Tag: Office 365 Training
What are RSS Feeds In Your Outlook?
When you set up Outlook for the first time, welcome to RSS feeds friends! You get them set up in the installation process. You sometimes have a chance to not turn them on, but most people just blaze right by that option, so most people have RSS feeds in their Outlook. Let’s start with what RSS feeds are…and what they can do for you and how to turn them off.
RSS means “Rich Site Summary” or the average person calls it “Really Simple Syndication” or just RSS.
RSS feeds are a way to get updates from your favorite websites in your Outlook. It could be news alerts from MSN or a blog post from your favorite blogger (like me!). If you look down the folder list in your Outlook, you may see RSS with tons of blue numbers. This is common, I see it everyday here with my clients. See the example to the right for where my RSS feeds lives. For the purpose of this blog, instead of removing RSS (which you can do and we will cover in a bit) I saved up a bunch to show you. See that MSNBC News one? 8794 feeds that I didn’t really sign up for, Outlook signs you up by default when you agree to RSS feeds in the setup process. This will be removed now!
How to remove RSS feeds
In your Outlook, you need to find your email settings. See pic below. You can click on the “remove” button on each and get rid of them.
Now how do you add an RSS feed from your favorite blog? Go to the top of my website and you will see the RSS feed button. My site says “Posts” but on some websites you may see “Feeds or RSS” with the commonly known logo. If you are new, you can click on the “subscribe” button and then those feeds will be in your Outlook or whatever other program you use.
Why does software support cost so much?
I will start with the main reason – knowledge. Not every computer repair or support company has the knowledge to support what you need help with. These software support companies put in the time and energy to learn the products on their own so they can support you. But there are few people that know it, so the rates are higher. Compare this to knick knacks you buy at Target. Their section for fun house decor is full of cheap, under $50 trinkets for your home. But if you want something really unique, you go to an antique store where people hand-picked cool stuff. You pay $500 for that one piece that wows people and gives your home a little something extra. Specialty software companies are like antique stores, we know what we are doing and can get things done faster. We know people, the software and how to scoot past first level support (when we call into companies if need be). We also know the quick bugs that the software can create and how to fix them fast. We work in these applications all day, fixing, repairing and supporting is what we know well.
Basic tech support should be relatively affordable; the rates at CTG are competitive in our market and offer quick fixes. But if you are using specialty software such as ACT, CRM systems, Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365 or need server work done, expect higher expenses with your tech support.
Does this make sense? I hope so. I’ve had some clients ask why my Outlook pricing is now a bit more expensive. I have spent 13 years working with Outlook on many different levels; I am fast and fix many problems in 15 minutes or less. If you asked the technician down the street in a local repair shop to fix it, even though their rate may be very low…they could spend hours trying to figure out the problem and not fix it. The may even need to do other things to your Outlook that would make your head spin, like reinstalling, starting from scratch or worse. Their expertise is probably not in Outlook and that costs you more time and money. Hire a knowledgeable software technician and get back to work faster – it will cost less in your time and money.
Call That Girl offers Outlook (all versions), Hosted Exchange Transition Assistance (old POP/IMAP email to exchange, where everything synchs) and is now in training for Microsoft Office 365. If your company is interested in working with us on a beta testing level, we are very interested in talking to you about your company and moving to the robust work of online cloud application support for your IT needs. Call today for a consultation if you’re in need of any of the above. I look forward to helping! 612-865-4475
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Do you need an email therapist?
Maybe you do, maybe you don’t? Many of my clients have told me over and over that when they book an appointment with me, they feel like they are booking a therapy appointment. I am guessing it’s because of the calming methods I use to get information out of them and how they manage their inbox. Or because they feel they went through a minor exorcism. Either way, at the end of our appointments, I have you thinking completely different about how you manage your email and more importantly, your email life.
- If you find yourself lost in your own email on a daily basis, you may need some help with your set up.
- If you can’t find important emails, you may need organizing help.
- If your Outlook is getting clunky and slow, you should call me quickly because that’s a sign of it crashing.
- If you have multiple email accounts and nothing syncs, there are solutions out there to help you.
- Are you and your team (or just you) emailing yourself documents so you can have a copy on another computer? Stop that madness now. I know I have solutions to help you with this!
- Are you an email hoarder? Can’t let anything go? I am an email hoarding specialist and work with you to learn to let go, but yet keep those emails…just somewhere else.
