This is a quick but useful tip for all email users. You should set yourself up as an entry in your email address book. Why? Whenever you need to test to see if you are receiving emails, or whenever you are formatting an email and want to see if it got received the same way it looked when you composed it, the easiset way to do it is to send yourself a test email. I have also done this when I wanted to save some information, such as a reminder note to myself.

Too much of a pain to be bothered with, you say? Well here's a tip to make it more convenient.

Tip #1 -
When I set myself up in my own address book, I don't use my name. Instead, I set up a user name of "@_home". Why? Because that causes my home address to sort to the top of the list so I never have to scroll down to find it! Makes it really easy to decide to add myself to the list of recipients.

Tip #2 -
Continuing with that same concept, I also add my family member's names in this form. My brother, Tom, is entered as "@Tom", my mother is "@Mom", my niece is "@Suzy", etc. Since these are the people I most regularly send emails to, this saves a lot of looking up of addresses.

Now, if you're really paying attention, you may have noticed that "@_Home" has an underscore between the "@" and "Home". On the other names, I didn't do that. (I know, that's asking a lot for you to have noticed that!) Well, it's not an accident. I want my address to always be at the very top. I want my relatives to sort at the top of the list, but only after my name. When Windows sorts alphabetically, the underscore comes before all alphabetical characters. Using the underscore in "@_Home" makes it sort before all the other names which begin with "@".

This level of planning will surely be taken as a "...sure sign of a misspent youth" on my part! If you decide to use this idea and someone sees you doing it, just say "It was Jeff's idea!" It's part of my service!