Lauren Wayne

How to change your Google spreadsheet's language & related formatting settings

2016-03-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

I was having a problem with a Google Sheets spreadsheet and am writing this post in case anyone is having a similar one. It's that type of nitpicky problem that wasn't a huge deal but was affecting my workflow — my spreadsheet thought I was in the UK when I'm really in the US.

What difference does it make if a spreadsheet thinks I'm writing in UK English vs. US English? Well, for me, it came down to the dates column. It really, really wanted my dates to be in this format: DD/MM/YYYY. Whereas we weird Americans tend to like it this way: MM/DD/YYYY, with the month first. I automatically type them like so: 3/16 (for March 16), expecting the spreadsheet to autoformat my entry to 3/16/2016. But…it wasn't. It just sat there: 3/16, and left aligned, as if I'd typed in text instead of a numeric value. If I typed in the words March 16, then it autoformatted it to 16/03/2016, which, though accurate in its own way, was not what I wanted.

So! I tried a couple things first that didn't solve it entirely. First of all, under Format --> Number --> More Formats --> More date and time formats…, I was able to find a way to change that column specifically to be the date format I prefer. But, it didn't "stick." Anytime I typed in a new date, the sheet still didn't seem to know what to do with it. I worked around it by copying and pasting the correctly formatted dates, but that was inadequate.

I also went to my universal Google account settings and found that, somehow and sometime, I had indeed been set to UK English, so I switched that back to US. I refreshed my spreadsheet and hoped that would be the end of it. Nope, still UK. I restarted my browser. Nope.

Then, I found it: File --> Spreadsheet settings…. Hurrah!

You can set your locale, and sure enough, mine was set to United Kingdom. As the Google help notes, "This affects formatting details such as functions, dates, and currency." I'd indeed noticed instead of a dollar sign ($) in my toolbar, there was a pound symbol (£).

You can also change your time zone (useful to know if you're trying to keep track of specific times entries were added to your spreadsheet) and your display language.

Click to embiggen.
Don't get me wrong — I love the UK, but I need my spreadsheets to function the way I'm expecting them to on this side of the pond. Hope that helps someone else who was frustrated by the wrong date formatting, currency settings, or whatever else was bugging you!

How to send from multiple email addresses in one Gmail account

2012-02-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

You now know how to log into multiple Gmail accounts at once and forward other Gmail addresses to a single account.

The next step in our Gmail simplification program is to look like you're still responding to emails from multiple accounts, even though they're really all consolidated.

1. Go into your Gmail Settings.

Click on the gear icon toward the upper righthand corner of your Gmail screen (located underneath your profile icon or name). In the drop-down menu that appears, select "Settings."

2. Go to "Send mail as" settings.

Click images to embiggen.

Select "Accounts and Import" along the top tabs in Settings.

Scroll to "Send mail as:" and select "Add another email address you own."

3. Add another email address.

This will take you to a popup window, and you simply follow the steps.

The name field will be filled in with the name you signed up under for the Gmail account, but you can change it to whatever you want. Enter the email address in its field.

"Treat as an alias" is a new option to me. Gmail help has some more info about it to help you choose.

You can also specify a different reply-to address. For instance, if you're sending from answers {at} yoursite, but you want people to reply to questions {at} yoursite so you can filter them into a special folder, you could specify that here. Just a small warning, not all email systems are compatible with specifying alias email addresses, so a separate reply-to address might not work all the time, either.

I always leave the first, default option selected on this screen, to send through Gmail. Is it ok to admit I don't know much about SMTP or when you'd want to use it? If you don't know either, it's probably safe to assume you want the first option, too.

Obviously, send the verification, and then click on the verification link once it arrives.

4. Choose your settings for "Send mail as."

Click images to embiggen.

Now go back into your Accounts and Import settings. Under "Send mail as" again, decide how you want your alternate addresses' replies to function under "When replying to a message." I select Reply from the same address the message was sent to." That tends to simplify things for me, but you can also have it go to your default address. I've done that previously when I was trying to get everyone writing me at one particular address instead of a hodgepodge of other addresses I'd given out over the years.

Speaking of which, select which one you want to function as your default address by clicking "make default" next to it. The default address will be the one that's automatically chosen whenever you start composing a new email that's not a reply, and it can also be used as above if you always want to reply from it.

5. Configure your signatures for each address.

Click images to embiggen.

