In Box highlights

Compiled by PETER SINCLAIR

Welcome to InBox, where we attempt to answer your internet questions.

Dave Harris from Bayswater, Auckland: "My friend in England has bought a Philips fax machine that doubles as an internet connection. To e-mail me, he faxes his letter - handwritten or typed - to his internet provider who sends it on to me as an attachment. The problem is that when I open the attachment, the file is in a tiff image format and I can't find a way of opening it. Any suggestion would be very welcome. I can e-mail my friend without difficulty - presumably the UK provider downloads my e-mail and faxes it to my friend."

Boy, your friend is really putting you - and himself - through some hoops, Dave; but it's not a problem, merely a hassle. Save the attachments to your desktop or wherever, open MS Paint (I'm assuming you're a Windows user) and click on File/Open, select "All Files" from the drop-down box and navigate to Desktop. Click on your .tif file and the image will appear. Better would be a copy of ACDSee, which will open just about any graphics file at all.

Meantime, might it be a kindness to tactfully point out to your friend that the fax-machine is to the internet as a fish to a bicycle, and suggest that the sooner he invests in a computer (with scanner) the better?

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Rex saves most of his e-mails to folders in the Inbox folder tree, as you do. "I am trying to figure out how to copy them to a Zip disk so I can clean up my hard drive... "

Just go to the File menu and select Import/Export (you may need to install this component from your CD at the prompt, as it does not auto-install during setup), check 'Export to File', and shoot stuff over to your Zip drive. Either select 'Personal Folders', which will copy everything but may be rather large, or choose individual folders separated by a comma, which can then be reimported if you need them. After that you can delete stuff you don't want. Remember to auto-archive regularly to compress old mail - go to Tools/Options/Other/Auto-Archive in Outlook.

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Sue McAinsh from the Far North: "I wish to remodel my kitchen and bedroom, and I live in an area where easy access to interior designers there isn't. Is there a site I could visit which would let me move things around until I can get a kitchen to look the way I would like it to, which I could then take to a builder? I am not good at visualizing spatial relationships, so a site for dorks is probably what I need... "

Sue, your enquiry has just about driven me nuts; because yes, there's exactly such a site on the New Zealand web, I wrote it up a year or three ago after having fun dragging and dropping benchtops and hobs and appliances. Do you think I can find it in my archives? - I've spent about an hour already. Would whoever runs it please e-mail us so Sue can turn her hovel into a palace without delay?

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Finally, Jenny Berry would appreciate some web-addresses for greeting cards and animated greetings.

The biggest on the web, Jenny, is Blue Mountain.

Links:

acdsee

Blue Mountain

More of your InBox questions will be answered Wednesday in CyberLunch, on air 12:00-1:00 with Murray Lindsay and Peter Sinclair on Classic Hits 97FM.

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