The MyOffice Blog

If you’ve been using MyOffice for several years you’ll probably have lots of very old appointments.  When I say lots, I’m talking in thousands, not hundreds. The suggestions in this blog only apply to users with LOTS of old appointments.

At start-up MyOffice does a refresh from the server to your local PC to create an ‘up to date’ copy of your data in case you need to run MyOffice in ‘Offline’ mode.  Typically you would run MyOffice in ‘Offline’ mode if your internet connection went down and you needed to carry on working. Being able to work in ‘Offline’ mode is one of the key advantages MyOffice has over ordinary web based applications.

If you’d like to speed up your start-up there are a couple of techniques that you can use when it comes to appointments.

Method 1 - Create a new diary and start using that instead of the old diary. Set the diary permissions on the old diary so that no-one has access to the diary. You can always re-instate access if you need to go back and view the old appointments. At start-up the old diary won’t be refreshed because you no longer have access to it … but the new diary will … thus speedng up your start-up time.

Method 2 - Simply delete old appointments. To do this search for all appointments in a date range. e.g. 1 Jan 2006 - 31 Dec 2006. Leave the search criteria box empty. In our example, this will list all appointments in 2006. Then, multi-select all the appointments using the left mouse button and the Shift key and delete them.

Which method you use depends upon whether or not you want to keep the appointments. Method 1 will save them. Method 2 will delete them.

In MyOffice there’s a feature called Draft Email Folders. This allows users to save a partially composed email as a draft and finish it at a later date.  Many users have realised that this feature can also be used to create template emails … but for those users who haven’t … this is how you do it.

If you have a standard format email that you regularly send out, just prepare the email and save it as a draft. This will pop the email into the Draft folder. You’ll probably want to leave certain sections of the email blank, such as the TO section.

When you want to send out this ‘template’ email right-click on it (in the Drafts folder) and choose the ‘Edit’ option. Now you can complete the email by entering the recipient’s name in the TO section or you might even want to enter multiple recipients. You can also personalise the email with the recipient’s name, etc.

Once you have your ‘Template’ email ready to send, just press ‘Send Email’. It’s as simple as that.

With practice, you can build up a list of Template emails in the Drafts folder and use them for a multitude of purposes.

We decided a long time ago that it was easier (and better for users) if we enhanced MyOffice on a regular basis rather than having one large release every 12 months or so.  This allowed us to immediately fix bugs that were reported … sometime in a matter of days, and also to incorporate user suggestions very quickly. Of course, some changes are so large that they can only be released in a major version of MyOffice. You’ll often hear us talking of ‘compulsory releases’ and ‘non comp releases’. The compulsory ones are signified by a change to the version no. e.g. Version 4.0.0 to Version 5.0.0.  The non comp ones are signified by a Sub Release no. At the time of writing we’re on Version 5.0.0 Sub Release 26.

The problem that we have is in encouraging users to upgrade to the latest sub release no. We don’t have a problem with major Version releases because they are controlled by another process, but the sub release upgrade is left to the user to decide.

If you visit the MyOffice web site you’ll see a list of the sub releases and the content of each release. See www.myoffice.net/releases.aspx You can also check which release you’re running by clicking Help > About MyOffice.NET in the client application.

It’s certainly not necessary to continually monitor the releases and instantly upgrade to the latest one but we are aware of a large number of users who are quite happy running a sub release that might be as much as a year old. This means that the users aren’t getting the benefits of many of the enhancements that we make to MyOffice on a week by week basis. A good example is the ‘drag and drop’ of appointments which was introduced in Sub Release 18. Anyone running a sub release lower than 18 won’t be able to drag and drop appointments.

The problem is how to advise users that a new sub release is available without being intrusive. We’ve elected to try a simple strategy …. displaying the information at logon in one of the progress windows that pop up to let you know how the start-up is progressing. We’ll display the Version and Sub Release currently installed and the latest version that’s available and let the user decide if they want to upgrade.

Hopefully, those users who are 10 - 20 sub releases behind will see the difference and decide that an upgrade would be a good idea. The last thing we want to do is annoy users who are quite happy with their version but we also want to ensure that they get the most out of MyOffice. Hopefully this change to the start-up process will do just that.

One of the more common questions we find ourselves on the receiving end of here at MyOffice is “I’ve made a new user but I can’t see their diary, help!”. It’s a sensible question because, well, there isn’t a diary there for them to see, because we don’t automatically create a diary for each new user. So why don’t we just create a new diary for each new user? Well…

As you’ve noticed, we charge per user, not per diary. We do this for a very simple reason. Simply put, we don’t want to tell you - the users - how to use the system, and how to organise your diaries, or for that matter, task lists, email folders, file store, or contact groups. Therefore, in MyOffice, users are considered to be separate from diaries, task lists, contact groups, and all of the other things you can use and share within your account. 