If you like having a signature, you can customize a separate sig for each email address. Still under settings, go to "General" in the tabs across the top and then scroll down to "Signature." Select that you want to have a signature, and then click on the address bar there to pop open the menu of all available addresses. You can choose to have signatures for some addresses and not for others, simply by leaving those ones blank. I like to emphasize which identity I'm writing from by rearranging the links in my signature to put the most relevant ones up first.

6. Use your alternate email addresses.

Well, this is the whole point, of course! When you're in the Compose screen, whether you're replying to someone or not, you can always select which email address you want to use. Next to "From," you'll find the same pop-open menu to click on and choose which address you prefer. As you scroll through, you'll see your signature (if you have one) change for each selection.

Pick the email address you want, and start writing!

Notes:

Not all email clients interacting with Gmail recognize alias addresses. I will occasionally receive email responses sent to hobomama {at} gmail (the lowest-level account address) even though I'd sent my email from, for instance, mail {at} laurenwayne.com. For this reason, I suggest not using this function if it's absolutely vital that your addresses/identities stay separate. For instance, if you never, ever want your work contacts to know your personal address (due to security or privacy reasons), I would continue to use separate Gmail accounts.
This Gmail function presupposes that you have permission to use the email addresses you are specifying, and access to any accounts needed to receive the verification code.
If you have a domain name address (such as, webmaster {at} yoursite {dot} com), you might need to first set up your preferences for such email aliases and email forwarding with your domain host.
More info on adding alternate addresses is available in Google Help.

Do I have too many email addresses? Do you? As always, I welcome any suggestions and questions in the comments.

How to forward email to another Gmail account

2012-02-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

As I discussed in "How to log into multiple Google accounts," it is possible to have multiple Gmail windows open in the same browser.

However, it can be even easier for you to have all your Gmail come to a single account, assuming it's prudent to combine them.

For my needs, I have several Gmail addresses that I need to check that all relate to my blogging: my main hobomama Gmail account, mail forwarded from my personal domains (such as {at} LaurenWayne.com), and mail sent to various addresses {at} NaturalParentsNetwork.com (CarNatPar, Lauren, Advertising). Before combining these, I had to log into each Gmail account separately to read the messages, even though it's entirely appropriate to combine them all into a single account for the purposes of checking my inbox and sending replies.

(Note that I've kept my personal email separate, however. I figure that might lead to too much confusion, so I check it separately.)

Here's how you can check multiple Gmail accounts under one login:

1. Go to your Gmail settings of the account you do NOT want to log into from now on.

Click on the gear icon toward the upper righthand corner of your Gmail screen (located underneath your profile icon or name). In the drop-down menu that appears, select "Settings."

What I mean by "the account you do not want to log into" is, this is the account you'll be forwarding mail out of, to flow into the account you'd prefer to check. So right now, set up the forwarding in the reject account.

2. Configure your email forwarding FROM that account.

Click images to embiggen.

Select "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" from the tabs along the top of Settings.

Click "Add a forwarding address" and do so. It will send a confirmation code to the forwarding address, so now you have to log into that account to receive it.

Confirm the code with the first (reject) account. You can click the link in the email Gmail sent you, or there is a box on that same page that will read "Verify [email address]" with a box for the confirmation code. (Will all this require some logging in/out and back-and-forth? Perhaps, if you haven't enabled multiple log-in, or you're forwarding to a non-Gmail account. But it will save you time in the future, so keep on!)

Select "Forward a copy of incoming mail to," and the address you've confirmed should now be in your drop-down menu of forwarding addresses.

Choose what to do with mail forwarded out of this account. Do you want it kept in the inbox, marked as read, archived, or deleted? To keep things tidy but preserve copies in case I choose to separate the accounts in the future, I choose "archive Gmail's copy." What you choose here will affect only the emails as they exist in this account, not as they appear when forwarded. In other words, I selected "archive," but the forwarded emails still appear unread and in my inbox in the preferred account.

3. Ta da!

I don't have another step. I just feel like good tutorials come in threes.

Speaking of which, stay tuned for tomorrow's tutorial: on sending from multiple email addresses, the next logical step in your Gmail account simplification!

Is it just me, or do you also have too many Gmail accounts? Leave any suggestions and questions in the comments.

How to log into multiple Google accounts

2012-02-15T22:27:00.000-08:00

Two Gmail accounts open in the same browser simultaneously,
with no computers exploding

If you want to check multiple Gmail accounts or access (some) other Google accounts without logging in and out or opening a new browser, here's a tutorial to show you the easy way to handle this.

