Q. I have Hotmail folders for all of my holidays, so that I may store e-tickets, hotel reservation, car hire details, etc., for each trip. I bought an iPad recently and, when I connected it to Hotmail, although these folders were there, they were empty and all of them were described as "mailboxes". Where did I go wrong?

A. You didn't! This is due to the different ways that Microsoft's Hotmail - now called Outlook.com - and Apple's Mail app function. I suggest that you stop using the Apple-provided Mail app on the iPad, and switch to Microsoft's free Outlook app which you'll find in the iTunes store if you use the search word outlook . Install it, and then just link it to your Hotmail account.

Q. How can I create hyperlinks in a word processed document, and then retain them when I turn the document into a PDF?

A. The technique for inserting hyperlinks: e-mail addresses or websites, in your text onto which your reader can click/tap and have an e-mail draft created automatically or be taken straight to the target website, varies between different word processing products.
Some will simply recognise the link as you type, which makes life very simple, but most require a little more work though not very much.
Here is a generic description of the likely steps required for those products that don't recognise the links as you type.
Your product may well have a small icon to insert hyperlinks alongside those above the typing area such as Save, Open, Print, etc.. To check this, hover your mouse pointer over the icons one by one to see their descriptions.
If you have one of these then, to insert a link, when you reach the point in your text where you want to insert a link, click on the Hyperlink Icon. This will bring up a small window. Select either e-mail or Internet, and then simply type in the information requested and click on Apply or OK.
If you don't have a Hyperlink Icon, check each of the text based menu options above the icons at the top of the screen to see which one has the hyperlink insertion option. The mostly likely one is the one headed Insert.
Using this technique, when you reach the point in your text where you want to insert a link, click on Insert, then Hyperlink, or your equivalent. This will bring up a small window. Select either e-mail or Internet, and then simply type in the information requested and click on Apply or OK.
Many of you turn your word processed documents into PDF files for use on the Internet, or for sending to contacts who may not the same word processing product as you.
Care is needed with this process if the documents to be converted contain hyperlinks.
Few of us can afford the Adobe PDF creating software, and many people turn to the often advertised “create PDFs easily and simply” products available on the Internet, often for free. The problem with these products is that the majority of them handle the conversion to PDF by effectively turning the entire word processed document into a single image, thus stripping out the hyperlink information.
If your word processing product is reasonably new, you don't need another product anyway since it will provide the ability to create PDFs itself and retain the hyperlink information.
You will find the feature – in most WP products – under File at the top of the screen. (If it isn't there, try looking under Tools.) Click on File, and look for Export, or better still Export as PDF. If the former, you will have to select PDF from the drop down file type box during the process. There will probably a small screen with choices, but in the vast majority of cases just accept the settings offered.
If you don't have these options in your WP product then it probably doesn't support PDF creation, but there is one more check you could make to be sure. Click on File, then Save As, and then see if PDF is listed in the file type drop down box.

Q. I use Outlook 2007 as my mailer, and have a very large number of old e-mails and attachment that I want to keep. However, the Outlook .pst file has now reached 17GB, which worries me. Is there a program that will strip off and save my attachments elsewhere to reduce the file size?

A. That certainly is some size for an Outlook file! I use Outlook too, but normally strip off (and save if relevant) attachments before filing them in Outlook. There are a number of commercial programs that do exactly what you want, but they tend to cost around £25 which seems expensive for a single-function application. Try Outlook Attachment Remover Add-In, which is free.

Q. Suddenly I cannot attach files to Outlook e-mails. Any suggestions?

A. Two sets of suggestions, depending on whether you are using the PC-based version of Outlook, or the webmail version. If the former, just log out and then back in again. If that doesn't work try Help/Detect and Repair within Outlook, or the Programs and Features Control Panel, depending on your version of Outlook and Windows. If that doesn't fix the problem, then try re-installing Outlook from scratch. None of these suggestions will delete your existing Outlook data. If you are using the webmail version, it may be something to do with your browser so try using another one. The three main browsers are Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, and they are all free to download, install and use.

Q. How may I protect my e-mail address from spam?

A. Well, the short answer is that you cannot, unfortunately! However, there are a few steps that can be taken to reduce your exposure to it. You may want to consider having more than one e-mail address: use one address whenever you sign up for anything on the Web, and give your other address only to people you know. When you do get spam mail, never reply or click on a link offering to remove you from their mailing list. This will only confirm your address is real and you will then get even more spam. Never sign up for any spam e-mail opt-out lists, these are just another attempt to get your email address, or worse, money. It is important that you have up-to-date anti-virus software. If a virus infects your PC it may try to use your address book to spread itself through e-mail spam to all your contacts. Visit www.getsafeonline.org for more advice about spam prevention and security online.

