Cleaning up my Email

Two of the most full folders you may have in your email are INBOX and SENT ITEMS.   If you want to clean these folders up a bit, you can move messages you want to keep to your personal folder, which stores the file on your hard drive. Messages you don't want to keep can be deleted to the Deleted Items folder which can then be emptied out.

Moving Messages:

1. Simply highlight the message you want to move and drag it to your personal folder. **
2. Alternatively, you can highlight the message and click Edit --> Cut, then select the personal folder and click Edit --> Paste
3. If you want to move more than one at a time, you can use the Shift key to highlight several in a row or use the CTRL key to highlight individual files
1. Several in a row -- click once on the first message you wish to move to highlight it, hold down the shift key and click once on the last message in the list you wish to move.  This will highlight all of the messages in-between
2. Individual files -- hold down the CTRL key as you click once on each file you want to highlight

** If you don't have a personal folder, call the Helpdesk at x5470, menu option #2 and one of our courteous professionals will be happy to help you create one

Deleting Messages

1. Highlight the message you wish to delete and simply press the delete key on the keyboard or click on the X in the toolbar
2. Once you have deleted the message, right-click on your Deleted Items folder and choose "Empty Deleted Items Folder"

Disk Cleanup

Windows 98 users have a neat little utility called Disk Cleanup. This will calculate automatically the temporary files, temporary internet files, recycle bin contents, and downloaded files folders and allow you to clean them all out in one shot. In addition,it tells you how much disk space it will free up. To access this utility, click on Start à Programs à Accessories à System Tools à Disk Cleanup.

Windows 3.x\95\NT and Macintosh users, please follow these steps to aid in cleaning your computer:

Internet Explorer - start the program and click on Tools à Internet options.  Under the "Temporary Internet Files" option, click the Delete Files button. Click in the box beside delete all offline content to select it and then click OK to confirm the deletion of all files in the Temporary Internet Files folder

Netscape - start the program and click on Edit à Preferences. Click on the + beside Advanced. Click on Cache to highlight it. Click on the Clear Memory Cache button and choose OK to confirm. Click on the Clear Disk Cache button and choose OK to confirm.

Temporary Files (Windows users) - usually, on Windows 9x\NT machines, temporary files are stored in the c:\windows\temp directory (c:\winnt\temp for Windows NT users). Click on Start à Programs à Windows Explorer. When this comes up, highlight the Windows folder in the left pane. If there is a + beside the Windows folder, click it once to expand the folder. Below you should see the Temp folder. Click once to highlight it in the left pane. In the right pane, search for any files that end with .tmp or that begin with the ~ sign. If you can't see extensions, click on View à Folder Options and select the View tab. Click in the box beside "Hide File Extensions for Known File Types" to deselect it and click OK. Delete all the files in the TEMP folder that end with .tmp or begin with a ~ sign. There may be other files in this folder you can delete as well. In addition to the c:\windows\temp directory, there may also be a c:\temp directory on your hard drive, especially if your version of Windows is 3.x or a Windows 9x upgrade. Check this directory as well for any *.tmp or ~ files.

Recycle Bin (Windows 9x\NT Users) and Trash (Mac users) - sometimes when we delete files, we actually are moving them to the "trash can" folders on our hard drives. Periodically empty out these folders to free up a little space.

Disk Maintenance

Scandisk and defrag utilities in Windows 9x were covered in a previous newsletter (see "Cleaning Up My Computer" in the Year 2000 newsletter). However, for convenience, we have reprinted that article with some additions for Windows NT & Macintosh users.

Running Scandisk (Windows 9x)

1. Click on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Scandisk. The following box will appear. Make sure (C:) is highlighted.
2. Click on the circle beside Standard.
3. Click on the box beside Automatically fix errors. Then click Start.
4. After Scandisk finish correcting any errors, the following box will appear.
5. Click Close, and Close again.
   
   

Running Defrag(Windows 9x)

1. Click on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Disk Defragmenter. The following box will appear.
2. Click OK. The following box will appear and your computer will start defragmenting drive C.


3. When defragmenting drive C is completed, the following box will appear. Click Yes.
   
   

Running Scandisk and Defrag on Windows 3.x

To run scandisk & defrag utilities on DOS\Windows 3.x machines, you must first exit completely out of Windows back to the DOS prompt. Once you are at the C:\> prompt, type "scandisk" (without quotes) and press the enter key. Follow the onscreen prompts to run scandisk. After scandisk has finished and you exit out of the program back to the C prompt, type "defrag" (without quotes) and press the enter key. The computer will check to see the percentage of fragmentation and will recommend the type of defragmentation that is needed. Simply press the enter key to select OK to begin the program once a recommendation appears on the screen.

Running Error Check (Windows NT)

There are 2 methods for running an error check on NT.

Method #1

1. Double-click on the My Computer icon
2. Right-click on the C drive icon and choose properties
3. Click on the TOOLS tab
4. Under the "Error-checking" section, click the CHECK NOW button
5. In the Check Disk option window, click in the box beside "Automatically fix file system errors" to select it and click the START button

Method #2

1. Click Start à Programs à Command Prompt
2. At the prompt, type "C:" (without quotes) and press the enter key to change to the C drive
3. Type "chkdsk /f" (without quotes) and press the enter key
4. When finished, type "exit" (without quotes) and press the enter key to return to Windows

Unfortunately, Windows NT does not automatically come with a defragmentation program. However, there are third party utilities that can be purchased or possibly downloaded from the Internet that have the capability of performing this task on Windows NT.

Maintenance on the Mac

Check the hard drive for any disk utilities folders that may contain disk repair software. In addition, there are quite a few disk repair\maintenance utilities available for download from sites such as www.apple.com, C/Net's utilities download center for Macintosh ( http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10157.html?tag=st.dl.10005.dir.10157 ), or www.macshare.com that can be utilized to keep your hard drive in tip top shape.