All you need to do is enable multiple sign-in and then sign in to each account, switching among them as needed.

1. Enable multiple sign-in for Google accounts within your web browser.

Go to https://accounts.google.com/b/0/MultipleSessions, select "On - Use multiple Google Accounts in the same web browser," and save.

2. Log into another account.

For most Google products, look in the top righthand corner to find a little down arrow next to your profile icon (if you have one) or your login email address. When you click the arrow, the drop-down menu above will appear. Click on "Switch account."

Presumably you will see yourself signed into only one account, marked "default." Click "Sign in to another account…" to do just that.

3. Switch back and forth between the accounts and add in others.

Yes, it's the same picture again.
Whichever account you're using in that window will have the checkmark next to it and be bolded. Click on a different account to switch to it.

Notes:

This works with Gmail/Google accounts as well as Google Apps accounts that are on a personal domain, such as my lauren {at} naturalparentsnetwork {dot} com address.
Multiple sign-in currently works with a number of Google products, including: Calendar, Docs (Google Apps accounts only), Gmail, Google+, Groups, iGoogle, Maps, Reader, Voice, YouTube, and more. The full list is available in the help section.
The first account you use to sign in will be your default account during that session until you log out of all accounts. If you open a new window for Gmail, for instance, it will load your default account and you'll need to switch to any alternate account you want to see.
If you log out in any Google product, you will be signed out of all your accounts across Google simultaneously.
If you visit Google products that don't support multiple sign-in, that product will automatically sign in to your default account.

Multiple Google accounts on a smartphone

Google presupposes that you're using these products on your computer/desktop, but I've found Gmail and ~~iGoogle~~Inbox [edited 2016] on my phone support multiple sign-in as well, handy since Sam and I share a phone but need to check both email accounts.

Here's an article showing how to log into multiple Gmail accounts on a smartphone, which includes a helpful screenshot showing how multiple sign-in is accessed through the menu at the bottom of the Gmail screen.

How well does multiple sign-in work for you? Leave your tips or questions in the comments.

How to tag Facebook pages from your fan page

2012-02-14T15:03:00.000-08:00

I'm banned from Facebook for today due to suspected malware violations,¹ which means I'll write about Facebook from afar.

Here's an(other) Facebook issue that was bugging me for months: I didn't seem to have the ability to tag other Facebook pages from my own fan pages.

So, for instance, I'd be on my Hobo Mama Facebook page and want to @ another fabulous fan page, and sometimes it would let me, but mostly it wouldn't.

I clicked around online, trying to find a fix, but nothing seemed to help. Until … I combined advice I received with one other crucial step: waiting a bit.

So, here is my two-step process to tag any page from your Facebook fan page. (Note that this doesn't work to tag people or personal profiles, as that doesn't seem to be a fan page functionality.)

1. "Like" the pages you want to tag as your Facebook page.

Here's how to do that:

Facebook defaults to letting you use Facebook as your personal profile, in my case Lauren Wayne. If you go up to the righthand corner and click the down-arrow next to Home, you'll see you can select alternatively to "Use Facebook as:" and then select any page of which you're an admin.
Once you click on the page you want to use, it will automatically redirect you to that page (such as, Hobo Mama). You'll then need to renavigate back to the page you want to like.
Click "like" on the page you wanted to tag. Ta-da!

I find little value in regularly using Facebook as my page, because it cuts down on what you can do on Facebook (such as visit your friends' profiles, post to private group pages, or chat²).
Also, if you "like" a page as a person, that page's fan count goes up. If you "like" it as a page, too, it does not.
After you're done liking a page as your page, you can click the arrow to go back to using Facebook as a person again as you wish.

2. Wait awhile.

Yep, this was the crucial second step I was missing. I heard about step #1 and tried it, but it still didn't work. Then I came back another day and tried to tag some of those pages — and it did work! So it apparently just takes a bit of time for Facebook to catch on to the changes you've made. I haven't timed how long it takes, but it seems to be within an hour or so, so check back. If I know I'm going to want to tag something soon, I try to "like" it right away as my page so it will be ready when I go to tag.

That's all!

Click here to Tweet this post!

Has this worked for you to tag other fan pages from your Facebook page? Any other tips or tricks to add?

