Before

After

New Customizations

You can customize how the email fits to your screen.  Choose cozy, comfortable or compact options.

New Themes

The new Gmail look also comes with new themes. You can access the new color options by clicking on the Gears icon, then Themes.

Chat Window

You can now modify the size of your chat window.

Better Search

The search box has been enhanced to include more filters.  You can now search throughout your email and conversations with more granular options.

Revert Back

If you aren’t ready to use the new look, you can revert back to your old Gmail look temporarily.  Click on the Gears icon, then choose Revert to old look temporarily.  Eventually, Gmail will make the switch for you.

Email Safety

1. Never give out personal information via email.

2. Be extremely cautious when being asked to click on any links sent to you in email. Even if it is sent from someone you know.

3. Your bank will not send you an email asking for your bank account information or your social security number. They already have this information. If you get this type of email delete it. If you are unsure and think the email might be valid, double check by contacting your bank by phone.

4. If you get an email asking for money from someone you do not know—delete the email. No matter what the horrible story is that they are telling you, these predators use the sympathy card and try to pull at your heart strings.

5. Keep your computer antivirus software up to date. I can’t stress this one enough. It is not good enough in this day and age to only have the software on your pc. Hundreds of new viruses, if not thousands, come out weekly and even daily. Your antivirus software is continuously being updated to catch all of the new virus’s that are out there. If your software is behind, you are opening the door to trouble.

Social Networking Site Safety

1. If you are on social networking sites—be careful the “surveys” you take asking you to fill out harmless questions for fun. A lot of times these answers are used to gather information that could possibly be things you use for passwords or challenge questions on different websites. If you give this information out "they" can reset your password for online banking or various credit cards. One of the common surveys being sent around— 20 things you don’t know about me is a perfect example — a lot of the answers are—birthday, where you were born, favorite color, first car you’ve ever owned. All of these questions are used as security questions on a lot of sites in order to change your password or verify you are the "account" holder.

2. Never post when you will be leaving town or will be gone from your house for any extended period. There are people who take advantage of the Social sites looking for vacant homes so they can break into the house. Even posting that your husband or wife is gone for the night is a safety risk.

3. Try not to list your entire birthdate on the site with the month, day, and year. You want to cherish your personal information. Specific information such as your entire birthdate, address, full name, spouses name, etc … are all things that can be used to steal your identity.

4. Do not accept people you do not know at all or even those you do not know very well. My rule of thumb is if I don’t know the person well enough to communicated often with them, then I don’t add them to my friends list.

5. Protect your childrens information. I am guilty of this one. You are a proud parent and you want to post a list of your children on the site. Their ages, birthdates, activities etc … This is especially dangerous if you do not carefully watch which friends you accept to your account. Kid Identity Theft is out there now as well as adult identity theft. As parents we need to protect their identities as we would our own.

There are many more ways to protect yourself and still enjoy the technology at hand, the items above will give you a good foundation and the most important way I have found is to use common sense and keep your eyes open.

Recycle Bin = Trash can

Let’s say you have a banana peel and you take your banana peel and walk it over to your garbage can and drop it in. In 15 days are you going to walk back over to the garbage can and pick up your banana peel? I’m guessing the answer is NO. Okay, so I’m truly HOPING the answer is no, because that would be really disturbing. Many, many, many, computer users do those same steps with their recycle bin. Granted not with banana peels but you get the point.

The Recycle Bin on your computer is in essence a trash can. This is where you put your files that you no longer need, pr those pictures that you took, downloaded and decided you didn’t need another picture of your sons thumb covering the lens of the camera. The idea behind it is, you would throw it away in the bin and never pull it back out. You would “empty” the bin after so long, giving yourself a little leeway so if you accidentally throw away your Thesis you have been working on for 2 years, you can retrieve it before you suffer a massive stroke.

Here’s what happened at the hospital I work for. It was decided that the IT Department was automatically going to delete people’s Recycle Bin’s after so long. I have never seen so many calls come flooding in with people wanting to move their files to a different location. They were storing their files in their Recycle Bins instead of creating a separate folder to store them in.

All Recycle Bins whether they are on your desktop on your computer or in your email (listed as Deleted Items) should never be used to store files. They should only be used to literally throw away unwanted material.

And here is why:

1. There are settings that can be set to automatically empty the deleted items or recycle bins based on certain criteria. Or the Recycle Bin itself can be set NOT to move anything into it but to automatically delete it.