Over the years we’ve noticed that businesses like to organise their data in extremely varied ways, with diary data being a prime example of this. Yes, there are those companies who like to have a separate diary for each user. This clearly makes great sense where each employee’s time is allocated separately, and seeing what each individual is up to at a given time is the name of the game. However, there are certainly plenty of companies who adopt precisely the opposite approach, organising their diaries by business function, rather than by who’s actually going to be doing the work.

One absolute classic example of the “Nobody’s Diary” case is the “Staff Holiday” diary. Using a single diary to record all staff leave seems to be very common concept (if our support records are anything to go by), because it’s a wonderfully simple method of keeping the data regarding who’s at work and who’s not in a single, understandable, and easy to locate place.

Going to the other extreme, we have quite a few “Diaryless Users”. Whereas with the “Staff Holiday” diary, we see a resource that’s accessed by all and sundry, but not really owned by anyone, our “Diaryless Users” are users who spend their time working with other people’s diaries, but have no diary of their own. The best examples we’ve come across of these are in businesses where one set of employees book appointments for a separate set of employees. It’s an age-old business dynamic - my chimney sweep’s been working this way for over thirty five years (although clearly not with MyOffice, as that would make the system older than me, not to mention the internet!). In this case, we tend to see office staff set up as users with diaries of their own (they don’t need them, as they’re almost always in the office taking calls, and arranging jobs), but with write access to the staff who actually go out on site and do the deed, whereas the site workers will have their own diaries which they can see, but no access to anyone elses diaries.

The final regularly-encountered example is the “Diary for a Resource” setup. From what we can gather via support, there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern regarding which businesses do this. However, why it’s done is extremely clear. The diaries are being used to record who’s got access to a given resource at a given time - meeting rooms, classrooms, vehicles in car pools, even floor space in a garage - the list of resource types is pretty endless, and some of the creativity shown by businesses with regards to how they organise their resource booking setups has been both impressive and surprising.

Having said all that, it’s also pretty common to be asked for help when it comes to setting up diaries for each user. If that’s your aim, as in a good few cases it will be, then once you’ve created your new user(s), you’ll have to into the Diary Admin window (in the main Diary window, open the “Tools” menu, then click “Diary Admin”) and create a diary for them. For a fuller description of how to accomplish this, the “How to Share Diaries” page on the main MyOffice should give you a better idea of what to do.

Q) How do you start a fight between the members of the MyOffice team?

A) Point at the screen and say “That, my friend, isn’t a Diary, it’s a Calendar!”.

It works every time, I promise you, so much so that in-house debates as to whether “the things you put appointments in” are diaries or calendars are virtually banned. I therefore present to you the standard in-house arguments. First, in the blue corner, the defending champion…

Diary

A quick dive into the Compact Oxford English Dictionary gives us the following definition :

• noun (pl. diaries) 1. a book in which one keeps a daily record of events and experiences.
2. a book marked with each day’s date, in which to note appointments.

Ah, well there’s the problem straight away. Our friend the dictionary has dived straight in with the “Dear Diary” definition, and quite clearly, that’s not what MyOffice is about. Something tells me that Samuel Pepys wouldn’t have gone down in history in quite the same way had his diary consisted of a series of reminders about meetings in coffee houses, and the annual chore of getting the fire extinguishers checked, just in case, or that Allison Moyet was on about a note to “Meet Ali for a beer after work” in the chorus of “Nobody’s Diary”. No, MyOffice definately isn’t that kind of diary.

It is, however, the kind of diary mentioned in definition number two. Okay, so it’s not a book, but it does provide for the creation of lots “thingies” in which to make a record of planned future events. In that sense, the “thing with appointments in it” is most definately a diary. It’s a diary in the same sense that the black leather-covered A4 sized book that lived in the corner of the office and contained the dates of significant events for the company was a diary, and that my Gran used a diary to make a note of who she was supposed to having coffee with next week. Hers, however, was smaller, had a gold cover, and didn’t come as an annual free gift from the office supplies company. No, the diary module is correctly named, because it does the “stuff” that businesses do with their diaries, and MyOffice is aimed squarely at business customers.

So diary it is.

Calendar

Oh no it isn’t! It’s a calendar. Look in the top left corner of the so-called diary window and there’s even a control that looks like a calendar! Even better, click on the Month View button and two thirds of the screen is taken up by something which any rational English-speaker would describe as “a calendar”.