Q. When I open a scanned document in my word processing package to check that it is OK before sending it in an email, it opens as gibberish. But if I open the scanned document from the original file, it is fine and I am able to read it. What is going wrong?

A. Scanned documents become image files, not text files, and text/word processing packages cannot open image files: they see the file content as the gibberish that you describe. You can see the scanned document properly when you open it from the original file because your computer opens it in your default image processing program such as Paint. You must use an image processing program to open an image file. You would have the reverse problem if you tried to open a text file in an image processing program. If you want to insert images into a text document, then you must follow this sort of approach, which applies to Microsoft Word 2010. First select the Insert tab on the ribbon at the top, then click the Picture button and choose Insert Picture from File.

Q. How do I create a standard "signature" for my outgoing e-mails?

A. This will vary for web-based services such as Hotmail or Googlemail, so click on their Help link and search for signature. For PC-based mailers, the process is typically like the one for Outlook, which is:-

• Go to Tools – Options – Signatures.
• Click New and in the "Edit Signature – Text" box type in your details, e.g. name, phone number, web address etc..
• If you’d like your web address to be a clickable link then be aware that a simple www.mysite.com should suffice but whether its clickable or not might depend on whether the receiver has HTML turned off in their email client or not.
• Make sure to tick the box "Add signatures to all outgoing messages" to use the new signature.
• Click OK and you’re done.

Q. I back up the My Documents folders and files periodically, but this doesn't include my e-mail for which I use Outlook Express. How can I back up my e-mails?

A. There are a number of free e-mail back-up offerings. One that I'd recommend is MailStore. It runs across most Windows operating systems, and supports most Windows PC-based mailers.

Q. My PC runs Windows Vista, and I use Windows Mail as my mailer. When I click on an e-mail link on the Invicta website, a Windows Mail new e-mail screen/form appears but there is no Send button or icon to let me send the e-mail. Why, and what can I do about it?

A. Windows Mail is Vista's successor to the Outlook Express that came with previous Windows operating system. The lack of a Send button is because Windows Mail is not your default mailer, even if it is actually the only that you use. This has probably been caused by something like Microsoft Office having been installed on your PC, and its built-in mailer - Outlook - having made itself the PC's default mailer. To sort this out, click on Start then Default Programs. Then click on Windows Mail in the list that appears, then click on Set.

Q. On closing Outlook Express, it suggested that I compress my e-mail folders. Next time I started Outlook Express, all of my folders except the Inbox had disappeared! Eventually I located the folders, and their contents, on my hard disk in a format ending .dbx. How on earth can I recover them? (This can also occur with the full version of Outlook, and Windows Mail on more recent computers - Editor.)

A. Your computer must have experienced a power failure, or software fault, whilst Outlook Express was running the compression, which has caused what are normally hidden folders to become visible. (.dbx is Outlook Express's own file format.) Open Outlook Express and click on File, then Import then Messages. Now navigate to where you found the missing folders, and follow the on-screen instructions to select and import them. Of course, there is a chance that the failure/fault may have produced some corrupted folders or messages, so that they won't import correctly. If this is a sufficiently significant problem for you, you could try OE-Mail Recovery, which claims to fix these issues, though I have no experience of it myself. It costs $27.

Q. My son has tried to send me e-mails from his company-provided Blackberry mobile telephone, but I am unable to open them in Outlook Express, and see a message reading "No sender - no message". Am I doing something wrong, do I need to change a setting somewhere, or might his employer be blocking them?

A. I'd not heard of this before, but I've done some digging about. It seems to be a known problem - with no solution as yet - particularly for users of smartphones, so it is most unlikely to be anything to do with you, your computer or your son's employer. It must a fault at the mail server, which would normally point at the mobile network service providers, although given how Blackberry handle e-mail - securely, which makes them attractive to companies - and that the problem spans many service providers across several countries, this could also point at Blackberry, though they are fending off enquiries about the problem and referring people to the network providers!

Q. What are attachments?

A. When you send an e-mail it is possible to send other files along with it, such as images or documents. You 'attach' the file by selecting the file on your PC and then using your e-mail program to send the attachment(s) along with your message.