What Is It?

Yesterdays post ( Remove Duplicate Emails and Other Items from MS Outlook with ODIR ) detailed some problems with Outlook duplicating emails if there is a timeout on the Internet connection while downloading your emails from the server. One tip that can help with this problem is to increase the timeout interval for the server connection.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Sets the Server Timeout on a per email account basis

Pros: What’s Good?

• Part of Outlook Account Settings

(more…)

Popularity: 14% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

What Is It?

ODIR – Outlook Duplicate Item Remover by Vaita, will search the individual folders in your MS Outlook setup and remove any duplicate items that it finds based on a simple set of rules.

Why Would You Want It?

If the Outlook email download process is interrupted part way through then it does not register that any emails have been received from the server. This can be caused by a crash in Outlook or the operating system, it can also happen due to Internet interruptions or a slow connection timing out. Other causes for duplicate items can be synchronisation with PDAs and mobile phones or the use of synchronisation software. Finding and removing these duplicates manually is a slow and painstaking process, ODIR provides a freeware method of making this much easier.

Note: For maximum safety I would advise that you backup your Outlook files before using this utility

Why Do I Use It?

I first started using ODIR 1 or 2 years ago when  I had some problems with my ISP and several timeouts when downloading emails caused a lot of duplicates to accumulate. Recently I had problems with Outlook crashing ( see Data Rescue Tip – Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files ) and this weekend I had some more problems with timeouts due to my Internet connection misbehaving. This again resulted in a lot of duplicates that needed to be removed.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Simply removes duplicate items in:
  Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

(more…)

Popularity: 14% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

What is This all About?

Most users will think of Windows Explorer (Not Internet Explorer the browser application) as the program they use to access their files. In fact Windows Explore is much more than this, in simple terms it provides the graphical user interface(GUI) between the user and the operating system. It gives access to the all the programs including the control panel and various system utilities such as System Information, System Restore and the Management Console. If Windows Explorer freezes or cashes then you no longer have access to the Windows Taskbar and the Desktop icons amongst other important ways that you interact with your PC to make it do what you need. (Windows Explorer is also referred to as the shell which interacts with the core operating system).

Tip 4 may be the most important Tip as this helps to protect against fatal Windows Explorer crashes

Why Do You Care?

For a multitude of different reasons Windows Explorer may freeze or crash at any time. Windows XP is certainly more stable than earlier Windows operating systems but it still happens, particularly if you load lots of programs and give your PC a heavy workload. This is another reason why it pays to reboot your Windows OS fairly frequently, as the longer he system runs in any one session the more likely it is that it may freeze or crash.

Once Windows Explorer is no longer available then how do you access such things as the Shutdown Menu or your open programs that are still running?

What Can You Do?

First of all, except for the most inexperienced of users of a Windows OS will be familiar with CTL-ALT-DEL (or the 3 finger salute) where you press all 3 keyboard buttons at the same time as an emergency “get out of jail” solution.

By the way – if this doesn’t immediately work give it a minute after which you will need to use the powerswitch or restart button with all the possibilities of loosing data or file corruption. So only ever do this as a last resort!!!!

When you use CTL-ALT-DEL from a User Login/Password system you see the following screen:

(Click on Screenshots to enlarge)

(more…)

Popularity: 23% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

What Is It?

Attribute Changer 6 by Romain Petges is a comprehensive utility to change the attributes for files and folders individually, in selected batches and for all files or by using a file filter for the files in a folder.

Why Would You Want It?

Ever copied files from a CD and found that they all have the “Read Only” attribute set? Have you accidentally change the modified date on a file when you really wanted to keep the original date? Have you found files on your system with “impossible” dates in the past or future? These have all happened to me in the past which is how I came across this very handy utility.

While you can change some attributes of files individually or for selected batches using the standard Windows Properties dialog in explorer Change Attributes lets you do so much more plus it gives you very useful options for filtering and using relative date/time adjustments.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Changes Windows Folder and File Attributes

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

(more…)

Popularity: 20% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites