7 Email Secrets to Make Your Life Easier and Safer

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(http://bottomlineinc.com)

7 Email Secrets To
Make Your Life
Easier And Safer
Date: March 15, 2015 Publication: Bottom Line Personal Source: Ryan A.
Teeter Print: (javascript:window.print())

Here are seven surprising things that can transform the way you use
e-mail
1. You might be able to cancel an e-mail after you have sent it. Have
you ever pressed Send only to regret it a moment later, possibly
because you included words of anger or other emotions in your
message that you wish you hadnt sharedaddressed it to the wrong
personor hadnt completed your message? With Gmail, the most
popular e-mail service, there is an undo option that is easy to use.

What to do: Adjust your settings now, because theres a time limit of
30 seconds after you actually send a message. Go to your e-mail
settings by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the in-box
page. Click on Settings, scroll down to Undo Send, enable it and

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choose a cancellation period that can last from five to 30 seconds.

Click Save changes at the bottom of the page. From then on,
whenever you send an e-mail, youll see a message at the top of your
in-box with an undo option available for the length of time you
selected.
2. Quirky text and punctuation can trigger spam filters that may
keep someone from receiving your e-mail. These include using more
than one exclamation point (!!!)putting a sentence in ALL CAPS
using unusual spellings of words such as speci@lor using too many
spam-associated trigger words, phrases and/or symbols. Among

those: Viagradrugspornguaranteed winnerprizefreeact

nowlimited time$$$. Spam filters typically dont block e-mail with
known addresses regardless of the content. If you suspect or discover
that youre-mail did wind up in someones spam folder, ask the
recipient to add you to his/her e-mail programs contacts list or
address book.
3. You can get a free temporary e-mail address in seconds without
filling out a long form. This can be very useful when you want to enter
a site that requires you to establish an account or join a mailing list but
you dont want to provide your regulare-mail address. That way you
dont leave yourself vulnerable to a deluge of unwanted messages. To
get your temporary e-mail address, go to Mailinator.com,
(http://mailinator.com/) type in an address you choose or that the site

suggests (for example, YourName@Mailinator.com), and thats it.

There are no passwords. If you need to checke-mail, you just type in
your address at the site. After a few hours, your address and your
e-mail messages are automatically deleted.

Important: The site is designed for speed and convenience, not

security. So dont use it to receive any e-mail with sensitive
information.

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4.You can use the e-mail program on a computer to send text

messages to cell phones. This is handy if your phone is not charged,
youre in an area with spotty cellular service or you just dont like
typing on a tiny keyboard. The address you will send your message to
will consist of the recipients 10-digit mobile number (without
hyphens or spaces), the @ symbol, and the SMS gateway address of
his/her cellular provider. Example: If the recipients provider is AT&T,
you would send your e-mail to the persons number@txt.ATT.net.

Addresses for the other major cellular providers: For Sprint, use
@messaging.sprintpcs.comVerizon, @vtext.comT-Mobile,
@tmomail.net. For other SMS gateway addresses, go to
EmailTextMessages.com(http://www.emailtextmessages.com/).
5.E-mail providers such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail scan every word
you write, and they sell the information to advertisers. Although no
humans read the text, and your name and e-mail address are not
identified, a software program searches for keywords and compiles
data for sale. Its called contextual ad targeting. You have to agree to
this practice to be able to use these e-mail services, but that policy is
hidden in the small type. And if you reveal private information in
youre-mailsfor instance, that you plan to get divorcedyou and
other people who share your computer may see ads for such products
or services as divorce attorneys in your browser. If these policies
make you uncomfortable, try Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail
instead. Although they reserve the right to scan your e-mail, Microsoft
does not target ads to you based on your e-mail content, and Apple
doesnt make e-mail information available to third-party advertisers.
6.Even today, many e-mail services dont allow sending or receiving
attachments larger than 10 megabytes (MB)so it is hard to send
high-quality photos or videos. Gmail and Yahoo allow sending files of
up to 25 MB, but even that is restrictive when a single high-resolution
photograph can surpass 50 MB. There are several ways to give your
recipients access to larger files, however. None of them involves
actually attaching the files and transferring them from your computer

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to the recipientse-mail in-box. Instead, you upload the files to a

remote server over the Internet. The recipient receives a link in
youre-mail that he/she clicks to download the file from the remote
server. Heres how to do this

If you have Gmail, use Google Drive. Its an online file-storage and
file-sharing service available to anyone with a Google account. With
Google Drive, you can send files as large as 15 GB, which is 15,000
MB. After you compose your Gmail message, instead of attaching a
document, video or photo using the paper clip icon, click on the
Google Drive icon next to the paper clip. You can select a file that
already is in Google Drive or first upload the file straight from your
computer to Google Drive. The recipient does not need Gmail to
retrieve the file.

For Microsoft Outlook, use Microsoft OneDrive, which works

similarly to Google Drive. Learn how to do this at
OneDrive.Live.com/about(https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/).

For Yahoo Mail and other e-mail services, use Dropbox.com

(https://www.dropbox.com/). Its a free online storage and file-sharing
site that works with all major e-mail programs. It operates similarly to
Google Drive, but it allows you to send the recipient a link to as large
an attachment as you want. Downside: You need to install Dropbox
software on your computer, and you need to pay if you want more
than 2 GB of storage. (However, 2 GB can accommodate many highresolution photos.) It costs $9.99 per month for an additional 1,000
GB of storage.
7.You can back up all your online e-mail to your computer hard
driveand you should. What would happen if you signed into your
e-mail account and all your old e-mails and attachments, including
work documents, photos and video, had been deleted? Although the
chance of this occurring is remote, its possibleGmail and Yahoo
Mail, for example, have both suffered glitches on their servers that

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erased the contents of entire e-mail accounts. Fortunately, backing up

e-mail is easy. What to do

For Gmail, go to Googles data download page

(Takeout.Google.com/settings/takeout
(https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout)), log into your account and

follow directions. You will receive a file in your Google Drive with the
backed-up data that you can download to your hard drive or to any
storage drive you attach to your computer.

For Microsoft Outlook, use the Microsoft Personal Folders Backup

tool(https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=9003).
For Yahoo Mail, download Yahoo backup software from
Yahoo.googleappsbackup.com(http://www.yahoo.googleapps-backup.com/). Install and follow directions.

Source: Ryan A. Teeter, PhD, clinical assistant professor of accounting

information systems at University of Pittsburgh and coauthor of Google Apps
for Dummies. He developed training curriculum as a training specialist at
Google. RyanTeeter.com(http://ryanteeter.com/)

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