What's going wrong? Here are some questions and answers.
1 PASSWORDS
Q
You can't log into your laptop with your password. Why?
A
Caps lock is on.
You have forgotten to use the capital letter.
You have forgotten the number at the end.
2 EMAILS
Q
Your email login is not working
A
You have left off the number at the end.
You joined this organization years ago and it is still using your old email which you abandoned because it was overloaded with spam.
3 PASSWORDS
Q
The password is not recognized.
A
It is a new website and does not have your usual password.
You need to create a new password for this website.
Although you have looked at the website such as a clothing catalogue several times , whenever it sends you an update on sales and, you have not yet created a password.
4 JUMPING TO HOME PAGE
Q
You are typing merrily away on your phone and it keeps leaving the whatsapp group and going back to the home page.
A
When you put your thumb or finger on the space bar at the bottom of the screen, you are accidentally touching the home key just below it.
5 TYPOS
Q
Your text is full of typos. So are your emails composed on the mobile phone. Why?
A
If you look at the English QWERTY keyboard, you will see that you are accidentally touching adjacent letters. On the top line, your q becomes a w, w becomes e, r becomes to and t becomes y and so on. On the next line, asdfg, your a becomes s, your s becomes d, your d becomes f, and your f becomes g.
Remedies:
Use a bigger screen which has a bigger keyboard.
Buy a bigger phone.
Or use a tablet or an ipad (Apple's tablet).
Or go to settings in your phone, look for keyboard, and choose larger keyboard.
CHECK FOR TYPOS
Check every text message before sending it.
Install Grammarly.
Re-read your blog posts after publication. Sometimes Grammarly or spell checker only highlights suspect words after publication.
6 STRANGERS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES IGNORE YOUR REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION
Q
You are giving them free publicity. Why are they ignoring you?
A
Small Business
Check their website. They may be a tiny one-person business dealing with orders Monday to Friday and answering general queries only at the weekend.
Add a translation in their language using Google translate. Convert what is said in their language back into English to be sure there is no ambiguity.
Make your long email more succinct, less daunting.
Make your short email more more friendly and complimentary.
Ask a friend or family member or colleague to check important emails. Does your translation of can you, or tell me or can you tell me sound polite in French? French is more flowery and uses different colloquialisms. For example, maybe change pouvey-vous (can you) into Est-ce-que vous pouvez (is it possible for you ).
Holidays
Check national holidays in the country of the recipient.
Bear in mind that the whole office may be closed during:
Xmas,
Ramadan,
Easter,
Passover, Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur (fasting day), and
Chinese New Year,
On the country's national day or holiday, the whole office may be closed. In addition, the person you are writing to may be travelling or on holiday.
During summer holidays, your email query might not be dealt with because the person is away and others are not allowed to contact them. Or the company, whether or business or educational establishment, cannot pass on your email and phone number to other staff members. The person you are writing to could also be away on a conference or training day. Staff may not be allowed to reveal that the person is away, because that would be a security risk for their home.
URGENT OR NOT?
Is your order or query urgent? If you need an item delivered fast, eg because you are going on holiday, tell the company. They cannot guess that you are the one customer in a hurry. They might be able to send by faster post (at your cost or theirs). They might get another office to deal with your query.
Equally, if you would still be happy to hear from them in a month's time, after the summer holidays or wine harvest, let them know.
LOST EMAIL
Q
Your important email has disappeared from your GMAIL inbox.
A
Check the sent items. The email may be above the reply.
Copy yourself into the reply so the whole correspondence chain comes back into your inbox.
Search for recipient or destination company name.
Search by subject.
LOST BLOG POST
Q My blog has vanished. Help!
A Use control and Z to recover. One might not be enough. Do it three or four times.
Keep saving your post.
Create drafts in notes and copy them when finished. You can later find the notes even if the blog disappears.
Make a second blog set to private. Copy drafts from there into your public post after you have checked spelling and grammar and added photos and checked statistics and spelling of proper names.
SECOND PRIVATE NAME APPEARS on public Emails
Q If Marilyn Monroe were alive today, she might not want Norma Jean appearing as her signature.
I found Angela The Author popping up on my email to banks and businesses which were using my full family name.
What can you do?