1 I have run my Mac security update but they won't let me back in for 24 hours. I'm not sure how not letting me post even a comment for 24 hours protects people from malware, but then again, I'm one of those smug people on a Mac.^↩
2 I was trying to confirm what access is limited, but did I mention I'm banned from Facebook? So this is just going off my memory and a best guess.^↩

Customize your Facebook links in status updates

2011-11-15T19:44:00.000-08:00

Here's a nice, simple tutorial for how to make the links you put into your Facebook status box look the way you want them to.

I believe it was Kelly of KellyNaturally.com who first clued me in to changing the descriptive text, and she's actually someone I've been talking with recently about frustrating Facebook changes that have restricted our customizations. That said, I hope most or some of the following still work for you (or will in the future)!

(Click images to see them larger.)

When you paste or type a link into the status box, Facebook will try to pull up a title, URL, description, and thumbnail for you. Sometimes this is helpful. Sometimes this is a big bucket of fail.

Randomly, Facebook used to pull the post description from my first comment. I believe this is some weird Blogger–Facebook glitch. It was not ideal.

Since adding my meta keywords and blog description, Facebook now draws from that — in this case, A blog about natural parenting — which is marginally preferable though still off.

But I can change it to be what I want.

Hover your mouse over the description, and you'll see it highlights.

Click it, and now it's editable.

Leave it and add to it, or delete it and start fresh.

Click outside the box to set it.

Other ways to customize:

Customize the status. Delete the link once Facebook has "found" it and pulled up the preview, and then type in your own description/status in the main box. However, just to point out as well, it used to be that the title of my post would show where it says just "Hobo Mama," but again, Facebook is glitching. Because of this, sometimes I leave the full link in the status update box so that people know it's not linking just to my homepage.
Select a thumbnail, or no thumbnail. As you can see, Facebook isn't playing nicely with Blogger right now (or with other blog platforms, either, frankly), so it's pulling up a max of one thumbnail from my posts lately ("1 of 1"). Usually, it would show all possible thumbnails and I could flip through them to choose the one I like best. If having a thumbnail (or the wrong one) would distract, you can click "No Thumbnail" to make it go away.

Note

These customization options work only if you're putting in links manually. They won't take effect or be editable if links are auto-populated on your page or wall (such as from Networked Blogs or similar).

If you have other favorite customizations or reports of FB bugginess (just to commiserate), add them in the comments!

How to purge your email inbox

2011-03-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

I am NOT an expert on reducing email clutter and controlling what comes in each day. Best to start with a caveat. That said, I recently cleared my personal Gmail account from over 2,000 unread messages (you read that correctly) to 42.

Here are a few of the tips and tricks that I sometimes follow to help me keep a handle on inbox overload (some of which I should really attend to more often!).

For this purpose, I'm going to assume you use Gmail or will consider using it after I tell you about some of the clutter-busting features. However, a lot of the tips can be easily applied to other email clients.

Keep it from coming into your inbox in the first place.

Are you subscribed to umpteen email newsletters and mailing lists that you don't pay any attention to? If the last time you used a newsletter coupon from an online store was a year ago, would it be better to unsubscribe from the store's mailing list and simply go check a coupon site (like RetailMeNot, my personal favorite) when you need to?

Send it straight to archives.

Maybe you want to keep receiving a newsletter or other frequent mailing — but you don't want to have to see it. You'll feel better if you know it's there and can find it by keyword, but you don't want to have to click "archive" on each newsletter. If you have Gmail, you can set up filters to send select messages straight to your archives, and potentially into a specific folder/label of your choosing.

Click images to see them larger.

Up at the top of your Gmail screen, there's a tiny link next to the search box that says "Create a filter." Fill in one or more of the search options and click "Test Search" to make sure it's finding what you want filtered (and not what you don't want — you can use quotes to find phrases and negatives to exclude words or phrases in your search terms if you need to). Once you're happy, click "Next Step" and then select "Skip the Inbox" (and, if you want "Apply the label"). If you dislike having unread messages in your folders, you can also choose "Mark as read." (Personally, I've just hidden my unread word counts, a feature in Labs under Settings.) Creating multiple filters takes awhile (it's more work than unsubscribing, for instance), but it can be worth taking the time now to free you up in the future.

Get rid of emails older than 6 months.

