Pasting Text Without Formatting In Google Chrome
As part of my regular use of Gmail, I often find myself pasting text from web into my e-mails. Since the Gmail editor supports rich-text, pasting generally includes the formating, which, most of the time, simply does not make sense within the e-mail. For years, I have been using a trick to get around this - one which involved using the almighty Windows Notepad. By simply pasting the text into Notepad, and then copying it from there, I make sure the formating is not brought over. This works because Notepad itself does not support formating. As useful as this trick is, I often found myself wondering whether there were better options available.
A few days ago, as I was writing an e-mail to a prospective client, I made the mistake of writing it in Google Docs, and then copying it over to Gmail. With the Notepad trick applied, I would have been fine – but it slipped my mind in this occasion. Copying text from Google Docs had one immediate effect – it meant the Google Docs font would be used in the Gmail Editor. In itself, not a problem – but as I continued working on the e-mail, I found myself copying another specific subset of the Google Doc, and pasting it in the middle of the e-mail. All looked fine within the editor, but after it was sent, one flaw was made immediately apparent:
Notice the unnecessary extra spacing? It appeared immediately after the content I pasted from Google Docs. To make matters worse, part of my e-mail explained how I put emphasis on perfecting the content I produce. Words cannot express how infuriating it is for a perfectionist to express his perfectionism, only to realize he sent an obviously imperfect e-mail.
I immediately sought to find a solution, once and for all, to ensure I never make such a mistake again. After some searching, I discovered that the good folks at Google already took steps to fix this browser “feature”. While using Google Chrome, one can simply press CTRL + SHIFT + V to paste without formating. Since Google Chrome is my browser of choice, this covers 90% of my use cases, making it a solid solution. Hopefully other browsers will start implementing similar features, permanently resolving the issue.
Reducing Email Attachment Sizes With Compression
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Description:
WinRAR:
http://rarlabs.com
B/MB/GB/TB Converter
http://egret.net/kb__mb.htm
Additional Info:
ZIP files
RAR files
Data Compression
Transcript:
In this video, I’ll be demonstrating how to use compression to overcome attachment size limits in emails. As an example, I’ll be using Gmail, which has a maximum attachment size of 25 megabytes. I’ve prepared two scenarios where the size of the attachments exceed the limits enforced by Gmail. In the first scenario, I’m looking to send pictures through email; however, I have exactly 25.1 megabytes of pictures, which is slightly over the Gmail limit. To get around this, I’m going to combine all the pictures into a special compressed file, which will be smaller in size. File compression is included in Windows and requires no additional software to compress files in windows.
- First select all the files you wish to compress.
- Right click one of the selected files.
- Select send to, and then select compressed zipped folder.
Now that the compression process is completed, a file with the extension .zip has appeared in the folder. This file should now have a smaller size than the combined total of the pictures. Sure enough, when I view it in Windows, it has a total size of 24.9 megabytes whereas we previously had 25.1 megabytes for all the photos together. It’s important to remember that this file now contains all of the photos we selected earlier, and if I launch it here, you’ll see what I mean. They’re all listed. Keep in mind that what I’m seeing here is actually enhanced by third-party software, but in Windows, opening a compressed folder (compressed file) is the same is opening a folder, so you will see the contents with all the photos much like what I am seeing right here.
At this point you may be wondering about the efficiency of the approach given that we saved only 0.2 megabytes. The pictures I chose to compress were all in the JPG file format and JPGs, by nature, are compressed images. In fact, many multimedia file types are already compressed significantly by the time they are produced. On the other hand, text files and executables are usually not, so they tend to compress better. At the very least, compression reduces the number files of that need to be uploaded to an email client, simplifying the act of moving them around. In this case, the recipient would receive only one file, and after it is uncompressed on his side, all the photos will be available… and it only took one email.
In the second scenario, I have significantly more pictures to send. Given that their total size is equal to 44.1 megabytes, I will have to change my approach. Rather than compress all photos into one compressed file, I will create multiple compressed files and send multiple emails. While I could simply select a subset of the pictures and create two compressed files via the Send To menu, I will instead use a compression program called WinRAR. WinRAR can be acquired from rarlabs.com, and is free to evaluate.
WinRAR introduces a new compressed file format, represented with the extension RAR. It is similar to the ZIP file, but requires WinRAR to be installed. It has a nice feature that allows RAR files to be automatically split into parts, which will be useful in my case. To create a multipart RAR file:
- Simply select all the files you wish to compress.
