Compuserve Faves and Forwards

A recent newspaper Q&A column by Jim Coates of the Chicago Tribune dealt with sorting Favorites in Outlook Express and Outlook. One of my CS subscriber friends asked if it was possible to sort her favorites. She says she has to manually move them about to get them in alphabetical order (how utterly last century). Of course, I have OE and have no problem in this regard. The problem I have with CS subscribers emails (and some AOL folks, too) is that their 'forwarded' mail comes in here without any text in the body of the message; the text is an attachment. Sometimes it's even necessary to open 2 or more successive attachments to get to the actual text. Since I don't trust Norton AntiVirus implicitly I end up moving the attached texts to a folder I keep on my desktop and then scan that folder before considering opening the attachment(s). Can anyone offer simple answers to the two questions: (1) How does one sort favorites in CompuServe? and (2) How can a CS subscriber forward their received messages without making them attachments?

 

Sorting Favorites - I don't have access to OE right now to be able to check but when I looked at Favorites in Outlook 2002, it gave me the list from my IE browser. OE may do the same.

If that is the case, there is a simple but very un-obvious way to sort them. Open Favorites using the word on the top bar, right click on any item in Favorites, and Sort By Name will be an option.

I haven't messed with AOL or CS for a long time but I'm guessing the same trick may work with their browser. Worth a shot anyway.

Forwarding - first off, your AV should have no trouble picking up a baddie even if the email is one of those horror things you mention.

I have a couple of friends who send me the same sort of mess but I don't think I've asked them exactly what they do to forward an email. I'm betting it is some sort of operator error although it could be down to strange behavior from their mail client I suppose. Have you asked them for details of how they are sending forwarded email along? Especially those where the original is buried 3, 4, more levels deep?

 

Thanks Newt,
I guess I didn't make it clear that I have no problem myself with forwards and sorting favorites (I have IE and OE). It's the other folks with CS and AOL who seem to have the problem. One of the CS subscribers described how she forwards, and it sounded good to me; but all her forwards come in as attachments. As I mentioned, another CS subscriber says she has to move favorites around manually. I'm beginning to think both problems are just simply AOL-proprietary programming; and it's my understanding that CS customers might be using AOL programs, too. Thank you, Bill Gates, for making these things easier for IE users.

 

Thanks TonyT.
You've managed to confirm my suspicions about AOL and CS using proprietary mail-handling schemes. I was really hoping that someone would have the answers to my original post; that is, what can I tell the CS and AOL subscribers to get them to forward emails without attachments. I know a way, and I'm going to tell them even though it is a bit unwieldy. To wit: When they have the message body on their screen highlight the entire text (without any address info) then copy and paste into a new message to be sent to their friends. By the way, I've told the CS and AOL friends that if I have to click on more than ONE attachment the message gets deleted.

Now, if anyone can answer the sorting Faves question (for CS subscribers - not for IE and OE subscribers) I'd sure appreciate it and my CS friends would also appreciate it.

71Sigma