Castleton Information & Educational Technology

Seeing the occasional unintentional “Reply-All” makes me think this subject deserves an explanation along with a warning – especially since the default for replying to messages has changed to “Reply-All” within the web version of Outlook.  Here’s how “Reply-all” works; someone sends a message to a group of people, you being a member of that group. If you wish to reply to the sender only, that is a simple “reply”. If you choose “reply-all”, it will go to the sender and also EVERYONE included in the original group. You can see how not paying attention to this detail has created some embarrassment. For some reason (probably because of end-user demand), Microsoft has decided it is more likely people WANT to do a “Reply-all” and have therefore made it the default when replying to a message. The arrow next to that text gives the option for a simple “reply”. Pay attention to this detail when replying and also look at who is in your TO: prompt before hitting “send”.

All that said, there is a way to change the default to a simple “Reply” rather than “Reply-all”. It can’t be done globally, but the individual can make this change on their own. Here’s how:

First off, click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner and choose “Options”:

Next, look for your reply settings under the Mail tab – choose the radio button for “reply” rather than “reply-all” and make sure to click “Save” when done:

Many of you have received messages about the “Clutter” feature in Office 365. Microsoft is often adding new features, but some can create confusion and make it appear messages are being lost. In reality, it’s making decisions about what could be considered unimportant – decisions that are often wrong. If you dislike the Clutter feature, here’s how to disable it.

First off, you will need to be in the web browser version of Office 365. Simply login to the Portal and click the link for email access on the left. Once your email loads look for the gear in the upper right-hand corner and click on that,and then click on Mail link at the bottom.

Once in Options, expand the Mail settings and look for the clutter tab – select the appropriate radio button to turn it off. That’s all there is too it!

We probably spend the most time fixing account issues for students, faculty, and staff. Believe it or not, you actually have many accounts on many different systems – Portal, Moodle, Email, WIFI, lab computers, etc.  All of these begin with a high-level account that was created when you were an applicant. As your status moves through the various stages (applicant -> registered student -> alumni), the appropriate down-level accounts are created. An example of one of these accounts is the one that authenticates you to the CSC-Community WIFI network. The good news is these accounts feed from the highest-level account so you only have to remember one username and password. The bad news is the low-level accounts might not have the same password if they were created after you activated your account. A password change will usually fix the problem. Keep in mind that the password will sometimes take up to 10 minutes to synchronize to lower-level accounts. You can also try recovering your password by answering the security questions. However, if one of your parents activated your account (a practice that happens all too often), you may not know the answers – especially if they answered the questions as they pertained to them! In that case, we can clear your activation so you can reactivate and set a new password.

Yes, it’s true. Sometimes restarting your computer, phone, device will fix a problem you’re having. Memory corruption, updates, or a program that didn’t close properly can be a drag on your resources. So reboot and refresh!