Email annoyances--a personal view.

If you're like me, you live in email. That means you also live with all the dumb things your email program does-like hide our attachments, turn them into gobbledygook, or delete messages without permission. It also means that you have to deal with all the joke lists, chain letters, and productivity--gobbling spam filling your mailbox at all hours of the day. First, I'll show you how to solve general email problems that drive me up the wall. Then I'll guide you through the annoyances in most of the popular email programs-Outlook and its kid sister Outlook Express, Eudora, AOL, Hotmail, and Netscape.

The Cardinal Rules of Email

Even seasoned email users may sometimes breach email etiquette. Here are some tips for avoiding e-gaffes:

* Keep it private. Don't reply to a mailing list with "great idea" or "I agree." Reply privately instead. Select a small part of the original message for context's sake.

* Play it safe. Ten people are on an email thread, and you're about to reply to the sender with some juicy gossip. Make sure you're not about to click "Reply to All."

* Keep it clean. Cursing somehow looks worse in email, Avoid swearing, or at least often it with asterisks. Harsh language often sounds even angrier in email, and curt messages that aren't meant to be harsh at all can come off as cold.

Don't showcase your lousy spelling. Take a second or two to spellcheck your email. I set Eudora to check automatically. Don't have a built-in spellchecker? Go to http://snipuri.com/spellcheck: it's free, includes a thesaurus, and translates into French, German, and Spanish. Ordonne', non? Ja, la, la!

When you reply or forward an email, it's helpful if you stick one or two descriptive words in front of the original subject so the recipient has an idea of what's in store. For instance, I use words such as "Update:", "Confirmation:", or "Really dumb:".

Hide The Recipients List

THE ANNOYANCE: It rankles when I get an email and the list of email addresses is longer than the message.

THE FIX? When you're sending an email to more than one person just made the recipient list using your email applications Blind Copy (Bcc) feature. You can either address the message to yourself or leave the 'To' field blank (if your mailer will let you). Then Bcc everyone else.

* To display the Bcc field in Outlook Express, select View and select All Headers.

* in Outlook, choose View and select Bcc Field.

* In Netscape, click the 'To' field and scroll to Bcc.

* Eudora's the easiest-just fill in the Bcc field.

Display Email Headers

THE ANNOYANCE: My email program works overtime to protect me from headers, and most of the time, that's just fine. Usually, all I want to know is who wrote the email, who received it, and when it was sent. But every now and then I have to dig up email headers to report a problem to tech support or to find out why something is bouncing back.

THE FIX: Each email application has a different way of showing headers. To display the header info, follow the steps for your mail program:

* OutlookExpress5 and 6: Open the email message, select File Properties, and click the Details tab.

* Outlook 2000 and 2002: Open the email message, click View, and select Options. The data you want is in the Internet Headers dialog box.

* Netscape Mail: In Versions 6 and 7 of Netscape, open the email message, click View, and select Message Source. For Netscape's web-based email, open the message and click the little yellow triangle at the bottom right of the messages Subject/Date/From/To pane.

* Eudora 5: Open the email and click the Blah Blah Blah (no, I'm not kidding) button on the message window's toolbar. The header information will appear at the top of the message.

* AOL: just above the email message, locate the "sent from the Internet (Details)' line and click '(Details)' The header information appears in the Internet Information dialog box.

* Hotmail: Head for Options, choose Mail Display Settings, choose Full, and click OK. Open the email again and repeat the process, choosing None or Basic once you've looked at the headers.

Stop Your Mailbox from Filling Up

THE ANNOYANCE: You get a call from a friend that his emails to you are bouncing back. 'It says your email box is full' your buddy says with a smirk. Lucky he called, though, because otherwise your email would continue bouncing.

THE FIX: This used to happen to me when friends insisted on sending messages with humorous files attached. When someone sends you an email message, it goes to your Internet Service Provider (ISP), which holds it on an email server so that your email program can, at your leisure, fetch it. Problem is, most ISPs limit you to between 5 and 10 MB of server space for your messages-and once your accumulating email fills that space, your ISP's email server rejects (bounces) any new incoming mail until you make room for the new messages.

My ISP, EarthLink, sends me a warning email when my email box is nearly full. But even if your ISP does you that courtesy, you have to fetch your email regularly. You also need to make sure your POP3 account is set up to delete your mail from the server after you've fetched it, as follows:

* In Outlook Express and Outlook 2000 and 2002, click Tools-+Accounts, select the proper account, and click Properties-+Advanced. if you have 'Leave a copy of message on server' checked, be sure 'Remove from server after 5 days' (the default) is checked, but change the 5 to 2.

* In Eudora, select Tools> Options->Incoming Mail. If you have leave mail on server" checked, be sure "Delete from server after 0 days" is checked, but change the default 0 to 2.

* In Netscape Mail select Edit>Mail/News Account Settings, then select Server (Server Settings in Version 7) under the appropriate account name. Make certain that 'Delete messages on server when they are deleted locally' is checked. Then select Copies & Folders (under Server or Server Settings) and set the drop-down lists to appropriate local folders.