• noun 1 a chart or series of pages showing the days, weeks, and months of a particular year. 2 a system by which the beginning, length, and subdivisions of the year are fixed. 3 a list or schedule of special days, events, or activities.

Well, it would appear the Compact Oxford’s come out well and truely in favour of the challenger, Calendar. There’s nothing there to suggest a calendar is anything other than a thingy one uses to plan and record future events. Not even a whiff of “What I did at the weekend”, “I’ve just met this really hot girl”, or a vivid account of London ablaze from end to end. Doesn’t get much more conclusive than that, does it? We must have got it wrong. They’re not diaries, they are calendars after all.

But not so fast…

When was the last time someone told you they’d “make a note of it on their calendar”? Quite a long time ago, I suspect. For proof of this one, next time you get your car serviced, have a look at any calendars on the wall. The servicing department don’t keep a list of all the cars they’ve got booked in on them, that’s for sure. No, those lists are, if not computerised, in something which you’d be hard pressed to call anything other than a diary. Try the same with a hair-dressers, or a doctor’s surgery. The receptionist certainly doesn’t lean against the wall and scribble “Mr. Pepys, ingrown toenails, Dr. Smith, 4pm” under next July’s member of the World’s Twelve Cutest Kittens. No, she puts it in the doctor’s diary. The list of real-world examples lined up against calendar, and in favour of diary is endless, so I’ll not bore you any further with bizarre images of driving instructors unfolding A1 wall calendars in their Nissans Micras, or teachers planning parents evenings in half an inch of space by pinching the microscopes from the biology store-room. No, quite simply, they’re not calendars.

Okay, so they’re diaries. Why all this Calendar talk?

Without beating around the bush, quite simply, it’s a “Sales n’ Marketing” problem. Whilst it’s not exactly hard to make the connection between calendars and diaries in the context of MyOffice, and given the way the diary window’s laid out, we could call them absolutely anything within the product and 99% of people would still suss out “it’s a thing to put future events in”, the problem comes when potential customers are presented with the word for the first time.

The problem word is most definately ‘diary’. In the minds of an awful lot of people, it conjours up an image of a blog, and we do pick up and awful lot of traffic from the search engines where the search terms show pretty clearly the visitor is looking for just that.

So, what do you think? Are we right to call “them” diaries, or should they be calendars? Would changing the name cause untold confusion, or doesn’t it really matter?

I was reminded today that our best ideas come from users.

A new subscriber sent in a list of suggested enhancements mostly relating to the Planner view in the Tasks module.  The suggestions would have a wide appeal and would definitely make scheduling tasks much easier.  We’ve added them to the wish list that we keep for user requests.

The way we work is to actively encourage users to suggest improvements to MyOffice.  We add all the requests into a wishlist and if several users ask for the same enhancement it carries more weight when we sit down to work out what we’re going to develop next.  Sometimes we can’t accomodate requests for quite a while …. possibly until we next release a compulsory version. At other times we’re able to make a quick non compulsory release and make some users very happy!

Generally speaking we look for ideas that will be easy to understand. We know that if a feature isn’t immediately intuitive we’ve failed. Complicated features just don’t get past our design committee. We’re also looking for ideas that will appeal to the majority of our users and if we get a really good one we’ve been known to drop everything and implement it as fast as possible.

From a humble beginning as an online shared diary MyOffice has come a long way in 5 years and a lot of it is down to user feedback.

Keep the ideas coming guys!

It is said that a watched pot never boils. This, of course, is patently untrue. However, the lack of truth in the non-boiling assertion doesn’t change the fact that staring a pan of water, waiting for it to boil, will seem like an awful lot longer than the five minutes it actually takes. The same goes for starting applications, especially those with a lot of ‘work’ to do during the startup sequence, such as MyOffice. With this in mind, we’ve tried decidedly hard to get MyOffice to fire up as quickly as possible. For most accounts, the startup time is well under a minute, but there are certainly a few users who experience pretty long startup times. With that in mind, here are few tips to speed things up a lil’ bit.

MyOffice Offline Data - Your best friend, or your worst enemy?

The ‘master’ copy of your data is held on our server, and if you’re part of a large account, that’s potentially an awful lot of data. If we had to shift a large lump of this every time you fired up MyOffice, not only would our bandwidth bill be absolutely hair-greying, but the startup times would be completely unacceptable. Consequently, we do our utmost to ensure we shift the absolute minimum amount of data we can each time MyOffice is started up.

Taking appointments as an example, here’s roughly what we do at startup…

We start by loading the local copy of your appointment data from the ‘cache’. This ‘cache’ is basically a dinky copy of your data, held in the ‘MyOffice Offline Data’ directory (usually found in your ‘My Documents’ folder).

