April 4, 2010

Use Outlook with Comcast e-mail

Applies to
Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003
Microsoft Outlook® 2002

You can use Outlook with your Comcast e-mail account. The following steps will set up Outlook to both receive and send e-mail messages with your Comcast account.

Note  You can receive your Comcast e-mail messages by using Outlook from most places with an Internet connection. Comcast provides you access to an authenticated SMTP server — allowing you to send e-mail messages using Outlook from your Comcast account when you are using another Internet service, such as at your office or when traveling.

Do one of the following:

Add your Comcast e-mail account

  1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
  2. Select Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next.
  3. Select POP3, and then click Next.
  4. Under User Information, do the following:
    1. In the Your Name box, type your full name the way you want it to appear to other people.
    2. In the E-mail Address box, type your e-mail user name followed by @comcast.net.
  5. Under Server Information, do the following:
    1. In the Incoming mail server (POP3) box, type mail.comcast.net.
    2. In the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box, type smtp.comcast.net.
  6. Under Logon Information, do the following:
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    1. In the User Name box, type your user name provided by Comcast.
    2. In the Password box, type your password.
    3. Select the Remember password check box.

      Note  You have the option to have Outlook remember your password by typing it in the Password box and selecting the Remember password check box. Having Outlook remember your password means that you won't have to type your password each time you access the account; however, it also means that the account is vulnerable to anyone who has access to your computer. Use strong passwords that combine upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Weak passwords don't mix these elements. Strong password: Y6dh!et5. Weak password: House27. Use a strong password that you can remember so that you don't have to write it down.

  7. To verify that your account is working, click Test Account Settings. If there is missing or incorrect information, such as your password, you will be prompted to supply or correct it. Make sure your computer is connected to the Internet.
  8. Click More Settings.
  9. On the General tab, under Mail Account, type Comcast.

    Note  If you are attempting to send and receive Comcast e-mail messages from a location where you are not directly connected to Comcast, such as at work or when travelling, see the Notes section for additional steps.

  10. Click OK, and then click Next.
  11. Click Finish.

Notes

  • Do not select the Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) check box.
  • Unless specified by Comcast, all server and address entries are typed in lowercase letters.
  • To send and receive e-mail messages with your Comcast account when you are not directly connected to the Comcast service, such as at work or when travelling, you must use the following:
    1. After step 9 above, click the Outgoing Server tab, and then select the My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication check box.
    2. Select Use same settings as my incoming mail server.
    3. Continue with step 10 above.

Remove your Comcast e-mail account

  1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
  2. Select View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.
  3. Click the Comcast e-mail account you want to remove, and then click Remove.
  4. Click Finish.

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GMAIL & OUTLOOK

To set up your Outlook 2007 client to work with Gmail:

  1. Open Outlook.
  2. For new setups, select Do not upgrade.
  3. Click Yes.
  4. Enter your display name, email address (including '@gmail.com'), and password. Google Apps users, enter your full email address, e.g. 'username@your_domain.com.'
  5. Select the 'Manually configure server settings or additional server types' checkbox.
  6. Select Internet E-mail.
  7. Settings: name, full email address (including '@gmail.com' or '@your_domain.com')
    • In the Account Type dropdown menu, select IMAP; enter the incoming is generic viagra real and outgoing server names shown below.
    • In the 'User Name' field, give your full Gmail address, including '@gmail.com' or '@your_domain.com.'
    • After creating these settings, clicking Next takes you to the end of the setup.

  8. In the Tools menu, select Options then Mail Setup. Under 'Email Accounts,' click E-mail Accounts.
  9. Select an account, and click Change above the list of accounts. Click More Settings, then the Advanced tab.
    • Incoming server must be 993, and must use SSL encryption.
    • Outgoing server can use 587, TLS encryption.
  10. Click the Outgoing Server tab. Make sure that 'My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication' is selected. The radio button 'Use same settings as my incoming mail server' should also be selected.
  11. Click OK > Next > Finish > Close > OK.
  12. Check our recommended client settings, and adjust your client's settings as needed.
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July 28, 2009

Building Your Slides Online

Building Your Slides Online

By Scott Nesbitt – Sunday, March 22, 2009

Over the last couple of years, I've been giving quite a few presentations. While some of those presentations have been solo efforts, I've done most of them with my business partner. And that's when a few wrinkles have crept into our grand plans.