2. Various “clean up” programs that are used to clean up your system when it is running slow will delete items in your Recycle Bins.

3. Items like the Recycle Bin should be used in uniform with other users so if someone uses your computer or borrows your computer or works on your computer and they empty the recycle bin for some reason, they are not deleting hours of hard work for you in retyping documents that you MUST have.

To avoid the heartache and hurt create folders in your My Documents folder or in your email Inbox to store the files in that you just might want in 15 days or 2 years down the road. Use the recycle bin to literally take out the trash.

Change Your View Button in Explorer

When in Windows Explorer you can click the Change your view button to toggle through different sizes of the icons. In this example we are in Details view which gives you more data about the files you’re looking at.

After clicking it once we see we have the Tiles View. Clicking it each time will give you a different view including Details, Tiles, Content, List, Large Icons, Medium Icons, and Small Icons.

Extra Large View

The one view not available by simply clicking the Change your view button is Extra Large Icons. To get the Extra Large setting click the arrow button for More Options.

Then at the top of the menu select Extra Large Icons.

In this example we see some default Windows 7 wallpaper icons as Extra Large.

Another way to quickly scroll through the views is click an empty area in the Explorer window, hold down the Ctrl key and scroll your mouse wheel up or down for different sizes.

Yet another way to change the views is to hit Alt+F to bring up the Menu Bar, then click on View and select different.

It can be done in Vista as well by clicking the Views button and selecting Extra Large Icons.

This simple tip can help those with poor vision, or if you need to see more detail in images as larger icons.

Let’s walk through placing it on the toolbar.

To customize your toolbar and add the Print Button option, follow the steps below:

1. Press the down arrow at the top of the Quick Access Toolbar.

2. Select the Quick Print option.

3. You will see the icon added.

You can use the same steps to add any of the listed items or you can click the More Commands option for even more things to add.

Need help setting up your signature for your emails? If you send a lot of emails, this simple step can save a lot of typing.

In Outlook Express, click Tools and then Options. In this window you will want to select the Signatures Tab. Click the New Button on the right hand side. And then in the lower section under Edit Signature you can free type your signature anyway you would like it to appear. Once you have finished typing the text, click apply. At the top of the window check the option to include the signature on all outgoing messages and click OK.

If you use Outlook 2007 the steps are similar but the screens are slightly different.

1. Click Tools and Options

2. Choose the Mail Format Tab

3. Click the Signatures button

4. Choose the New button at the top LEFT corner

5. Enter a name for your signature – (example Work)

6. Choose OK

7. In the lower section of this screen you can free type the way you want your signature to look. With Outlook 2007 you are able to customize the fonts, sizes, colors, etc …

8. On the top right side of the screen it will let you select when you want to use the Signatures with either new messages and or replies/forwards

9. After setting this option, click OK

Let’s say you have a mailing to do that consists of 100 envelopes. Do you really want to manually address each envelope? I know I wouldn’t. Word has a feature called Mail Merge to help with these types of things.

In order to use the Mail Merge function you need to create a “data” file. Keeping with the example of addressing 100 envelopes, you would create an Excel spreadsheet and in the spreadsheet you would enter in the data you want to appear on the envelopes. First name, Last name, address, city, state, zip code, etc…

Let’s do that step. Open Excel. Type First Name in cell 1A, in cell 1B type Last Name, in cell 1C type Address, in cell 1D type City, in cell 1E type State, in cell 1F type Zip Code. These fields will now be referred to as the HEADERS. When this is done fill in one envelope addressee per row. See example below:

Once you have finished typing your 100 names/addresses, you will save the Excel file. Make sure you save it in an easy location to find with a logical filename, such as Christmas Letter Data File.

Now we can start the actual Merge.

Follow the steps below to create your envelopes:

1. Open a new document in Word

2. Click the Mailings Tab at the top of the window

3. Click Start Mail Merge and then click Envelopes

4. Choose the size of envelope you are using and click OK

5. Click Select Recipients and choose use existing list

6. Navigate to where your Excel file is and open it

7. Specify your address elements

8. Click OK

9. In the Recipient Address Area on the envelope put your mouse where you want the address to go and click one time.

10. At the top of the window click Address Block

11. Then click Finish and Merge—choose edit individual documents

12. Click all and OK

Your mail merge should show on your screen as individual envelopes with the Addresses filled in. You are done! All you need to do at this point is print your envelopes!