Once we’ve loaded this data, which is ‘up to date’ as of the last time you ran MyOffice, we then ask our servers for a list of the dates and times at which any appointments you’re allowed to see (i.e. appointments in your diaries) last changed. MyOffice then compares the dates on the appointments in the cache it keeps on your machine, with those it’s just got back from the server, thereby working out which specific appointments it needs to get the full details of from the server in order to get you a completely up to date copy of the data.

Having worked out which appointments it needs, MyOffice then asks our servers for only the specific appointments it needs, downloads these appointments, and writes them in the local cache.

So, what are the implications of all this, and, more to the point, why on earth should you care?

Well, if MyOffice is starting up nice and quickly for you, you’ve got no reason to care. As with so many things in life, if it ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it. If, on the other hand, MyOffice seems to be on a bit of a go-slow, here’s a few pointers as to how to speed things up.

‘Go-Faster Stripes’ for MyOffice

Almost without exception, there are only two possible ’states’ the MyOffice cache can be in. Either you’ve just installed MyOffice for the first time, or perhaps removed your offline cache for some reason, and therefore have no local copy of your data, or you’ve got a virtually up to date cache, with only a few updates needed at startup.

To start with, let’s look at the situation where there is no existing cache. The good news here is this isn’t the ‘normal’ situation. As long as you’ve got a working cache, you’re only going to suffer the ‘rebuild the whole cache from scratch’ situation once in a blue moon. Okay, if you’ve got pots and pots of data in your account, it might take a little while, but once it’s done, it’s done. Unless MyOffice is failing to start up completely (in which case, contact the chaps at support… www.myoffice.net/support.aspx), the best bet is not to worry too much about the startup time when MyOffice is creating a new cache, as the next time you run MyOffice it’ll be quite a bit quicker.

Once we’ve got a full cache, we can now try and make sure it’s working as quickly as possible. The first thing to consider is whether anything’s getting in the way of MyOffice reading it. If you’re read my articles on email, you can probably guess what’s coming next… yes, security software.

How much Security do you actually need?

Now, when it comes to reading ’stuff’ from disc, ‘active’ anti-virus and anti-spyware software likes to get in and have a peek at any data that’s being read. This, on balance, a good thing. It (hopefully) prevents any nastiness that may have found it’s way onto your system’s storage devices from being allowed to do it’s evil deeds. However, as with any form for precaution, it’s possible to go a bit too far.

One of the great curses of working with computers for a living is, if you admit to what you do during the day, it’s almost inevitable that someone’s going to ask you if you could “pop over next week and have a look at mine, it’s playing up”. It’s very hard to say no. Then again, the odd five hour knuckle-skinning experience can prove quite useful from a learning perspective, even if it does come a poor second to a beer with the missus.

To cut a long story short, the two most common problems I’ve seen on home PCs (and, rather worryingly, a number of office PCs) are effectively ‘not enough security’ and ‘too much security’. A good trawl through our support records seems to have turned up much the same. Let’s start with the most dangerous - ‘not enough’.

Quite simply, there are a lot of people out there who want to do dastardly things to your PC. Some want to pinch your personal details, some want to pop up endless adverts for stuff you almost certainly don’t want, and others merely want to make mischief. The first step in preventing this is to make sure you’ve got some decent security software installed (a virus checker and firewall at least), and that said software is kept up to date. How does this affect MyOffice? Well, the most obvious effect you’ll see of running MyOffice on virus and spyware loaded PC is that of performance. With all those potential ‘nasties’ fighting to use your PC’s processor, disc drives, and maybe even your internet connection, the applications you’re trying to run (not just MyOffice) will run an awful lot slower. So, if your PC is devoid of decent security software, and you’re suffering from a bit of strange PC behaviour, and your machine’s running depressingly slowly, I’d definately recommend getting some.

The other extreme we see from time to time is what I think of as the ‘Five Condoms Effect’, and has a habit of making an appearance on PCs used by small businesses. To cut a long story short, it’s not uncommon to find PCs with absolutely stacks of security software installed. After all, if one firewall and one virus checker makes you safer, isn’t it logical to assume that three of each would make you three times as safe? Okay, yes, there are exceptions to this, but in general, no it doesn’t. One decent software firewall, and a decent virus and spyware checker is all you really need. That said, what could the harm possibly be in having loads of security software running? Quite simply, it can seriously slow your machine down, and in some cases, cause stability problems. Whilst I’m absolutely, definately, and utterly not going to recommend removing bits of security software will-nilly, I would certainly recommend taking a good long look at your setup if you’re having performance problems and have an awful lot of security software installed.

Is the cache in a sensible location?