A
Create a second email just for business or your second name or for personal items.
FINALLY
Q Your techie help is away. What to do?
A Somebody else has your problem. Ask Google. Most queries, from how to operate a printer and a sewing machine, to edit a photo, can be solved on the internet. If you cannot follow the instructions, first list the technical words and lay terms. Then check for a video on YouTube.
Q
Each time you have a problem and solve it, make a note. In a year's time you might have the same problem. It could be a great help to you or your colleagues to have the solution handy.
LOST AND HIDDEN KEYS
Q Where are the keys? Once we lost the back door key. The boiler repair man had it and brought it back a year later. Now I hide all keys or put large, colourful obvious key fobs on them when workmen and visitors are in the house so nobody takes my keys by mistake.
We lost the front door key. Instead of changing two locks, we added a third, just in case. A month later, friends found the missing key under their sofa.
A relative lost two car keys. Replacing them cost a three figure sum. All three family members in different countries were told it was their fault and they must hunt for the keys. We all hunted in vain.
A year later, g he found their location listed on the end of an old shopping list.
Email yourself a note on where you have hidden something. For security, the location could be cryptic. At least if you know which room to check, you will be saving hunting time. And you know that the key is hidden in the house, not lost in the street. if you have two homes or two business offices, have a code for each one, or the name of a colleague or family member or pet who lives there as your hint.
Better still, something which nobody could find from searching your public or private Facebook account. For example, if you had two homes, one in New York, the other in Brazil, you could write the instructions for finding the spare keys to your New York apartment in Brazil in Portuguese, or use a Portuguese royal family name as a hint.
Finding Items
The less clutter the better. I spent three panic-stricken hours hunting for my missing train ticket to Wales. I threw out every old newspaper, old magazine, out of date newsletters, expired supermarket discounts, old receipts. The piles of paper were halved. But still no ticket. I had to go off without it, if necessary spend one hundred pounds - Google tells me this is about 132 US dollars in March 2019.
When I got to the station, I discovered that my ticket was an e-ticket. If I had sent myself an email reminder a week earlier, a search of emails would have revealed this.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.
1 PASSWORDS
Q
You can't log into your laptop with your password. Why?
A
Caps lock is on.
You have forgotten to use the capital letter.
You have forgotten the number at the end.
2 EMAILS
Q
Your email login is not working
A
You have left off the number at the end.
You joined this organization years ago and it is still using your old email which you abandoned because it was overloaded with spam.
3 PASSWORDS
Q
The password is not recognized.
A
It is a new website and does not have your usual password.
You need to create a new password for this website.
Although you have looked at the website such as a clothing catalogue several times , whenever it sends you an update on sales and, you have not yet created a password.
4 JUMPING TO HOME PAGE
Q
You are typing merrily away on your phone and it keeps leaving the whatsapp group and going back to the home page.
A
When you put your thumb or finger on the space bar at the bottom of the screen, you are accidentally touching the home key just below it.
5 TYPOS
Q
Your text is full of typos. So are your emails composed on the mobile phone. Why?
A
If you look at the English QWERTY keyboard, you will see that you are accidentally touching adjacent letters. On the top line, your q becomes a w, w becomes e, r becomes to and t becomes y and so on. On the next line, asdfg, your a becomes s, your s becomes d, your d becomes f, and your f becomes g.
Remedies:
Use a bigger screen which has a bigger keyboard.
Buy a bigger phone.
Or use a tablet or an ipad (Apple's tablet).
Steve Jobs introducing the Ipad. Photo by Buchanan under Ipad article in Wikipedia.
Or go to settings in your phone, look for keyboard, and choose larger keyboard.
CHECK FOR TYPOS
Check every text message before sending it.
Install Grammarly.
Re-read your blog posts after publication. Sometimes Grammarly or spell checker only highlights suspect words after publication.
6 STRANGERS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES IGNORE YOUR REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION
Q
You are giving them free publicity. Why are they ignoring you?
A
Small Business
Check their website. They may be a tiny one-person business dealing with orders Monday to Friday and answering general queries only at the weekend.
Add a translation in their language using Google translate. Convert what is said in their language back into English to be sure there is no ambiguity.
Make your long email more succinct, less daunting.