"..these applications enable you to collaborate on your presentation slides without having to worry about whether or not you're stomping on someone else's edits"How? Well, an important (or at least useful) component of a presentation is a slide deck. Before plugging in a digital projector, you need to create your slides. It's easy enough to pass a PowerPoint, Keynote, or OpenOffice.org Impress file around. But it's just as easy to lose track of which file is the latest version. Or just lose the file.

Fortunately, some Web entrepreneurs have made strides in eliminating this problem by developing Web-based tools for creating slides. The four that this TechTip highlights have a number of things in common:

  • They're free
  • They're easy to use
  • You can run your slide show from within the application
  • They support sharing and collaborative editing
  • They pack enough features to make attractive and functional slides

280Slides

On the surface, 280Slides looks like a stripped-down version of Apple's popular Keynote presentation software. Although 280Slides has a limited number of features in comparison to Keynote (or any other desktop presentation program), you'll be surprised at how quickly and easily you'll be able to create a solid slide deck with it.

Of all the applications that this TechTip discusses, 280Slides has the best import and export capabilities — it can pull in PowerPoint (97 through to 2004, and PowerPoint 2007) files and OpenOffice.org Impress files. It can output those formats as well as a PDF file. The import can be a bit rough. Text can be larger than in your source file, and the positioning of elements like images might be a bit off.

 

280Slides comes with a limited number of themes and slide layouts (nine and three, respectively). It also has basic text formatting functions — including bullets and numbers — along with the ability to insert images, movies, and basic shapes into slides.

On top of that, you can add presenter notes (also called speaker's notes). These are notes that are attached to a slide deck that a speaker uses as a reference. In case you're wondering, the audience can't see the notes.

On the other hand, the application can be a bit slow. That said, this situation has improved a bit over the last month or two. While you don't need an account to work with 280Slides, you'll need to register (for free) to save your files online.

Empressr

Empressr bills itself as a free online storytelling tool that allows you to create, manage, and share rich media presentations online. That's a mouthful, but it's pretty close to the truth. And Empressr is a lot easier to use than it sounds.

Slides are called empressrs, and you can start one from scratch, import a PowerPoint file, or upload multiple images to create an empressr.

The slide editor is simple, but packs a number of interesting features. Like what? The ability to create a library of background images and add those images to your slides, for one. You can attach audio files to act as a voice over or soundtrack. And you can specify transitions for slides. Some of the slides that Empressr users have made public use the latter feature to sometimes annoying effect.

In addition to that, Empressr allows you to add shapes, tables, and charts to your slides. The latter two options are missing from most online presentation tools.

There doesn't seem to be a way to export your slides. You can publish your slides on the Empressr site in Flash format. Empressr also generates code that you can use to embed the presentation in a Web site or a blog.

Preezo

Of the presentation applications that are featured in this TechTip, Preezo is probably the most bare bones of the bunch. That doesn't mean it's not usable, though. Preezo seems to be based on the 80/20 rule — 80% of users take advantage of only 20% of an application's features.

As with any other Web or desktop presentation application, you can start a presentation from scratch or import a PowerPoint file. While writing this TechTip, I wasn't able to get the import to work. The export function, which generates a PowerPoint file, did work though.

As I mentioned a moment ago, Preezo's features are a tad basic. You have the choice of half a dozen slide layouts, along with some basic text formatting functions. On top of that, you can add any of a handful of transitions to your slides. Nothing spectacular, but enough to build a solid slide deck.

Remember how Empressr enables you to create a library of images? Preezo does the same, but takes the feature one step further. You can actually create a library of slides which you can reuse. How is this useful? In the slide decks that I create, I have two stock slides at the end — one which asks if the audience has any questions, and a marketing slide. Instead of continually retyping or copying these slides, I can use the slide library to instantly insert them into a new deck.

And, like Empressr, Preezo enables you to publish your slides on the Preezo site and it generates HTML code that you can use to embed the presentation in a Web site or a blog.

Google Docs

Anyone who knows something about Web applications knows that Google Docs contains a good word processor and spreadsheet. But one component of Google Docs that some people miss is the presentation editor.

Like the other application discussed in this TechTip, Google Docs enables you to start a new slide deck from scratch or upload a PowerPoint file. That file can be a maximum of 10 MB in size. You can also clone an existing presentation, which is useful if you need to create a variation on a theme.

On top of that, there are about 87 slide templates (as of this writing) that you can use to build a slide deck. Most of the templates leave me a bit cold, but there's no reason why you can't modify one to suit your needs.