You can choose your own figure in place of "6 months" — longer if you're gun shy, and shorter if you're determined to go minimalist. (I set my limit at a month, and it needed to fit all on one screen.) Plus, you can choose whether you delete the emails or do something less drastic like mark them as read or archive them out of your inbox. You're very, very, very unlikely to do something in response to an email you received even a few weeks ago if you haven't by now. Save yourself the guilt and the potential for bother.

Here are what I think are definite candidates for deletion (for sure if it's old and some as they come in to keep clutter at bay):

Any email containing coupons or deals that will certainly have expired by now
E-newsletters you haven't read yet
Notifications from your bank, credit cards, and the like, telling you you have a message or a new statement in your account without any further actual information in the body of the email
Duplicates of anything, like a reminder to respond to an invitation from a year ago (and, yeah, the invitation, too)
Notices that someone's following you on Twitter or friending you on Facebook
Pleas to take a survey or leave feedback
Anything making you feel guilty or sad. (This might be an archive situation rather than full delete, but it's worth considering.)
Reminders to do something you've remembered (such as from an online calendar or bill-pay service)
Email forwards from your mom (She'll send them again — don't worry.)

These are emails you might want to save but out of your inbox:

Anything personal written directly to you (aw! how rare!)
Anything you might want to reference later for your own reasons
Anything that's needed for tax purposes or other official business

I think it's valid to archive things that are old (or that will be pushed to another page in your inbox, even), because I know I'm unlikely to scan through hundreds or thousands of emails looking for one in particular. I'm much more likely to use the search function to locate something if it's not on the first page of my inbox. Might as well just archive the rest, then!

Subscribe to RSS feeds instead.

This is a tricky one, because (a) much depends on your own reading habits and (b) your feed reader might be as bloated and unmanageable as mine. (Purging your reader's another post!) But if you find, like me, that you do almost all your online reading on blogs and websites directly and almost none out of email links, it might be better to unsubscribe from your email lists and find an alternative. For instance, companies that send out newsletters often have blogs you could subscribe to just as easily, or perhaps a Facebook page you could "like" to get notice of current sales and coupons. Your local newspaper could email you a daily summary of the headlines — or you could just visit their site to find them on your own as you wish. One of the newsletters I subscribe to but rarely get around to clicking the links on is from Writer's Digest — when I do click a link, I notice it goes to that author's blog. Why don't I just subscribe to the blogs that interest me, then? I'll have a better chance of reading it once in awhile that way.

Have some stock answers handy.

Do you get or send the same emails time and again? I've found having a pre-formulated template can cut down on the amount of time I have to think about responding, which makes my responses faster (and gets those emails out of my inbox). You can craft a stock email in a number of ways: in a saved file in a simple text / text edit program, in your drafts in your email (just leave it there and copy and paste when you need it), or under Settings --> Labs --> Canned Responses (select Enable). I like to leave CAPS notes for elements I need to personalize (e.g., "Hi, PERSONNAME!"). I have canned responses waiting for customer service emails for our business (such as for people who can't locate their packages or want to return something), and for my blogging (Carnival of Natural Parenting editing emails and giveaway prize announcements, for instance). As long as it's not something that requires a completely personal touch, no one will be offended. (I wouldn't recommend creating one to respond to your mom, for instance, unless it's "What a funny email forward! I've never seen that one before.")

Archive any email where you're waiting for a response.

Unless you need to have it sitting in your inbox staring at you for another reason, trust that it will pop back up if a response is sent to you and you have to take a turn again.

Go radical with a zero inbox.

I read about the "Inbox Zero" idea awhile ago, but I've never trained myself to implement the system. The general idea is that you look at each email once, deal with it right then, and move on with your life. You have to set up a system of filters and archived labels or folders so that nothing stays in your inbox (such as "Read If Bored" for newsletters or "Deal With Today" for urgent messages). By the end of each day, you should have completely cleared your inbox (kind of like FlyLady's kitchen-sink philosophy).

The problem I have with this is that I'm very much trained as an out-of-sight/out-of-mind sort of person. Even the second page of my inbox might as well be Siberia for the chances I'll ever get there. I would have to be very, very diligent in retraining myself for this to work — teaching myself to check the urgent folders each day. I'm wondering if I should try it for a month in one of my inboxes to see if I can handle it or not.