By default, MyOffice trys to make it’s cache in the ‘MyOffice Offline Data’ folder in your ‘My Documents’ folder. Why do we do this? Well, it’s the place we’re mostly likely to be allowed to create it. For very sensible reasons, at awful lot of PCs are secured in such a way as to prevent us from writing the cache to other locations, so by default, ‘My Documents’ is it.

Okay, having said that we’ve put your cache in your ‘My Documents’ folder simply because it’s the mostly likely place we’d be allowed to put it, the next question is ‘why is it not necessarily the best place to put it?’. Well, that comes down to two factors - you might not want it in ‘My Documents’ for various reasons, or your ‘My Documents’ might live in a ’slow’ place. With regard to the first reason for wanting to move the cache folder, that’s absolutely none of my business. The second (okay, it’s also none of my business, but I might at least be able to help a bit) sort of is.

The reason we want the cache held somewhere we can access quick is pretty self-explanatory really. MyOffice reads a lot of data from it at startup, and writes small amounts of data to it pretty regularly when you’re using MyOffice. Consequently, if we have the cache set up to work somewhere that can be got at quickly, it’s going to improve MyOffice’s performance. So what constitutes a ’slow’ place to have your cache? In my opinion, the answer to that is “anywhere other than on your PC’s hard disc(s)”. It’s not uncommon for ‘My Documents’ folders to be located on your server, and whilst that’s generally a Good Thing for most of the stuff we put in our ‘My Documents’ folders, it’s definately not the case for the MyOffice cache. The same can also be said for ‘My Documents’ folders held on external hard discs (okay, they can be pretty quick, but they also fall asleep from time to time), and other forms of media that aren’t designed to be accessed quickly.

So, how on earth do we go about moving the cache, and where should we move it to? That, at least in part, is the easy bit. Firstly, we need to work out where we’re going to put it. If pressed for a recommendation, I’d suggest a folder in the root of whichever hard disc drive you put data on. Eh? Well, for most of us, that means “make a folder on your C: drive, and use that”, but for some it may be a drive other than C. Once you’ve made a new folder to put the cache in, make sure MyOffice is closed, and open ‘MyOffice.NET Client Configuration’ from the ‘MyOffice.NET’ folder in your Start Menu. In the ‘Offline Files’ tab, you’ll see a checkbox called ‘Store Offline Cache in the default location’, and a text field called ‘Cache Directory’. If there’s a check in the checkbox, then MyOffice will be using your ‘My Documents’ folder for it’s cache. If not, then it’ll be using the location shown in the text box. To change where you store the cache, simply remove the check from the checkbox, click the ‘Change Cache Directory’ button, and select the folder you to move the cache to in window that pops up.

So you’ve composed an email, and now it’s time to send it, but for some reason the email seems rather reluctant to go. Whilst I’d love to be able to claim that the MyOffice Outbox is just so homely and inviting that the email is reluctant to leave it, I can’t. It’s a rather stark place, devoid of scatter cushions, and the coffee machine’s been out of commission for years. Quite frankly, any emails in there are desparate to get out and get on with their journey, but something’s preventing them. Let’s have a look at what that might be.

Send Failed for message X of Y - Send Failed - DNS Error GetHostByName

Quite simply, the outgoing email server (SMTP) address is wrong. MyOffice has attempted to look up the name you’ve entered, and internet’s equivalent of the telephone directory has come back with “sorry, there’s no-one called that in here”. Your best bet now is to make sure you’ve entered the correct SMTP server address in the email account.

Send Failed for message X of Y - Send Failed - Error connecting to server mail.somedomain.com

If you’ve read my first post on email error messages, you may well remember the incoming mail server (POP3) equivalent of this has a whole series of potential meanings. So as to save you the pain of having to dig about for that post, I’ll recap them here.

The message itself means “I’ve looked where you told me to look, and I couldn’t see an SMTP server”. Discounting the Extremely Obvious (i.e. your net connection’s just gone down), there are four pretty common reasons why you’ll see this message.

Firstly, and perhaps most commonly, is an incorrectly entered outgoing mail server address or port. In short, this leaves MyOffice trying to talk to the wrong thing. If you’ve never been able to send email via the email account in question, this is a good place to start if you see this error message, so it’s best to check your outgoing mail server address and port at this point. If you’re still having trouble, then we can pretty much rule this one out, and it’s on to the next possibility.

Probably the next most likely cause of a failure to contact the outgoing mail server is “something” blocking the connection. In practice, this is most likely to be a software firewall installed on your PC. Software firewalls have come a long way in the last five years, but every so often we come across one that gets a little over-zealous in what it blocks. If you’ve got a software firewall installed on your PC, you’re seeing this error, and you’re sure you’ve got your outgoing server address and port correct, then it’s well worth having a look at the settings on your firewall to see if it’s that getting in the way of things.

