. Different email providers and email programs have different customization options, don’t be afraid to poke around or ask for help if you aren’t sure how to accomplish what you are trying to achieve.

If you need support for your email or would to join me for a one-on-one technology class contact Jester’s Computers at 717-642-6611 or customerservice@jesterscomputers.com. We are located at 5135 Fairfield Road Fairfield, PA and on the web at www.jesterscomputers.com