Regardless, I like the general ideas behind it — that you have to be active about dealing with emails as they come in. You waste time and frustrate yourself looking at an email twenty times rather than just dealing with it then. (Much like FlyLady's "Do It Now" principle. I am a FlyLady dropout, but I can still hear her voice in my head…)

For instance, I get a lot of affiliate emails in my blogging inbox telling me what sales and deals I could promote for my affiliate brands — many more notices than I can do anything with. I make sure to label them all with a special label. That way, I can archive them immediately and when I have time and the desire, I can go through my label to find relevant posts. It can also help me in deleting old posts — anything under that label that's more than a couple months old is now outdated and can be safely expunged.

Use Priority Inbox to help you, well, prioritize.

Gmail has a feature now called "Priority Inbox" to help you automatically filter the urgent messages to the top. I appreciate it, because emails that aren't so important (newsletters, mailing lists) sink to the bottom and stay there if I need them later. I try to check the bottom of my inbox, titled "Everything else," at least a couple times a day to see if anything important got caught down there, and to clean out the really unimportant stuff. But it's the top section, "Important and unread," that I use the most. I like having this tiered system.

The only problem for me is the middle section, which is "Starred" emails that are either unimportant or important but read, I totally ignore. It's like the Scary Guilt Horror section of my inbox, so I keep hiding from it. I know this is psychological. To deal with this, in my personal inbox, I now have no emails in the Starred section. Anything I know I want to deal with urgently I just keep marked as unread and important (and starred if I really want to emphasize it).

Consolidate your inboxes.

I admit I have a personal inbox and a blogging inbox, but I actually have used this tip to help me keep things manageable. You don't want to be checking and managing numerous email inboxes every day; something's bound to get lost in the shuffle (if only your peace of mind). Gmail allows you to forward email into or out of an account (under Settings --> Forwarding). Your domain host will allow you to forward email sent to you at a domain name (such as mail {at} laurenwayne.com) to an address of your choosing. I have email coming to me at mail {at} hobomama.com, mail {at} laurenwayne.com, lauren {at} naturalparentsnetwork.com, etc. — but they all go to one Gmail account.

To keep things organized, you can go to Settings --> Accounts and Import and add addresses you send mail from. For instance, in my hobomama {at} gmail account, I can send mail as lauren {at} naturalparentsnetwork. That way, if someone writes to my NPN address and I hit reply, my Gmail settings mean that it will reply from that address.

So that's how I've begun the great email purging, and how I intend to move on from here. I have yet to tackle my blogging inbox, so I'll let you know how it goes.

If you wrote me several months ago and haven't heard back from me? Oops, sorry. And now it's likely your message will get caught in my decluttering. If it's really important, email me back and I'll mark it as important and unread … again.

Ah, well, progress, not perfection! (Darn, that FlyLady is catchy.)

What are your inbox-purging or email-handling tips? I can use more!

Image courtesy Agne Kveselyte on stock.xchng

New rich-text signatures in Gmail

2010-09-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

Just as a short update to my post on creating HTML signatures in Gmail:

Gmail has finally released a long-awaited function for creating a signature in rich text format.

Click the image to see it bigger. Ignore that it's in German. That's a quirk of mine.

This screen is in Settings in Gmail (which you can reach by clicking the link in the top right corner). The box where my signature is is where you paste in or craft your own signature, and the rich-text icons allow you to control and customize font styles, colors, sizes, and alignment, or to add lists, links, and images.

So that should be easier, all around! I just pasted my previous HTML signature into the rich-text box, and it transferred perfectly. You could also build one from scratch, and you can include URLs and images as you wish, so you can link to your website or social media pages and include an avatar or business logo.

You can even have a different signature for each reply-to address, so if you wanted to have a personal signature and a business signature, that's possible. Or if you run separate businesses (such as a blog and a store), you might have one signature that goes to readers and one that goes to customers. As an author, you could include an image of your book cover and a link to the Amazon buying page.

There's really no downside to having a simple but effective signature. I encourage you to take advantage of the signature function, and personalize the emails your readers receive. Thanks to Gmail for realizing rich-text was the next (overdue) step forward!

"Usernames must be at least 5 characters long" Facebook bug for custom URLs

2010-06-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

If you've been getting this obnoxious error message —

"Usernames must be at least
5 characters long"

— when you're trying to set your Facebook custom URL, you're not alone.

I was having this problem lately. After much thought, trial and error while typing in possibilities, and a public opinion poll, I had decided on the custom URL for my Hobo Mama page: http://www.facebook.com/HoboMamaBlog

I toddled off to the Facebook link to claim my URL — http://www.facebook.com/username — which works both for personal Facebook pages and for business/blog/etc. fan pages.