The final very common (judging by our support records, at least) situation is that in which “something’s changed”. If you’ve been merrily sending email using an account, and that account’s suddenly decided it doesn’t want to play any more, the chances are this is it.

Top of the list of likely candidates for “changing” is your software firewall. When fiddling with the settings, it’s quite easy to accidentally change something and accidentally end up blocking a program from accessing the bits of the net it needs. Furthermore, software firewall providers have a habit of issuing regular updates for their products, and these can sometimes result in programs being blocked by accident. Make no mistake, these updates are Very Good Things Indeed - they mean your firewall provider’s on the ball, or at least trying to get there - but they can have the odd unforseen consequence. So, if you find yourself suddenly unable to send email on a given account, best give the firewall a quick check.

The next mostly culprit for a sudden “change” is the email server itself. In much the same way as I invariably forget engagements made by the missus (”We’re going to Bob and Freda’s in four weeks”), it’s extremely easy to have that email about changes to your email account your provider sent you two months ago. We’ve all done it. Well, I have anyway. So, if your outgoing email’s suddenly packed up and you’ve ruled out the other possibilities, it’s often worth checking your email provider hasn’t changed anything.

The final, and in the case of some email accounts (including my personal account… hey, it was cheap) extremely common, reason for the “Error connecting to server” error message is the temporary dissappearance of the email server itself. My provider’s server seems to go to sleep from time to time, but it always comes back after a few minutes. If you’re finding yourself unable to send emails every so often, there’s a good chance it’s that, and short of changing email provider, I’m affraid there’s not an awful lot you can do about it.

Send Failed for message X of Y - Send Failed - [A Three Digit Number] [An Incomprehensible Phrase]

In my post regarding incoming mail errors (POP3), I mentioned that outgoing mail errors were a bit on the wierd side. Well, here’s that wierdness. Put simply, we technical types rather like error codes. They’re a great way of communicating what’s gone wrong without ambiguity… providing whoever’s on the receiving end of those error codes has a nice lil’ list from which to translate them which, in reality, is almost never the case. SMTP status codes have been about for years, and they work the way they work because, well, that’s the way they work.

Let’s look at code 550, as that’s the one you’re mostly to encounter, and the one you can do the most to solve. In MyOffice, you’ll see this error returned from the SMTP server presented as ‘Send Failed for message X of Y - Send Failed - 550 Requested actions not taken mailbox unavailable’, or something very similar. The important part of the message is the number. Status code 550 means roughly “Hi, I’m an SMTP server, and I’m not going to do what you just asked me to do, and I’m not going to tell you why.” Not very helpful, is it? So it’s up to us to interpret that message.

The most common cause of a 550 SMTP code is an incorrect or missing user name and password. It would be nice to have been told this by the server, but we can’t have everything. So, if you’re getting a 550 code, it’s worth checking that you have the correct user name and password set up for your outgoing mail server, and that the ‘SMTP Server requires user name and password’ checkbox is checked in the ‘Servers’ tab of your email account details.

Another relatively common cause of 550 SMTP errors is trying to send an email using the ‘wrong’ email address. For example, if the email address for your email account is ‘fred@somedomain.com’, and your email account settings in MyOffice have that email address set as ‘bob@somedomain.com’, your SMTP server might take exception to you trying to pretend to be someone else.

Sadly, there are just too many SMTP error codes for me to go into in detail. It would bore both me and you rigid, and given that the only action you can take regarding most of them is shrug your shoulders, make a coffee, and call your email provider, it seems rather pointless spending the time explaining them. Thankfully, plenty of others have spent the time, so if you’re getting an SMTP error code you don’t understand (honestly, hands up anyone who does understand and hasn’t administered an SMTP server), and you feel like attempting a bit of self-diagnosis, this PDF from AnswersThatWork.com will give you a pretty good pointer as to what the problem is.

Love it or loathe it, email has become horribly important in so many aspects of our lives. For some, it forms a significant part of their business communications, for others it’s the driver for their social lives. Consequently, when the flippin’ thing doesn’t work properly, we get more than a little bit irritated, and what makes it worse is the irritating error messages we get back from our email clients - not just MyOffice, but any of them. They don’t actually tell us what we need to fix.

If you’re having problems receiving email in MyOffice, you’ll have noticed the unpleasent red crosses in the “Email - Send and Receive Status” window. The text next to those crosses is the error message. Here are some of the more common ones, a brief explanation of what they mean and, most importantly, some pointers as to how to get rid of them.

