Summary. A fake email that poses as being from a YouTube user is circulating. An image of the email is below.

The text reads, “Username has sent you a message: Sorry… your email address here Can I place your video on my web site? You can reply to this message by visiting your inbox.”

Several of these emails are circulating. The links continued in the email, including the report spam link, go to sites other than YouTube. Links may go to malicious websites or identity theft sites, so they are to be avoided.

Summary. As of about 1PM Central Time, the Apple iCloudemail server is down and the service not running.

Apple has posted an update on the iCloud status page. Screen shots below show the current user experience.

According to the update (below), the iCloud email service should be restore as soon as possible.

Given the broad awareness of Apple’s recently launched cloud-based services, this outage will likely be reported by mainstream  media outlets. This is a surprising outage considering the reliability of Apple products and services.

Summary. When forwarding email newsletters and similar items, it is important to remove links from messages that may automatically give the recipient inadvertent access to your personal account with the original sender. For example, if someone who receives the email from you clicks on the one click unsubscribe button, you’ll be removed from the list. Some messages even contain an encoded link that allows you one click access to your account.

Solution. Be sure to remove all such links before clicking send. One way to ensure this is to copy and paste the article into Notepad (Windows) or Text Edit (Apple) and remove any special formatting. For Windows Notepad, formatting is removed automatically. for Apple users, click on Format > Make Plain Text from the menus in Text Edit. Then, copy the resulting text and past it into an email message. Another privacy consideration would be to remove any of the previous recipients’ email addresses.

Summary. The Apple Mail client has a default set of icons along the top of the application window. However, additional icons can be inserted by customizing the toolbar.

Instructions. Follow these instructions to customize and configure the Apple Mail toolbar for maximum efficiency.

1. Right click in the toolbar area and choose Customize Toolbar.
2. Then, click and drag toolbar icon options placing them in the appropriate locations. An example is provided below. Click the image for a larger view.

Click image for larger view.

Problem Summary. With the increased use of email, it’s common for people to feel overwhelmed by having too much email. The inbox grows like an automated task list of items needing attention. Soon, the list of things to do exceeds the available time in a day. This results in people becoming a slave to the inbox.

Problem Solution. After doing the obvious things such as unsubscribing from unnecessary lists, and creating email rules for regularly reoccurring emails, how does a person get on top of the email flood? Something that might help is the simple practice of creating an email floodgate. This is achieved by creating a folder of pending email items. In this way, it’s easier to monitor the current flow of incoming email, and make sure you are keeping up.

Sustainable. The goal should be to keep up with the daily email, while at the same time, having a sufficient abundance of available time to work away at older emails. While this system won’t create more hours in the day, it can help a person gauge how effectively they are keeping up and also it clears from one’s view the hundreds or thousands of emails yet to be answered.

Floodgate Technique. The floodgate technique applied to email is similar to clearing everything off your desk and putting all papers in boxes. Then starting fresh with a clean work surface. You’ve not reduced the work needing to be done. You’ve just created a clear space to reduce the stress associated with clutter.

Public Writings. One method for saving time on email responses is to write a monthly newsletter, and/or maintain a blog, instead of many individual personal emails. This is a way to convey most of what you’d want to tell people.

Summary. Windows 7 is a significant improvement over previous versions of Windows. However, when upgrading from Microsoft Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7, you’ll soon discover that all of your email messages are missing as a result of the migration. This page explains how to recover your email messages using Mozilla Thunderbird and a special Thunderbird Windows Mail import and export utility available from Nic-Nac-Project.de as a free download. The step-by-step instructions are found at the bottom of this page, following some general information about email clients and why Windows no longer includes one. There is also information about best practices for upgrading to Windows 7. If you’ve not yet upgraded to Windows 7, it would be wise to install Thunderbird first and import your information before the Windows based mail programs are removed. Exporting your address book from Outlook Express or Windows Mail would be a good idea also. More about Windows 7 can be found on Microsoft’s What Is Windows 7 page.

Missing Mail Client Program. Windows 7, like previous releases of Windows, eliminates features that were included in previous versions. For many years, Windows has included email software such as Outlook Express or most recently Windows Mail with Vista as an email client. Windows 7 doesn’t include an email client. This isn’t the first time a software upgrade resulted in lost functionality. Windows 95 included Fax capabilities as part of the installation, but Windows 98 did not. Microsoft Office 2003 lacked utilities and functionality available in previous versions. When Microsoft adds and later removes features from their products, it appears they are making an effort to avoid antitrust action.

