Open .eml attachments in Outlook 2003/2007

I came across a problem today where some co-workers were forwarded a bunch of emails that were attached as files, instead of inline, but they couldn’t open them. They kept trying to open in Outlook Express, which we don’t use. I could have just let them open all the attachments in Outlook Express, it wouldn’t have been a huge deal. But if they wanted to respond back to them they would have to bounce back and forth between the two – slightly annoying. I googled and found this website where you can download the registry key that allows you to open the .eml files in Outlook 2003 or 2007. You just have to make sure you install the key for the correct version of Outlook and either the 32 or 64-bit version of windows (most of you are probably 32-bit).

Before you install the key, you have to make sure you have all the current windows updates associated with Outlook, it won’t work if you don’t. After you check for updates, all you have to do is download the zip file, open it, and double click on the version that matches what you have – the key will install itself. You don’t need to restart the computer and I don’t think you even need to restart Outlook, if it was open. The .eml attachment should now open in Outlook without any problems.

If the link for the .zip file on that website ever dies, I uploaded it here.

“The Facebook Team” has sent you a virus!

Yet another email is floating around out there trying to get you to download a file that’s really a virus. It’s sent from “The Facebook Team” and says something like “for security reasons your password had to be reset” and it tells you to download the .zip or .exe file that is attached (Facebook_Password_4cf91.zip or Facebook_Password_4cf91.exe).

If you look at the email closely enough, it probably isn’t even addressed to you. My Aunt got this email and the name they used referring to her, in the body of the email, was just a bunch of random letters. That, the random letters at the end of the file name and the fact that there is even an attachment at all should throw up red flags. But there will always be people who fall for this kind of thing or just don’t pay attention and download it anyway, which is why there are geeks like me around to fix things when this happens. Unless you reset your password yourself and triggered a confirmation email, you will not get these kind of emails, period.

My Aunt flipped out because she thought she may have saved the file on her computer so this prompted me to do a bit of research on what this virus is. I found the virus total report that shows which scanners are able to locate and eliminate the virus. Only 14 out of the 41 scanners are able to detect it – my Aunt happens to have Symantec, which if you notice is not one of those 14. I’m currently running F-Secure’s online scan and will run Microsoft’s Security Essentials since both of those are listed as being able to detect it.

Here’s the page on F-Secure’s website about the virus. There isn’t a whole lot of information on it. But it does list a registry key that is installed.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\”RunGrpConv” = “1″

If you’re comfortable working with computers you can check the registry yourself for that key. If not then I suggest running the F-Secure online scan on complete mode, if you have time to let it sit for awhile, and also running Microsoft Security Essentials. They are both user-friendly and free. Just be sure to remove security essentials once you’re done if you do have another anti-virus currently installed. Having more than one can really slow the computer down.

The good news is, from what I’ve read it looks like it’s just another virus that causes messages to pop up telling you that you need to pay to download a fake anti-virus in order to fix your computer.  So it doesn’t appear to be something that is terribly difficult to get rid of.

• F-Secure’s online scan
• Microsoft Security Essentials

Recover deleted email in Outlook

We had a co-worker come to us asking if it was possible to recover some email messages she had accidentally deleted using shift+delete, which skips the trash folder entirely. I’m not sure how one accidentally presses two keys that really aren’t next to each other and happens to delete important emails, but I have learned not to ask. I googled it and came up with a simple solution.

1. Exit Outlook.
2. Open the Windows registry editor.
3. Browse to My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options.
4. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type the name DumpsterAlwaysOn.
Note Do not type any spaces in the name.
6. Set the DWORD value to 1.
7. Restart Outlook.

The Tools menu now has the Recover Deleted Items command for every Outlook folder.

Source: Microsoft Office Online

Unnecessary Internet Explorer add-ons

This is related to a previous post I did back in March about add-ons slowing down my Aunt’s computers. I don’t use IE so I never payed attention to them before. After working on her computer I messed around with mine a bit to see how the add-ons impacted the application loading time and discovered that there are a handful of add-ons that are, more than likely, completely unnecessary for the typical user.

I went through the add-ons for IE on my computer and disabled 10 out of the 15 in there. I noticed a major difference in the loading time and haven’t had any issues since disabling them. Depending on what programs you have installed on your computer, you may have different add-ons and might have more that can be disabled without causing problems.

Go to the Tools menu -> Manage add-ons and wait a couple seconds for it to load the list. The ones I highlighted in the picture below I would say are perfectly safe to disable. If you later notice something weird, you can always go back in and enable them again. On the far right it shows you how long it takes each add-on to load. Some of them may not sound very long (.29 sec), but they add up and you definitely notice a difference even when you’re saving yourself only a few seconds.

disabled add-ons

If you’re noticing Internet Explorer being slow and can’t figure out what’s going on, try this, it made more of a difference than I expected it to.