Unable to connect to mail.somedomain.com - Connection error - DNS Error GetHostByName

If you’re seeing something along the lines of the above, then it’s almost 100% certain that you’ve got the incoming mail server (POP3) address wrong. The message itself means, more or less, “I’ve spoken to the internet’s version of Directory Enquiries, and they don’t have any record of a Mrs. Gooseblanket in Rotherham”. Your best bet now is to double check the incoming mail server (POP3) address you’ve entered for the email account in question, as it’s almost certainly wrong.

Unable to connect to mail.somedomain.com - Connection error - Error connecting to server mail.somedomain.com

When it comes to errors encountered whilst attempting to receive emails, this is probably the most baffling, simply because it can be caused by so many different things. First off, let’s see what it actually means.

Sadly, it’s a great example of a completely honest error message. “Error connecting to server mail.somedomain.com” means exactly what it says. MyOffice has asked Windows to open a connection to the specified incoming email server and port, and Windows has come back with “sorry, I can’t”. Why sadly? Because it doesn’t tell us why.

Look at it like this. Your Aunt Maude writes her phone number down for you, and tells you to call her on Saturday. You call the number, and no-one answers, so what can we deduce about Aunt Maude from this? Well, she might have gone to the Bingo, she might have been in the bath (which you’ve just interrupted), she might even have given you the wrong number. We just don’t know. All we can do is guess.

The first possibility to rule out here is that of your mail server becoming temporarily unavailable. Mail servers (some more than others) have the irritating habit of dozing off for a bit, which means we can’t connect to them from time to time. If you see this message every so often, but things get back to normal after a few minutes, it’s entirely likely it’s just the mail server being a bit lazy. There’s not a lot we can do about this one.

If you’ve just set up your email account, and you’re seeing this message every time you try and receive email, then the chances are it’s either…

The incoming mail server address and \ or port are wrong. Check that you’ve entered them correctly and, if they appear to be correct, contact the person you got them from in the first place and make sure they haven’t given you duff information.

…or…

There’s ’something’ preventing MyOffice from making a connection to your incoming mail server. Whilst there are a whole load of possible ’somethings’, by far the most likely is your software firewall. Okay, so unless you’re genuinely familiar with how it works, delving around inside your firewall’s settings can be a bit daunting, but it’s certainly worth making sure it’s set up to allow MyOffice access to your mail server. To be honest, it’s probably worth it from a ‘learning experience’ point of view as well, as the chances are your firewall will end up blocking other things you want to allow through in the future, so being able to set it up to work the way you want is a good thing all round.

If you’ve been receiving emails on the account in question just fine up until now, and all of a sudden it’s stopped working, then we’re into a slightly different set of possibilities. Assuming it’s not just your email server having a sleepy period, we’ve not got to work out what’s changed to stop you seeing your email server, and by far the most common ‘culprit’ (well, that’s what our support records seem to suggest anyway) for this is the software firewall. Sadly, as per the paragraph above, it’s going to be down to you to delve around in your firewall’s settings to try and allow MyOffice access to your mail server.

Unable to connect to mail.somedomain.com - Connection error - ERR Unknown user or incorrect password

The good news here is MyOffice is managing to connect to a POP3 server. The bad news is it’s not being allowed to use it. As the error message suggests, our first port of call here is going to be the user name and password for the incoming mail server. There’s a pretty good chance one or both of these is wrong.

If you’ve definately got the correct user name and password, and you’re still seeing this message, then it’s worth checking the incoming mail server address and port. Why? Well, it’s entirely possible that you’re actually connecting to the wrong server in the first place.

One thing we can certainly rule out here, you’ll be pleased to know, is your firewall. Error messages starting with ‘ERR’ are actually from the mail server itself, so if you’re seeing those, then MyOffice is definately able to make contact with ’something’.

Email. Simple, isn’t it?

Let’s face it, POP3\SMTP email is a really very simple concept to grasp, isn’t it? It’s been with us in various forms since the early 70’s, so surely we must all know roughly how it works, mustn’t we? Well, no.

For those of us of a non-technical persuasion (i.e. most of the earth’s population), email is generally a mixture of three experiences. Either…

• We’ve arrived at a new job, been given a logon to the company’s systems, et voila, email!
• We’ve popped the CD that came with our ISP’s welcome pack into our home computer, answered a few questions, followed a few instructions, and hopefully ended up with our email account working happily away in (usually) Outlook Express.
• We’ve headed to the website of one of the numerous free email account providers (e.g. Hotmail), answered another ream of questions, and been given a URL, user name and password, via which we can access said email account.