The options for Google Docs are simple and familiar: text formatting; adding images, video, and a handful of shapes; basic control over text (changing the size, font, and justification); and the ability to arrange objects on the slide. On top of that, you can add speaker's notes to each slide.

As you might have guessed, Google Docs supports Google Gears — you can learn more about Gears here. With Gears, canada viagra online you get the best of both worlds: you can work and collaborate on the Web, but use Google Docs offline as well.

Your download options are limited to PDF, PowerPoint, or text. You can also publish the slides for viewing online.

Sharing the finished product

As I mentioned in the introduction, you can share slide decks from within each of the applications that are discussed in this TechTip. However, you'll probably wind up exporting your slide deck (when possible) to your hard drive to do some final edits and tweaks. Once you've done that, you can share the slides with the wider Web using SlideShare and Scribd.

SlideShare is an online community for sharing presentations. You get your own little corner of SlideShare, called a Slidespace, where you can add and display your slide decks. You can also make your slides private so only select people can see them.

You can upload presentations made with Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org Impress, or Keynote; you can also upload PDF files. SlideShare then puts a Flash wrapper around the file to make it viewable on any desktop computer or laptop computer. Well, at least one with a Flash player installed. You can also use some HTML code to add your slide decks on SlideShare to a Web site or blog.

Scribd, on the other hand, has been described as YouTube for documents. The goal of the site is to let people upload original documents, and allow others to comment on them. Scribd allows you to upload a number of different kinds of files — from Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org files, to PDF, Postscript, and text documents. Scribd wraps your documents in iPaper, a Flash-based format for viewing documents on the Web.

As with Slideshare, you can make your slide decks (or any other document) public on the Scribd site. Or Scribd can generate HTML code for you to embed the document on a Web page or in a blog.

Final thoughts

This TechTip only covered a few of the available online slide tools. You can find more here and here. The great thing about these applications is that they enable you to collaborate on your presentation slides without having to worry about whether or not you're stomping on someone else's edits, or if you have the right software installed on your computer.

These tools may not have all the features of your favorite desktop presentation tool, but they can get you going quickly and easily.

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April 22, 2009

Using AutoText in Outlook 2003 as a Sales Tool

Do you find yourself typing in the same familiar email to your prospects and clients again and again? Whether it’s boiler-plates, generic thank you messages or directions to your business, there is a tool in Microsoft Outlook 2000/2003 – AutoText – that can help you automatically insert text into an email with minimal effort.

Whether you need to automate a paragraph or a three page email, I will show you how you can use AutoText to help save time so you can spend more time selling.

There are four easy steps to create an “AutoText” Entry

1. Type your email into the email body area.

2. Highlight the text you want for your AutoText Entry.

3. Once the text is highlighted… click – Insert > AutoText > New… Or you can simple hit Alt+F3 (Function Key – Not F then 3)

4. Name the AutoText and click OK


Using your AutoText Entries:

1. In a new email start typing the name you gave the AutoText name

2. When the yellow box appears as you type (above), simply hit the “Enter” key. Your AutoText will then automatically be placed into the email body text.

Option Two: If you can’t remember what you named one of your AutoText entries, you can use the Insert AutoText Option.

1. Click – Insert > AutoText

2. Find the name of your AutoText
1) Click the name can you buy viagra without a prescription of the AutoText
2) Click “Insert”
3) Click OK

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April 3, 2009

Animation choices in PowerPoint

Do you like MS PowerPoint's animations for your shapes, pictures and text?

I don't know about you, but I like the control it gives me for revealing content as I'm ready to cover it. I know that my audience isn't busy reading every word on the slide instead of focusing on the current discussion.

So… needless to say, I use them all the time as I'm sure many of you do too.

My thought today is about how each animation is started.

If you think that each and every one takes a click to make it happen, then we need to talk.

You actually have a couple of other good choices when it comes to starting an object's animation on a PowerPoint slide.

By default animations are start with the "On Click" setting.

But, there are also the "With Previous" and "After Previous" settings to choose from.

"With Previous" will set the animation of the selected object to start at the same time as whatever animation is started with the click directly before it.

Here's a great side note: I love to use this buying viagra one for the very first thing to have an animated entrance on the slide. Basically, this setting will start the object animation as soon as the transition to the slide is complete. I like it because it will allow me the animated entrance without the extra pause that the required click can cause.

"After Previous" will do exactly as it says… it will start the object's animation when the one just prior to it is completed.

You've just got to give these a try! I've been doing a tremendous amount of work in PowerPoint lately and these have truly helped to make my presentations smooth as silk!

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