Hide Your Return Address

If you read mail on newsgroups, keep prying eyes-namely, bots that scoop up email addresses for spammers.--from getting a usable email address. You tan either insert characters that legitimate users can remove, or you tan physically break up your address so a bot can't read it. For instance, in your email program's "Reply to" field under Tools or Options, change your email to something like bassREMOVETHISgroupsClycos.com, if your emails have a signature line, break it up like this:

bass-     | not
groups    | extractable
@Lycos.   | by
com       | automated means

Spam Zappers Extraordinaire 

THE ANNOYANCE: Its getting so bad that on some days, I get as much spam as legitimate email.

THE FIX Don't spend your time battling spam. In fact, it shoudn't even be on your radar. There are dozens of tools to reduce spam, but I recommend the following three because each is able to capture and mulch between 90 and 98 percent of the spam aimed at me:

MailWasher : This spam attacker has all the characteristics I like in a spam blocker. It works like a charm, is truly easy to set up and use, and nails spam at the door by filtering, bouncing, blacklisting, and removing it. And while there's a MailWasher Pro version, the free one is adequate for most people. MailWasher works on your incoming missives (POP3 email programs and AOL only) before you open your email program. It goes to the mail server, just as your email program does, but it retrieves only the header information and the first few lines of each message. From there, I take action: I mark messages I recognize as spam, or I agree with MailWasher's suspicion that they're spam. One click and MailWasher spits the message back to the sender, camouflaging it with 'address not found.' Yep, it really looks like bounced mail. After a few days, you'll find MailWasher a no-brainer to use. It's easy to add email buddies to a friends list and the junk to MailWasher's spam list. After you've used MailWasher for a while, it collects enough info-through heuristic checking and filtering-that most spam is automatically blocked without any intervention. Grab a copy at http.//www.oreilly.com/pcannoyances. iHateSpam What's neat about iHateSpam is that, unlike MailWasher, it works within your email program, so there's no need to load and use a separate program, iHateSpam adds a toolbar to both Oudook and Outlook Express that lets you bounce email, mark messages as spam (or not spam), and add senders to an enemies or friends list.

What won me over to iHateSpam is that it really, truly blasts spam to smithereens. My wife and I used iHateSpam for more than a month. Her daily use filtered about 98 percent of the spam she received; dummy accounts I set up on Hotmail and CompuServe gave me an even better hit rate. I don't know what sort of algorithmic magic the program uses, but it seems to grow smarter the more I use it. You can grab a trial copy of the $20 utility from http://wwworeilly.com/pcannoyances. Spamnix. There's no doubt that Eudora users need Spamnix, a $30 no-frills plug-in from Spamnix Software. Spamnix examines each messages header and content, s. If Spamnix thinks the email isn't spam-but it is- click the Reject This Sender button and Spamnix bans the sender's subsequent messages. Click the Accept button and the program grants immunity to future mail from the sender. Spamnix optionally accepts all email from anyone in Eudora's address book. You tan get a copy of the 30-day trial version at http://www.oreilly.com/pcannoyances.

If you're using a web-based email service-which typically has built-in spam filters--you may need to dig into the options and turn on or configure filtering:

HotmaiL From Options, choose junk Mail Filter and choose a filter level. Then click Safe List and add addresses you want to get through the filter, such as friends or business associates. Finally, click Mailing Lists and add any lists you subscribe to so they won't be filtered as junk.

Yahoo!. There's no way to set spam filtering levels. Yahoo uses SpamGuard, a tool that automatically filters spam.

Alternative Medicine for PC Viruses

THE ANNOYANCE: Help! I think my PCs infected, and I havn't updated my antivirus software in ages.

THE FIX: Head for HouseCall, Trend Micro's free, up-to-date online virus scan- ner, at http://snipurl.com/housecall. After a small utility downloads onto your PC, HouseCall scans your computer's hard drive, finding and removing viruses.

Play it safe and do another scan using McAfee's Stinger. It's not a substitute for antivirus software, but a virus removal tool for the virus du jour. As 1 wrote this book, Stinger looked for and removed such common pests as MSBlast, Fizzer, Lovgate, BackDoor-AQJ, SQLSlammer, Lirva, Yaha, Bugbear, Elkern,, Funlove, Nimda, Sircam, and the ever-popular Klez. McAfee updates Stinger depending on how frequently the virus strikes. You can find Stinger at http://www.oreilly.com/pcannoyances

Clean Up Forwarded Email

THE ANNOYANCE: Are the forwarded messages you send overloaded with excess baggage-distracting > symbols, extra spaces, carriage returns, and bizarre word wrapping. When I receive such emails, I often don't bother to read them, so don't be surprised if the messages you forward aren't read either.

