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1029usr078198
Forum Admin
USA
333 Posts |
 Posted - January 13 2011 : 05:58:21
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Listen now. or Download the archive.
Question: Pam asks, "Outlook popped up a message saying I needed to compact my file. How do I do that and why do I need to?"
Answer: Great question, Pam. The reason you need to compact your file is that when you delete data from most databases, the actual file the database uses on your disk doesn't shrink; and Outlook is a database program of sorts. It downloads your mail and stores it in what amounts to a database file. When you delete emails, they go to the Deleted Items folder. When you empty that folder the messages go away, but the space they took remains and is marked as reusable, so that as you receive new emails, they are stored in that reusable space until it is exhausted. Then the file grows again. OK, with all that said, Outlook is telling you that your database file has a lot of space that's considered reusable. The way to get that disk space back is to compact your email file. Starting with Outlook 2007, the compaction can occur automatically. If you use an earlier version, you'll have to do it manually yourself. On the File menu, click Data File Management.
Click the personal folders (.pst) files that you want to compact, and then click Settings. Click Compact Now, click OK, and then click Close. We'll have a link in the show notes to these instructions on Microsoft's website. That article will have links to help you if you have an earlier version, too.
Cool Site: Speckle: This week's cool site is Speckle. It's found at speckleapp.com and this site is one that helps you organize projects. You set up a free account and then start creating projects. You can invite others to participate in the project and you can collaborate with those individuals to complete the project. If you're a college student with group projects to do, this might be a tool you could use to help everyone communicate as you work. Each project consists of one or more lists. Each list consists of one or more individual tasks. Each of those tasks can have several statuses that ideally should convey the completeness of the task. The default statuses are Started, Done, Checked, and Live, but you get to make up your own when you set up a project. If you just want to try out the site, you can get a demo account. If you decide you like the app, you can change the account information, which is minimal: Name, email address, and password. The statuses are simple check boxes and when you check/uncheck them, the background color changes and the project completion percent increases or decreases. It's very simple, and very functional, and hey, it's free. Give it a shot.
Cool Gadget: Cosmic Color Ribbon: Have you seen Christmas lights synchronized to music? They do this at Six Flags, there's a guy in Rusk that does his as well. I personally really enjoy watching these shows myself. If you've been looking into this look no further than Light-O-Rama. They make a full line of professional grade equipment to animate your Christmas lights. But new this year (I think) is the Cosmic Color Ribbon. It's a 16.4 foot flexible circuit board that houses 150 Super Bright LED lights. Each group of three (red, green, blue) lights is considered a single pixel and can be set to any one of 2 million colors of varying intensity. It has its own 150 channel controller built-in, and it's smart enough to recognize whether it's been connected to a Light-O-Rama or DMX-512 light control network. You should see the video on their website. It would only be scratching the surface to say that these pixels can be made to chase, blink, or do rainbow color effects; these lights can be programmed to do just about anything. It runs $250 direct from Light-O-Rama.
It's All "Geek" To Me: NVRAM: This week's term is a technical one, NVRAM. It's actually an acronym, that means Non Volatile Random Access Memory. Whoopee! No wonder it's an acronym. But normally, random access memory, RAM, is volatile. This means it will lose its contents if the power goes off. So, Non-Volatile RAM is memory that will hold its contents even if the power is off. The most familiar example of this type of memory is the memory used in USB thumb drives. You can plug the drive in, and after you've saved something onto it, you can unplug that drive, which causes it to lose power. When you plug it back in, it still has the same contents because it's not volatile.
Links
Tech Tip Friday's Show Notes RSS Feed:
http://www.daconsult.com/downloads/rss.xml
How to Compact Outlook 2007 Data Files on Microsoft.com:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291645
Speckle on MakeUseOf:
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/speckle-web-based-task-management/
Speckle:
http://speckleapp.com/
Cosmic Color Ribbon on Light-O-Rama:
http://www.lightorama.com/CosmicColorRibbon.html
Hughes Holidays (The guy in Rusk I mentioned):
http://www.hughesholidays.com
NVRAM at TechTerms:
http://www.techterms.com/definition/NVRAM |
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12/17/2010-CompactOutlk,Speckle,RibbonLite,"NVRAM"