How to remove Facebook’s highlights section

10/24/09

If you haven’t noticed already, you will.  Facebook has changed the layout AGAIN.  What they did was get rid of the highlights section and mash all that crap (that I, and a lot of other people according to the views for this post, DO NOT want to see) into the new newsfeed.  According to this website, the new newsfeed is now basically the crap from the highlights section and the live feed is the old newsfeed.

I don’t want to see what people comment on or who they became friends with, ahh!  Facebook needs to either stop changing so damn frequently, or give us the ability to filter what we see more than only completely removing people, which is currently the only option.  Until either of those things happen, I’m hoping the author of the facebook fixer script can figure something out.  Go to the facebook fixer forum to leave a comment on any of the “broken” features.

Edited 10/13/09 to add more detailed instructions and fix the problem in the Google Chrome directions.

I finally got fed up with the highlights section of Facebook and went searching in the help section for a way to filter out what I see. It turns out there’s no way to filter this irritating section of Facebook. I don’t care what groups my friends recently joined, what pictures they recently commented on, or the fact that a friend became a fan of sleep.

Doing a Google search I came across Facebook Fixer. This offers a lot more customization than simply getting rid of the highlights section, but you can mess around with the other stuff on your own – these directions are purely for removing highlights.

Click on your browser of choice below to jump to that section:

• Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Opera
• Internet Explorer (No directions yet, still searching for a solution.)

Firefox

1. The first thing you need to do is go download & install the Greasemonkey add-on in order to use the script in Firefox.
2. Then you can go to the Facebook Fixer page and install the script.
3. To get rid of the highlights you hover over the settings link up top on any Facebook page and go to Facebook Fixer or you can right-click on the little monkey face icon in the bottom right of Firefox, go to user script commands, then click on configure Facebook Fixer.

That will bring up a window with a bunch of different ways you can customize how Facebook looks for you.  Go down to the second section, Home Page Customization, to choose what you want to hide. I chose to keep the right column, but unchecked the four boxes below it. I found that choosing to hide the right column also hid group and friend requests. I still want to see those so I just hid everything else.

Result:

This script also checks for updates automatically, which is a very nice feature.

Google Chrome

There’s a Chrome greasemonkey-like add-on that is in the works but as of the day of this post, the program crashes after trying to open it. Clearly more work needs to be done. I did find another way to use the Facebook Fixer script for Chrome and it works great so far.

1. The first thing you want to do is edit the Chrome shortcuts you use by right-clicking them and going to properties. Change it so the target line has - -enable-user-scripts at the end, after the quotation mark.

There are 2 dash marks in front of the word enable, wordpress merges them into one dash so I put a space there to help make it more obvious, there is no space between the dashes – just 2 of them.

1. Navigate to this folder %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default. Easiest way is to probably go to your start menu -> run.
2. Create a folder titled User Scripts.
3. Now download Facebook Fixer by right-clicking on install now and then save link as…. Save it in the User Scripts folder you created.

You should be able to refresh the page to see it work, if not then close and reopen it. Now you can just hover over the settings menu on your Facebook page and the settings for the script will be at the bottom. The only thing I noticed is that the menu doesn’t come up right away, but that doesn’t really matter. Chrome is FAR faster than Firefox. I’m impressed so far.

If the script doesn’t work for you, you may need to download the Google Chrome Channel Changer and choose the beta channel. I have mine on stable and it works fine.

Opera

1. You do not need an add-on to run the script in Opera, but you do need to create a new folder in the directory to to save the script after downloading.  Unless you changed the default path it saves to, navigate to C:\Program Files\Opera\ either by going to my computer or you can copy/paste that path into start -> run box, then create a new folder called user scripts.
2. Now go download Facebook Fixer by right-clicking on the install button and selecting save linked content as…. Save it in the new folder you just created above and replace the 8861 in the name with FacebookFixer, that way you can actually figure out what it is later, if you ever need to.



3. In Opera, go to the tools menu -> preferences ->advanced tab -> content on the left in the middle section -> then javascript options.
4. Under User JavaScript files on the bottom click the choose button and find the user scripts folder where the script is saved.
   
5. Click Ok, Ok again and close then reopen Opera so it can load the script when it starts up this time.

Now all you have to do is go to your Facebook page and hover over the settings up top. It might take a couple seconds, but when the menu appears Facebook Fixer should be at the bottom so you can click on it and edit the settings to get rid of the highlights section. See my Firefox section for the settings I chose, which got rid of highlights, but kept the group and friend requests. If you check the box to get rid of the entire right column, it includes any type of request.

Internet Explorer

I have yet to find an add-on for Internet Explorer that works with the Facebook Fixer script. I’ve tried both IE7Pro and Trixie to no avail. I’ll keep searching.