Benefits of Email Client Software. Many people use web-based email services such as Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo. The benefit to web-based email services (not using an email client) is that your entire collection of emails are easily accessible from any computer. You don’t need to worry about losing your e-mail if your computer crashes. Also, it’s one less program to install when you upgrade from one computer to another. However, despite the advantages of using only web-based email services, many people choose to use email client programs such as Thunderbird, Outlook, or Apple Mail for the reasons and benefits listed below. It’s also possible to use both systems (client and web-based) simultaneously through IMAP configuration (or POP). Here are some of the advantages to using an email client instead of (or in addition to) your web-based email.

• Archive. Online email services allow some archiving. However, mailboxes can quickly fill-up if messages contain large attachments. Email client software allows you to store many years worth of emails on your computer and quickly search, sort, and export based on a variety of criteria.
• Consolidation. Email clients can help with the consolidation of schedule, contacts, tasks, and other information. Programs such as Outlook help organize schedule, contacts, and emails all in one system. In Apple computers, the Address, Mail, and Calendar programs work together.
• Features. Email client programs typically offer a more diverse set of features and formatting controls, email rules, signatures, and spam filtering.
• Multiple Accounts. Online email services are primarily for accessing email from a single account, though some offer the ability to check other accounts.
• Off-line Access. Online email services require an Internet connection. Perhaps the biggest reason for using an email client is the ability to read and compose email while not connected to the Internet – such as during air flight, riding in a car, or traveling in a remote area.

Windows 7 Upgrade. Assuming you have an existing copy of Windows Vista that is stable and problem free, the best upgrade path to Windows 7 is probably to purchase the $120 Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade DVD. This will retain your programs, settings, and user data.

Windows 7 Clean Installation. If you have several days of free time, there may be a benefit to performing a clean installation of Windows 7. This will required reinstalling and configuring all software programs, as well as drivers for printers and other accessories. For users with only a few data files, who need only Word Processing and Internet access, a clean installation is fairly easy. For users who have numerous programs and hardware devices, and gigabytes of photos, music, and videos, a clean installation will be quite time consuming.

Importing Windows Mail Messages. Below are instructions for importing Windows Mail messages into Thunderbird.

1. Download and configure Mozilla Thunderbird.
2. Download the Nic-Nac-Project import export plug-in for Thunderbird.
3. In Thunderbird, go in Tools > Addons (or Extensions) and click on Install, then pick the xpi file you downloaded and follow the instructions. Restart Thunderbird.
4. Before importing, you’ll need to configure at least one email account in Thunderbird.
5. From the Tools menu find Import / Export Tools. The Import options include the ability to import all the eml files (email message files) from a certain directory, including the subfolders in that directory. Choose to do this, and navigate to Users > Yourname > Application Data > Microsoft > Windows Mail. Or, alternatively, you could probably just click on your user folder and allow the import to search for any email files in your user account. This may result in importing from multiple programs if you had previously used Outlook Express and then later began using Windows Mail.
6. After importing, a folder structure will be added under the Inbox of the Thunderbird account you created. You may need to review the emails that were imported. There may be some email messages with no date, subject, sender, or contents. Delete these or any other messages you don’t need.

Windows Live Essentials Mail. As an alternative to Thunderbird, some users may prefer the free Windows Live Mail email program bundled with Windows Live Essentials from Microsoft.

Document History. This document was originally posted on 20091101su2300. It was revised and republished on 20091120fr0900.

Problem Summary. Gmail does not have an easy or intuitive method for recovering deleted messages. This page explains the details of this problem and the solution to recovering deleted messages from Gmail.

Quick Fix. These are the simple step 1, 2, 3 instructions for quickly and easily recovering deleted Gmail messages.

1. In very small print, at the top of the Gmail page when you are logged in, you’ll see a link that says Show search options. Click this link, then choose Trash from the drop down next to Search and then click the Search Mail button. This will show all of the messages in your Trash.
2. If you have too many emails in the trash to easily find what you are looking for, you can actually search the Trash for something in specific.
3. Once you find what you are looking for, select it, and then click the Move to Inbox button.

Alternate Methods. Instead of implementing a simple and intuitive method for recovering deleted messages, Gmail has chosen to leave their system confusing, complicated, and difficult to figure out, and they have written up difficult to find help pages. This is similar to putting a sign along the road that says “bump ahead” instead of fixing the bump in the road.

• Gmail has a help page for deleting and recovering messages.
• There is also a Gmail help page with instructions on searching Trash for messages that may have been deleted.

Problem Details. When using the web interface for Gmail, the Trash folder doesn’t show up in the left navigation bar. However, email client software running on your computer, such as Thunderbird or Apple Mail, when configured to access GMail via the IMAP protocol, will show hidden folders on Gmail including the Trash folder. You’ll see All Mail, Drafts, Sent Mail, Spam, Starred, and Trash. The Trash folder is where deleted messages go. If you see a Deleted Messages drop-down in the web version of Gmail, this may have been created by the Apple Mail client. It is a different folder than the Gmail Trash. This may be a result of the client having it’s own method of marking messages as deleted.