- Right-click any one of them
- and select add to archive
This option will appear after WinRAR has been installed. Once WinRAR appears, it will ask you for an archive name, the archive format, compression method and other options. The one we care about at the moment is “split the volumes”. What this will allow us to do is instruct WinRAR to limit the size of each part in the multipart set. So since WinRAR requires bytes in this case “split to volumes bytes”, we will need to use a free online converter which will accept the friendlier megabyte format and change that into bytes. So I have a site right here which I will put in the description which will allow me to do just that. So when I enter 25 megabytes into this site and click on this button below, it automatically provides me with the bytes, kilobytes, gigabytes, terabytes. Right now, we only want bytes, so I will copy this and return to WinRAR. I will provide it with the bytes in the field right here, and click OK.
Now WinRAR will start doing its work – we simply have to wait and once it’s complete we will have two RAR files. You can see right here that it is already talking about part two – we already have two RAR files. Now that it’s complete, I will show you the RAR files right here: scenario two, part one and part two. Now what we can do is simply attach each of these RARs individually to their own emails. So I have an email open right here in Gmail – I will drag the first RAR file into it, and I can send it and simply create a new email and send part two. Once the person receives these RAR files, it’s really as simple as clicking on any one of them, and dragging the contents elsewhere. WinRAR figures out putting them together, and you don’t have to worry about that – so, multiple files, but they’re treated as one when they’re finally collected at the end.
So those were two scenarios that illustrated how compression could be used to get around attachment size limits. If you have any questions about what I presented, please feel free to leave me a comment. I’d be happy to answer them, thanks.
Reducing E-mail Spam by Eliminating Public Listings
I’ve been using Gmail as my e-mail service provider for a few years now, and due to their excellent spam filters, I’ve been able to ignore the continuous stream of junk mail hitting my mailbox every day. Despite their efficiency at identifying and hiding spam e-mails, I remain genuinely concerned about keeping my e-mail address hidden from the public view. E-mails that are publicly available are easy targets for spambots, which are automated programs that scour the Internet for e-mail addresses. Once “harvested”, these addresses are sent junk mail, spam.
by Allan ReyesSometimes, however, it is desirable to have an e-mail address visible to the public – to do so, a special approach should be taken to protect it from spambots. For example, you can use services like reCAPTCHA Mailhide, which challenges viewers with a CAPTCHA before it displays the full e-mail address.
Curious about whether or not my e-mail was “out there”, I decided to look into it. Below, I explain how you would go about checking for public references to your e-mail address, and how future slips could be prevented.
Google Your E-mail Address
Try searching for the e-mail address using Google. Search engines scour the Internet for web pages, rather than just specific elements in the page (like e-mail addresses). They do so through programs called crawlers, sometimes referred to as spiders. If they have indexed a webpage that has your e-mail address mentioned, you’ll be able to find it in the engine’s search results. The important fact here is this: if you can find it using a search engine, you can safely assume that a spambot would be similarly capable. It is therefore important to remove any references to your e-mail address – in doing so, you’ll be making it a little bit harder for spammers to target your address.
To do so, try launching a Google search for your e-mail address, using this format:
“you@youremailprovider.com”
The double-quotes will tell Google to look for that exact string, which will limit the number of false positive search results that are returned. If you get no results with the double quotes, try removing them.
After running the search, if you spot search results that actually have made your e-mail address publicly visible, you’ll need to try and remove them. In my case, when I did this, all the hits were sites that I could log into, and then remove my address. If you’re lucky, it’ll be that simple. Otherwise, you might have to contact the site owner to get it removed.
Question How Websites Use Your E-mail
To avoid getting into potentially complicated situations, it is worthwhile to spend some time determining how websites intend to use your e-mail. An e-mail is almost always requested when registering, but the uses vary. It could, for example, just be used to contact you to activate your account. Or, it could be used for a multitude of things, including as a publicly viewable piece of information. Take the time to check FAQs, site forums, or even contact the site owners if there are doubts – this could prevent an increase in spam received.
Sometimes, however, it isn’t as straight-forward as them displaying your e-mail address- sometimes certain sites will indirectly expose your address. I’ll give you an example… consider Google Profiles. By default, the URL that points to your profile looks something like this:
http://www.google.com/profiles/114973454253911341512
You can, however, choose to have your username appear at the end, like this:
http://www.google.com/profiles/youruseraccount
This is naturally better for search engine optimization, and it also allows you to memorize your profile link – but it introduces a flaw as well. Looking at that URL, I know that the e-mail address “youruseraccount@gmail.com” exists. It has to, that’s how Google accounts work – they are based on an e-mail address, so there is no doubt about what the username portion is. If I know that, then I can deduce that there must be a spambot out there that is smart enough to exploit the same flaw. Even if no spambots are currently exploiting this, I’m pretty sure one eventually will. Thankfully, though, Google has explained the feature very well on the settings page – reducing the likelyhood that someone would enable it unknowingly:
To make it easier for people to find your profile, you can customize your URL with your Google email username. (Note this can make your Google email address publicly discoverable.)