THE FIX There's a very easy fix, and it won't cost you a cent. All it takes is a quick cut and paste into eCleaner, a nifty free utility, to scour the email of junk before you forward it on. Besides removing irritating > symbols, the tool gets rid of HTML code and email headers, and straightens out the word wrap. To clean an email, copy and paste the desired mail into eCleaner and press F1 Select the cleaned text and paste it into a spanking new email. I keep eCleaner on my Windows Quick Launch toolbar for easy one-click access. To add it to the toolbar, open the eCleaner folder, right-click eCleaner, and drag and drop it to the Quick Launch toolbar. Release the mouse but-ton and choose Create Shortcuts Here. You tan grab a copy of eCleaner at http://snipurl.com/ecleaner.

Share Big Files Without the Attachments

THE ANNOYANCE. You have a terrific video to share with a buddy. Unfortunately, it's 30 MB and if you try to attach it to an email message, the ISP police will come knocking at your door.

THE FIX: Forget email. If you frequently send and receive large files, use znail (http://www.znai/.com), an almost-free web site for file storing and sharing. You simply upload a file to znail using your browser, then send your friend an email with a link for file retrieval. There's no cost for up to 5 MB of storage. If you want to be a big spender (and big file-transferrer), a dollar a year gets you 20 MB of storage; 50 MB runs $10 a year. znail has some download restrictions, but nothing I'd call onerous. If you have 20 MB of znail storage, you tan download a maximum of 40 MB per day and 100 MB per week. (To share data, you have to share the same username and password with friends or coworkers.) If you're on a dialup line, these uploads and downloads can take forever. So if that's your situation, burn the file on a CD and hand-deliver it to your buddy.

Return to Sender, Address Unknown

THE ANNOYANCE: Theres one guy who sends me the most inane, awful, dumb jokes. I've asked him to remove me from his alleged joke list, to no avail.

THE FIX. Here's the sneaky way to get off any joke list. Use the Bounce Spam Mail utility to deliver a fake bouncemessage. It looks absolutely authentic, and the poor shlub will think your email address is invalid. You'll find Bounce Spam Mail at http://www.oreillycom/pcannoyances.

Indecipherable Attachments

THE ANNOYANCE: Occasionally I receive email with a file attachment that's indecipherable. My virus program scanned it and gave it a clean bill of health; it's just unreadable.

THE FIX. The attachment has probably been encoded with Uuencode, MIME, or BinHex, rendering it seemingly impossible to read with any program in the PC world. You need a copy of V Communications PowerDesk, a free Wind~ Explorer replacement that has a built-in decoder (and, if you ~ need it, an encoder) for UU, XX, MIME base64, and BinHex files. It's also a terrific file manager. PowerDesk as available at PCWorld.coms Downloads at http://snipurl.com/powerdesk

Turn Off Return Receipt

THE ANNOYANCE. Some people slip a return receipt request into email they send me. Do they think I wouldn't read it otherwise?

THE FIX. I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they don't realize return receipts are a breach of email etiquette. 1 reject the request and tell the writer how to turn the feature off:

* In Eudora, just don't click the Return Receipt button on the toolbar.

* In Outlook, click Tools-Options, choose the Preferences tab, select Email Options, and click Tracking Options. Make sure 'Request a read receipt for all messages I send' is unchecked. If you use Outlook Express 6, click Tools-Options, choose the Receipts tab, and make sure 'Request a return receipt for all sent message? is unchecked. If you want to keep your email reading habits to yourself, check 'Never send a response' in Outlook, or 'Never send a read receipt" in Outlook Express.

Finally if your message is really critical, try using that newfangled thing called a telephone.

From PC Annoyances. Steve Bass, O'reilly.

Windows Server 2003 in a Nutshell,

Mitch Tulloch

Readers who are familiar with Tulloch's previous book, "Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell" will notice that this new book represents a complete overhaul of the earlier material. "Windows Server 2003 in a Nutshell' has much easier to find information-there are only two alphabetic references, one for the GUI and one for the command-line," Tulloch explains. 'The Task Map chapter lets you look up a task-troubleshooting startup issues, for instance-and then find topics in the two reference chapters that will help. This one-two approach to finding things will make it easier to navigate through the vast wonderland that is Windows Server 2003." According to Tulloch, this reference is ideal for administration and deployment, as well as for deeper issues such as planning, configuring, and troubleshooting.

'Windows Server in a Nutshell" includes:

--Introductory chapters on transitioning from Windows NT and Windows 2000

--A task map listing more than 600 common tasks and how to perform them

--A GUI reference organized by major themes of Windows Server 2003 administration

--An alphabetic reference of command line administration tools and scripts

This book is a no-fluff guide to administering the Windows Server 2003 operating system, written for those who are beyond the tutorial stage-primarily intermediate to advanced admins who are are familiar with either the Windows NT, Windows 2000 platform, or both. Small enough to sit handily on the desktop where it's needed, and condensed enough to he quick and easy to use, "Windows Server 2003 in a Nutshell" is the ideal quick desktop reference for those who work or plan to work closely with Microsoft's new platform.

www.oreilly.com