TOPIC: OUTLOOK.COM
What to do when Tuta Mail issues this message when logging into an account on macOS: Could not access Secret Storage
24th September 2024Two things changed before Tuta Mail stopped working as before: modifying Keychain Access settings and upgrading macOS from Sonoma to Sequoia. Either could have been a cause or none of them. The first of these was more likely a culprit than the other.
The result was the same: logging into Tuta Mail yielded an error like this: Could not access Secret Storage. The solution essentially is a two-step process: remove the app and delete its settings folder. Reinstallation then happens after these.
In Finder, go to Applications and move Tuta Mail to the Bin before clearing it from there. That uninstalls the app.
The next step needs you show hidden files and folders using the Command + Shift + . shortcut. Then, go to your home folder (this may need use of the Command + Shift + H shortcut). Open up the Library folder and find the folder called Application Support. Enter that and find the subfolder named tutanota-desktop. That needs to go to the Bin too before expunging it from there. Doing that provides the clean slate for restoration to commence. After this, using the Command + Shift + . shortcut again hides the normally hidden files and folders once more.
Nothing is resolved with the removal of /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/tutanota-desktop. Using the rm command from the command line interface will remove it faster than Finder, though that may be easier for many users.
Changing Outlook usage habits
2nd August 2010Given that I have been using it for so long, I shouldn't be discovering new things with Outlook. However, there is one thing that I have been doing for years: leaving messages set as unread until I have dealt with them. Now that I look at it, it seems a terrible habit compared with an alternative that I recently found.
Quite why I haven't been flagging messages for follow-up instead is beyond me. Is it because I worked with Outlook 2000 at my place of work for so long, and the arrival of Outlook 2007 into my life wasn't sufficient to force a change of habits? In fact, it has taken a downgrade to Outlook 2003 to make it dawn on me; it was the sight of search folder for messages marked for follow-up that triggered the realisation.
Speaking of old habits, there is one that I'll be dropping: setting up loads of rules, allegedly for organising messages. Given that they were the cause of my missing emails quite a few times, it's one more nuisance that needed to be left behind me.
The case of a wide open restriction
7th November 2007The addition of IMAP capability to Gmail attracted a lot of attention in the blogosphere last week, and I managed to flick the switch for the beast courtesy of the various instructions that were out there. However, when I pottered back to the settings, the IMAP settings had disappeared.
A brief look at the Official Gmail Blog confirmed why: the feature wasn't to be available to those who hadn't set their language as US English. My setting of UK English explained why I wasn't seeing it again, a strange observation given that they are merely variants of the same language; I have no idea why I saw it the first time around.
My initial impression was that the language setting used was an operating system or browser one, but this is not how it is. In fact, it is the language that you set for Gmail itself in its settings; choosing US English was sufficient to make the IMAP settings reappear, while choosing UK English made them disappear again.
Personally, I am not certain why the distinction was made in the first place, but I have Evolution merrily working away with Gmail's IMAP interface without a bother. To get it going, I needed that imap.gmail.com needed an SSL connection while smtp.gmail.com needed a TLS one. After that, I was away and no port numbers needed to be supplied, unlike Outlook.
Office 2007 on test…
23rd January 2007With its imminent launch and having had a quick at one of its beta releases, I decided to give Office 2007 a longer look after it reached its final guise. This is courtesy of the demonstration version that can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website; I snagged Office Standard which contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Very generously, the trial version that I am using gives me until the end of March to come to my final decision.
And what are my impressions? Outlook, the application from the suite that I most use, has changed dramatically since Outlook 2002, the version that I have been using. Unless you open up an email in full screen mode, the ribbon interface so prevalent in other members of the Office family doesn’t make much of an appearance here. The three-paned interface taken forward from Outlook 2003 is easy to get around. I especially like the ability to collapse/expand a list of emails from a particular sender: it really cuts down on clutter. The ZoneAlarm anti-spam plug-in on my system was accepted without any complaint, as were all of my PST files. One thing that needed redoing was the IMAP connection to my FastMail webmail account, but that was driven more by Outlook warning messages than by necessity from a user experience point of view. Though I have still to get my Hotmail account going, I lost that connection when still using Outlook 2002, and after I upgraded to IE7.
What do I make of the ribbon interface? As I have said above, Outlook is not pervaded by the new interface paradigm until you open up an email. Nevertheless, I have had a brief encounter with Word 2007 and am convinced that the new interface works well. It didn’t take me long to find my way around at all. In fact, I think that they have done an impressive job with the new main menu triggered by the Office Button (as Microsoft call it) and got all sorts of things in there; the list includes Word options, expanded options for saving files (including the new DOCX file format, of course, but the doc format has not been discarded either) and a publishing capability that includes popular blogs (WordPress.com, for instance) together with document management servers. Additionally, the new zoom control on the bottom right-hand corner is much nicer than the old dropdown menu. As regards the “ribbon”, this is an extension of the tabbed interfaces seen in other applications like Adobe HomeSite and Adobe Dreamweaver, the difference being that the tabs are the only place where any function is found because there is no menu back up. There is an Add-ins tab that captures plug-ins to things like Adobe Distiller for PDF creation. Macromedia in its pre-Adobe days offered FlashPaper for doing the same thing, and this seems to function without a hitch in Word 2007. Right-clicking on any word in your document not only gives you suggested corrections to misspellings but also synonyms (no more Shift-F7 for the thesaurus, though it is still there is you need it) and enhanced on-the-spot formatting options. A miniature formatting menu even appears beside the expected context menu; I must admit that I found that a little annoying at the beginning, but I suppose that I will learn to get used to it.
My use of Outlook and Word will continue, the latter’s blogging feature is very nice, but I haven’t had reason to look at Excel or PowerPoint in detail thus far. From what I have seen, the ribbon interface pervades in those applications too. Even so, my impressions of the latest Office are very favourable. The interface overhaul may be radical, yet it does work. Though their changing the file formats is a more subtle change, it does mean that users of previous Office versions will need the converter tool in order for document sharing to continue. Office 97 was the last time when we had to cope with that, and it didn’t seem to cause the world to grind to a halt.
Will I upgrade? I have to say that it is very likely given what is available in Office Home and Student edition. While that version misses out on having Outlook, the prices mean that even buying Outlook standalone to compliment what it offers remains a sensible financial option. Having a look at the retail prices on dabs.com confirms the point:
Office Home and Student Edition: £94.61
Office Standard Edition: £285.50
Office Standard Edition Upgrade: £175.96
Outlook 2007: £77.98
Having full version software for the price of an upgrade appeals to me, and it is likely to be the route that I take, if I replace the Office XP Standard Edition installation that has been my mainstay over the last few years. Having been on a Windows 95 > Windows 98 > Windows 98 SE > Windows ME upgrade treadmill and endured the hell raised when reinstallation becomes unavoidable, the full product approach to getting the latest software appeals to me over the upgrade pathway. In fact, I bought Windows XP Professional as the full product to start afresh after moving on from Windows 9x.