Lisa Hendrickson is the owner of Call That Girl. She is an Outlook Expert and Microsoft 365 Consultant.
I just spent a few hours last week cleaning up 22,000 emails from my Gmail account. I believe I created the account in 2007 or 2008 and never took the time to just clean house. I really don’t use the account for anything anymore, I used to use it for the chat feature, which has now turned into G+ and Hangouts. I rarely use those products of Google anymore, so cleaning up as a good idea and wow…I found some interesting stuff in there!
For most of us, we have many email accounts. It’s very typical of a client to have the following email accounts
While I am seeing less and less AOL calls in, Gmail and the free internet cable provider email (Comcast and Charter) are still very popular. But the question is this, do you have 20,000 or more emails in your Gmail? And if you are using Outlook to read those emails, is your Outlook slowing down?
Might be time to clean up those emails, archive them and organize them in your preferred program by using PST files, so you can still search them.
Outlook is a program that can manage a lot of email accounts and 1000’s of emails, but the more you have to synchronize 20,000 or so emails, the slower it will get and cause Outlook to have issues. Such as sending and receiving, not opening and won’t synchronize (if you’re using IMAP)
I can help you with these issues, call me today for help or email me! 612-865-4475 or Lisa@callthatgirl.biz
Two times this week, had the exact same call come in. Gmail inboxes are missing in Outlook 2013. Guess what? Other things are going to not work either that you might not notice right away. Here is what’s going on.
Gmail offers you 2 ways to setup your email in Outlook. IMAP (nice because it synchronizes) and Pop, (download only, no synchronizing).
What is IMAP? It synchronizes your email and folders from Outlook to your email on the web, that should match up with your phone, other devices. It’s a nice feature, but not always play well with Outlook 2013, and usually just Gmail users have issues due to the limitations of Gmail and the new features in Outlook 2013.
When you setup your Gmail, your inbox may be missing and many other folders, here is why…
Outlook 2013 has added some features for IMAP and it allows you to download the folders you want to see. I’m not sure why they would add this feature as it’s not really a feature, more of a disappointment… because HELLO, the inbox is critical! So you have to go and add it yourself.
Outlook 2013 also creates an .OST file, and that makes it difficult to configure your calendar and contacts with 3rd party apps, (that you need to get your phones and ipads to synch) because it creates a “Local computer” calendar and then…you will need a local .PST file for the contacts. Getting confused? That’s why people call me..as well,
Other issues you might experience
Gmail IMAP only synchronizes email, no calendar, no contacts (for free accounts, business apps yes, if you have Outlook synch app installed and enabled in your account)
Lately my clients on Comcast are asking me for help for solutions to getting on an email program that is free and that allows them to synchronize their email/contacts and calendars.
Comcast only offers Pop accounts, which means email does not synchronize on the phones, Outlook or online. IMAP functionality allows email inboxes to synchronize and the last time I checked, they were still not offering IMAP (hello, they are still in the 1990’s here!). And we are just talking email, most people today have 2 computers, a smartphone, iPad, tablet and want online access for travel, mobility people!
So it’s time to move into the future! While you can still use your Comcast account, getting an Outlook.com account is free and allows you to use the synchronizing platform on all of your devices. Goodbye to deleting email you have already deleted and not having calendars/contacts match up. And this might be a good time to get rid of the email account that is full of junk/spam, etc. Use that Comcast email for when you sign up online for stuff, use your Outlook.com account for only new communications.
Below is a list of things I help clients with…and if you want my help, it’s approximately 30 minutes of time to set up or $89. I know the tools and can do this quickly. You can do this yourself as well, but if you don’t know how to import/export, it might be sticky. (I’ll try to make a video on this soon.)
Once setup, you will truly enjoy the experience that usually only companies can get from Microsoft Exchange, this Outlook.com is just for personal use. If you are a business wanting it, I will recommend using Microsoft Exchange.
It’s been awhile and I feel I have to remind folks to check their internet speed. The cable companies will change their packages and not send you a message to let you know you to “Upgrade” usually at no cost! Sad, but they do it all the time. What you bought 5 years ago is now outdated and the pricing is the same, their packages now have more download speed at the same price! If you don’t call, you won’t know.
Here is how to test your internet speed, then call your internet company and find out if you’re on the best package.
Go to this site… http://www.speedtest.net/
Click on “Begin Test” in the laptop screen, do not click on “Start Now” as that is another tool we are not using.
The test will run and let you know your download speed and upload speed.
My recommendations for home users: You should have over 10 mbps (megabytes per second) download and 1 up. I have 20 mbps download and almost 5 mbps up! That’s fast and I’m wireless upstairs from my router in the basement!
My recommendations for businesses: If you are just one person in an office, then yes…10 mbps down and 1 up should be fine, but if you have a lot of people in your office, then you want to call your internet provider and check your package. You also might have a bad modem or router if the speed is fine. Just this month I have had 2 businesses call me about “slow computers” and their computers were fine, internet speed was bad.
Some businesses are on a dedicated internet service, and your speed might only be 1.5 down. This is common if you are with companies such as TDS or CBeyond. Some clients I have found are just using these companies for internet only and if that’s they case, I would check with Comcast for business class and get the speed you really need.
I can’t seem to say this enough and each blog, I feel a bit silly saying that the ones coming out are worse that then the one before….I said was worse! This one is attacking the UK right now and will be on it’s way over to the states here soon. By the way, this type of virus is already here, just last week we had a client call in, her computer was “held ransom” and while we got the computer back to a running state, her data was encrypted. Luckily, this client was on her corporate computer and all of her work data was in a cloud app, so her IT team can assist with that. But what about you?
What you can do and should do.
How we can help
What we have done at Call That Girl is offer you a 2 part plan to assist with this. We have a good daily computer monitoring plan, that includes a cryptolocker prevention add-on and we have online backup. We sell this at $250 per year, if you happen to download junkware, we remove that at no charge. While we can’t guarantee that no virus will never get through, we do that for free if you get one. Our virus detection tools usually clean up any virus attempts while you are sleeping, it does the work for you!
To read more about our plans and what is covered, what is not https://callthatgirl.biz/monthly-plans-and-agreements
Contact us today for an installation and get safe now! Click here…https://callthatgirl.biz/schedule-an-appointment
Questions
Did you know?
General Outlook Repairs
Office 365
Synchronize your Outlook calendar and contacts to your iPad, iPhone, Android and contacts with the cloud products such as Microsoft Office 365, Hosted Exchange, Outlook.com, 3rd party apps.
Training
Software upgrades and transitions
Migrations
Outside consulting
To book an appointment, please call 612-865-4475 or email info@callthatgirl.biz