Make your short email more more friendly and complimentary.
Ask a friend or family member or colleague to check important emails. Does your translation of can you, or tell me or can you tell me sound polite in French? French is more flowery and uses different colloquialisms. For example, maybe change pouvey-vous (can you) into Est-ce-que vous pouvez (is it possible for you ).
Holidays
Check national holidays in the country of the recipient.
Bear in mind that the whole office may be closed during:
Xmas,
Easter,
Chinese New Year,
On the country's national day or holiday, the whole office may be closed. In addition, the person you are writing to may be travelling or on holiday.
During summer holidays, your email query might not be dealt with because the person is away and others are not allowed to contact them. Or the company, whether or business or educational establishment, cannot pass on your email and phone number to other staff members. The person you are writing to could also be away on a conference or training day. Staff may not be allowed to reveal that the person is away, because that would be a security risk for their home.
URGENT OR NOT?
Is your order or query urgent? If you need an item delivered fast, eg because you are going on holiday, tell the company. They cannot guess that you are the one customer in a hurry. They might be able to send by faster post (at your cost or theirs). They might get another office to deal with your query.
Equally, if you would still be happy to hear from them in a month's time, after the summer holidays or wine harvest, let them know.
LOST EMAIL
Q
Your important email has disappeared from your GMAIL inbox.
A
Check the sent items. The email may be above the reply.
Copy yourself into the reply so the whole correspondence chain comes back into your inbox.
Search for recipient or destination company name.
Search by subject.
LOST BLOG POST
Q My blog has vanished. Help!
A Use control and Z to recover. One might not be enough. Do it three or four times.
Keep saving your post.
Create drafts in notes and copy them when finished. You can later find the notes even if the blog disappears.
Make a second blog set to private. Copy drafts from there into your public post after you have checked spelling and grammar and added photos and checked statistics and spelling of proper names.
SECOND PRIVATE NAME APPEARS on public Emails
Q If Marilyn Monroe were alive today, she might not want Norma Jean appearing as her signature.
I found Angela The Author popping up on my email to banks and businesses which were using my full family name.
What can you do?
A
Create a second email just for business or your second name or for personal items.
FINALLY
Q Your techie help is away. What to do?
A Somebody else has your problem. Ask Google. Most queries, from how to operate a printer and a sewing machine, to edit a photo, can be solved on the internet. If you cannot follow the instructions, first list the technical words and lay terms. Then check for a video on YouTube.
Q
Each time you have a problem and solve it, make a note. In a year's time you might have the same problem. It could be a great help to you or your colleagues to have the solution handy.
LOST AND HIDDEN KEYS
Q Where are the keys? Once we lost the back door key. The boiler repair man had it and brought it back a year later. Now I hide all keys or put large, colourful obvious key fobs on them when workmen and visitors are in the house so nobody takes my keys by mistake.
We lost the front door key. Instead of changing two locks, we added a third, just in case. A month later, friends found the missing key under their sofa.
A relative lost two car keys. Replacing them cost a three figure sum. All three family members in different countries were told it was their fault and they must hunt for the keys. We all hunted in vain.
A year later, g he found their location listed on the end of an old shopping list.
Email yourself a note on where you have hidden something. For security, the location could be cryptic. At least if you know which room to check, you will be saving hunting time. And you know that the key is hidden in the house, not lost in the street. if you have two homes or two business offices, have a code for each one, or the name of a colleague or family member or pet who lives there as your hint.
Better still, something which nobody could find from searching your public or private Facebook account. For example, if you had two homes, one in New York, the other in Brazil, you could write the instructions for finding the spare keys to your New York apartment in Brazil in Portuguese, or use a Portuguese royal family name as a hint.
Finding Items
The less clutter the better. I spent three panic-stricken hours hunting for my missing train ticket to Wales. I threw out every old newspaper, old magazine, out of date newsletters, expired supermarket discounts, old receipts. The piles of paper were halved. But still no ticket. I had to go off without it, if necessary spend one hundred pounds - Google tells me this is about 132 US dollars in March 2019.
When I got to the station, I discovered that my ticket was an e-ticket. If I had sent myself an email reminder a week earlier, a search of emails would have revealed this.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.
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