I have written many blogs about Outlook and helping. If you’re not sure you’re ready to book an appointment yet, please go to our search function at the top of the page and type in “Outlook” and you will find many more blogs I have done on the subject to help. Are you ready right now? Please call 612-865-4475 and ask to get on Lisa’s calendar. I’m here to help!
Skype Won’t Quit Or Close Windows 7
Is anyone else out there as irritated as I am about Skype not closing or quitting? It’s like the family member that won’t leave at Christmas! Even though I am a technician, not every annoyance deserves my precious time. Just like you, I sometimes just wait until I can’t stand something anymore and deal with it. So let’s deal with it together. First we will deal with Skype just always starting up when your computer turns on.
If your Skype starts up with your computer and hangs out at the bottom of your computer with the rest of your apps, your Skype is set up to “Launch at startup” of your computer. So yea, it’s always there. Here is how you can disable this…
Disable start up in Skype itself. Open Skype and go to “Tools” and select “Options”–then uncheck the box “start Skype when I start Windows”. Then it’s gone and should be gone for good!
But now, let’s say you start Skype up and use it, chat away and then you want to get out. You can sign out, or quit…but guess what? It will probably still linger like that awkward cousin at Christmas! I want it gone, I hate seeing it at the bottom of my screen! First, I try right clicking on the app and choose the option, “Quit Skype.” It will ask if you are sure you want to quite Skype and inform you that you won’t be able to send or recieve messages anymore. Select “Quit” and it should go away, but a lot of time this doesn’t work. So then I go off and kill it in the task manager. Really, that’s the best way I have found to get rid of it. For now, it’s not that important of a tool for me to put much time into figuring out why the thing won’t close properly…other than Skype did it as a master marketing plan to keep it in your face every day and night.
Lisa
Free Outlook Google Sync For Calendar Tool May Not Work Anymore
Sometimes when you work with larger companies such as Google, they may change a policy on the use of their free software, and many times they are not exactly clear on what is going on. Here is what I know about Google calendar syncing…
Google calendar sync was a nifty little tool to allow Outlook users to sync those calendars with their Google calendars. From my research, this tool is not available on the Google websites anywhere to download and use for free anymore.
Also I have learned that if you had it installed at one point, you can continue to use it…but any new users need to sign up for their Google Apps plan to be able to sync.
This is the paragraph I read…
Starting January 30, 2013, users, other than paid Google Apps users, won’t be able to set up new devices using Google Sync and should see our sync site for instructions. You can also consult with your device carrier or manufacturer for how they recommend to sync with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Contacts. Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government customers can continue to set up new devices with Google Sync after this date.
To read the full article…
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2716936
So how this technician reads it, Google is not allowing free calendar syncing. If you have found a solution to this and know where the tool is, feel free to let me know and I’ll update this blog article!
If you want to get on board with their Google Apps plan, we can help. If you want to move to a Microsoft solution, hosted exchange in my opinion just works better overall for business needs. Everyone will have their own opinion though on this!
Outlook Suggested Contacts: What are they used for?
If you have installed Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010, you may have noticed the new “Suggested Contacts” in your contacts area in Outlook. What does it do? How do you use them? What are they for? How do names get there!
Here is the Microsoft Explanation
But here is my simple explanation:
Outlook’s Suggested Contacts do a few things
- Keeps email addresses you have emailed in there if you have not saved them as a contact, but it does not nicely organize them by last name/first name. Consider it a “reply email database”. Otherwise known as your favorite “Auto-fill” (what happens when you open a new email and start typing someone’s name and it auto-populates people you have emailed). It’s Outlook’s “Memory bank” of who you have emailed in the past.
- If you leave one email provider and move to another, getting your contacts in your “auto-fill” can be returned
Con’s
- I think it’s picky because not all the emails I have sent are in there, so don’t depend on it to work 100%
- No organization unless you manually go in and add in the first name/last name.
- Not reliable, but better than nothing
Pro’s
- Not everyone has a CRM system so I appreciate when I move to one computer to the next that I have a way to gathering those email addresses up in one swoop without bogging down my contacts in Outlook.
- If you have an iPhone, every person you have ever emailed gets added to it (yeah, not fun to clean up), but they don’t all show in Outlook.
For a great story on how to disable this, I found this article. How to disable Suggested Contacts in Outlook 2010 by Black.
If you have questions about suggested contacts, synching, etc… please call me for an appt! 612-865-4475