At no point during any of this have we ever had to actually do anything especially ‘technical’. This is a good thing. After all, computers are supposed to make life easier, not force you into the 21st century equivalent of welding the sills on a Ford Capri in a desparate attempt to get it through the MOT.

Unfortunately, life with email only stays easy if you keep your setup the same. If you’ve decided to give the MyOffice email client a go, then I’m affraid there’s just no alternative but to have a minor brush with the technicalities of the situation. Thankfully, unlike welding up a rusting 1970’s coupe, the basics of setting up a POP3\SMTP email account are extremely easy to grasp, and won’t end up in bits of molten metal on the garage floor and a minor upholstery fire.

Setting up your POP3\SMTP email account in MyOffice

In order to get your email account(s) up and running in MyOffice, the first thing you’re going to need to do is find out the following bits of information.

• Your email address. Not difficult, one would hope.
• The address of your POP3 server, sometimes called ‘Incoming Mail Server’, or even just ‘Mail Server’.
• The port number of your POP3 mail server (you may not be able to find this).
• The user name and password associated with your email account.
• The address of your SMTP server, sometimes called ‘Outgoing Mail Server’.
• The port number of your SMTP mail server (you may not be able to find this).

Okay, so that sounds like a potentially daunting list, but in reality, it isn’t. The addresses and ports for your POP3 and SMTP servers are almost certain to be included with the documentation you received when you signed up for your email account in the first place. There’s also a good chance your user name and password will be included in these as well. The big challenge is, if you’re anything like me, actually finding the bits of paper in question. If it turns out you didn’t receive any paper documentation, then it may be that you received the settings by email, in which case it’s a matter of digging around in your inbox for the email in question. If all else fails, you’ll need to contact the people who provide your email account and ask them. They will almost certainly be able to give you direct answers with regard to the information you require.

If all else fails, you may well be able to get most of the details required (you won’t get the password, for obvious reasons) from your existing email client (e.g. Outlook Express). For example, in Outlook Express, you can find most of the information required by selecting ‘Accounts…’ from the ‘Tools’ menu, and double clicking on the email account in question.

Once you’ve got a pretty complete list of the details you’re after, it’s time to fire up MyOffice and get on with the business of setting up the email account. Assuming you’ve got most of the above details, the following steps should get you up and running in no time.

If you haven’t already done so, run the MyOffice windows client.

Open the ‘Email’ window, either by clicking the ‘Email’ button on the toolbar, or by selecting the ‘Email’ option from the ‘Window’ menu.

From the ‘Tools’ menu, select ‘Email Accounts’ to open the ‘Email Accounts’ dialog and press the ‘New’ button.

The first tab of the ‘Email Account Details’ dialog is called, somewhat unimaginatively, ‘Details’, and is extremely easy to fill in. The first field - ‘Account Name’ - is what you want your email account to be referred to within MyOffice. Personally, I name them after their purpose. Consequently, mine are called ‘Work’, ‘Personal’ and ‘Customer Services’. The next field is called ‘Your Name’. This is what will be displayed next to your sent emails when they’re received. The ‘Email Address’ field is pretty self-explanatory. It’s the email address associated with this email account. Lastly, we have the ‘Reply to address’. If you want recipients of your emails to send their replies to a different email address, enter that email address here. If not, leave it blank, and replies will come back to the email address specified above.

Once you’re happy with the contents of the ‘Details’ tab, click the ‘Servers’ tab, and we’ll enter the information we obtained about your email account earlier.

The details tab is divided into two sections - the ‘Incoming Mail Server (POP3)’ section, and the ‘Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)’ section. Let’s deal with the top section first.

In the ‘Address’ field of the top section, you’ll need to address of your POP3 server. Next to the address field is the ‘Port’ field. If you’ve been given a port number that’s different to the supplied default (port 110), then enter it here.

Below the ‘Address’ and ‘Port’ fields are the ‘User Name’ and ‘Password’ fields. You’ll need to enter the user name and password for your email account into these.

In the ‘Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)’ section, you’ll see that only two of the fields are enabled. The address field should be filled with the outgoing mail server address you obtained earlier, and the same goes for the outgoing mail server port if you were given one. Don’t worry if your POP3 server address seems to be the same as your SMTP server address; some email providers have both at the same address, some don’t.

Below the address and port field, there’s a checkbox called ‘SMTP Server requires user name and password’. If you’ve been told to use a user name and password for your SMTP server, click this checkbox. If not, best to leave it unchecked for now as we can always come back and enable that later if needs be.

Now click the ‘OK’ button. You’re done. You should be set up to send and receive emails using MyOffice. Then again, you might not be. Quite apart from good ol’ human error, it’s possible some of the settings may need a little tweaking. I’ll cover common error messages and how to handle them in my next article.