There’s nothing more frustrating than searching for a page, finding what looks like a promising result, and then clicking though only to discover that the page is gone. Unfortunately it happens all the time. Servers get jammed, pages are removed, some servers move and some servers are simply no longer maintained. Here’s how to resurrect a copy of that missing page….
Countless books have been written on how to shortcut your way around Windows to your advantage. But in the last part of my shortcuts series, I am going to do you a big favour and only tell you a few shortcuts that I use on a daily basis to speed up my travelling around Windows XP (most should work on Vista as well).
How to make a hotkey to immediately eject a specific USB drive from your computer. VERY useful and something that I definately need for my computer.
photo credit: Staciaann Photography
Building a media server gives you access to all of your tunes from anywhere in your house. You’ll be able to search for songs and play them back whether you’re in your kitchen, living room or your home office, regardless of where in your home your media server sits. If you’re extra savvy, you can also set up your server to be accessible over the internet.
A friend of mine who owns a Gmail address asked me just now how to set up a filter in Gmail for emails with “FW” in the title. After walking her through it, I thought I would just expand on it a little here. With the new Gmail expanding into 37 new languages, I thought it would be a good idea to go back to basics for a while.
Heavy Gmail users may have mastered how to set up filters and labels but the smaller users may not have worked it out yet. Since filters and labels are the backbone of how Gmail works (and by far its biggest strength), every Gmail user should learn how to set them up and use them. Not using the filters and labels is like going to visit a hooker and only asking for a hug (OK, a dodgy analogy there but I am not an analogy expert!).
I have my Gmail set up to the point where every known contact has their own label and emails from them go directly there. Only people I have never talked to before or rarely talk to end up in my actual inbox. Any emails with “FW” or “Fwd” in the title is assumed to be a joke or a photo and those are sent to their own folder so they don’t distract me. I then go back to them later when I am bored and I have some spare time on my hands.
Using this method, I have cut down on distractions where Google Talk notifies me of new emails and as a result, my productivity is much better.
So here’s how to do it :
If the email is already in your inbox and you want to filter future similar emails from that person or emails with the same subject title, then it is very easy. When the email is open, go to the top right hand corner of the email and drop down the little menu :
Choose “filter messages like these”. This then takes you to the filter page where everything from that email is pretty much filled in. But just to be sure, press “test search” to see what comes up.
On the next page after that (just follow the buttons), it will ask you what you want done with that email. You can automatically trash it, automatically archive it, label it, forward it to another email address, star it or mark it as read (this last one appears to be a new feature!). Choose the label option, choose what label you want and decide if you want the email to have something else. Want it to bypass the inbox? Then choose the archive option. Want a star on that email? Then the star option. You get the idea.
When everything is configured the way you want it, save it all and exit. All future emails with that criteria will now be handled the way you want them to.
But what if the email is not yet in the inbox? Then you are basically going to have to make the filter from scratch and guess what criteria you would need. As an example, let’s take my friend’s dilemma and say that we want all forwarded emails to be moved to their own folder. First make a label where you want the emails to go. You can make this by going to the green label box on the left hand side - at the bottom is a link that says “edit labels”. Click on that and at the bottom of the next page is a box where you can name new labels. Let’s say we name the label “forwards”.
Once you have your “forwards” label set up, go to “settings” (top right hand side of the page) then “filters” then “create a new filter”. In the next box that comes up, add “FW or FWD” in the subject line (this means that all emails with FW or FWD in the subject line will be filtered). If you want to only apply the filter to a certain person, add their email address in the “from” field. You can also specify other keywords and whether or not the email should have an attachment :
Don’t worry if you initially muck it up. You can always go back in later and refine it the way you want it. Everything is reversible.
On the next page, again choose what you want done with the email and save everything.
Setting up filters is like everything else in life - practice makes perfect. When you’ve done one, you’ll find the next one easier to do. I’m off now to check out the new “mark as read” filter option.
| Managing Editor : Mark O'Neill Email : mark@betterthantherapy.net Phone:(0049) 931 406 2564 Skype ID: camelot2302 Send me a Google Talk message Send me an AIM message Send email links to my Delicious account 
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