I typed my choice into the little box and hit "Check availability." And, um … no. Facebook scolded me with an incomprehensible message: "Usernames must be at least 5 characters long."

HoboMamaBlog, I read. HoboMamaBlog. I stared at it. I squinted. Yes, even without all the bother of actual counting, that sucker was definitely over 5 characters.

Well, good old Google to the rescue.

I found this Hubspot blog post by Ellie Mirman: "How to Create a Facebook Page Vanity URL." Ellie in the post did not explain the error and offer a workaround — but Ellie in the comments section helpfully did!

Piecing Ellie's advice together with some advice I found on a Facebook forum that I for some reason can't locate at the moment, I played around with entering my name, erasing it, clicking "Check availability" while there was nothing in the box, then typing it in again. It still took a few tries, but eventually: It took! I have my new Facebook page URL!¹

So, basically, it's a known bug. Facebook is aware of the issue (I'm told), but so far this is the best workaround.

Assuming you don't yet have a Facebook custom URL, here are the details on how to get one:

First, the why: It's easier! You can tell people to find you on Facebook by saying, "Go to Facebook slash HoboMamaBlog." Rather than saying, "Go to facebook.com/pages/Hobo-Mama/322453825286." Oof, what a mouthful! The former also fits better on business or calling cards, darling. And, you know, why not? It's fun; it's cute; it shows you care.

So you want one? Good.

Where: Go to http://www.facebook.com/username.

You can click on images to see them bigger.

Personal first: You will have to set a personal user name first if you don't already have one before setting any for your pages. My personal Facebook name is http://www.facebook.com/hobomama (and feel free to friend me if you like). As you can see, I "stole" hobomama from myself so it was no longer available when I wanted it for my blog's Facebook page, which meant I belatedly had to come up with something else.

Permanence: Do think long and hard about what you want your permanent URLs to be, for all your Facebook profiles and pages, because so far Facebook is being hard-nosed about allowing changes to usernames. Basically, you can change your personal one once. You cannot change your business (page) ones. You cannot transfer a username to or from someone else. (So on that note, triple check your spelling, too!)

Eligibility: All verified Facebook accounts are allowed to set a personal username. Fan pages, however, must have 25 fans before you can set a username for a fan page.² (This is to prevent name squatting.)

What's in a name:

Usernames can only contain alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) or a period ("."). I was kind of bummed that no other punctuation was allowed, such as an underscore. If you use a period for your own aesthetic sensibilities, know that it does not make your username unique from the same name without the period(s). That is, "hobo.mama" is considered the same as "hobomama." I did check, thanks to Toni Lamn's suggestion.
Usernames must be at least 5 characters long. Har har har. But it's true. "HM" wouldn't fly.
You can't claim someone else's username. (Duh.)
You can't claim a copyrighted username — or you might be able to, but Facebook can then take it away if a rights holder complains. So even if your last name is McDonald and you're managing your family fan page, don't bother registering "mcdonalds" as your username.
"Certain words" are not allowed. I think we can all guess what might be on that list. But, really, do you want your mother to see such a username? Shame on you for even considering it. Unless you're not Facebook friends with your mom. Then it might sort of rock.
You're also not allowed to use super generic words like "pizza" or "flowers," to prevent (again) people from squatting on popular SEO terms.

How: Type in your username and click "Check availability." If you get the infamous "5 characters" error and your username is, in fact, more than 5 characters, then backspace, click "Check availability" anyway, then type again. Rinse, repeat. Hopefully one of those times Facebook will obey and let you go through with the process. You'll get a big warning that this will go on your permanent record. If you are happy with same, go ahead and confirm. Congratulations! You have a personal username, i.e., custom URL with Facebook.

Down to business: So, if you have a Facebook fan (er, "like") page and want a username for that one (or multiple pages), then you just go back to the same link — http://www.facebook.com/username — and start again.

Click "Set a username for your Pages" underneath the yellow box telling you your personal username has already been set.
You'll see a drop-down menu with all the pages where you're an administrator. Select the one you want.
The same rules for usernames as above apply.
The same error might also apply, so use the delete-and-click workaround.
Remember the important differences between fan page usernames and personal:
- You need at least 25 people "liking" your page before you're allowed to set a name.
- The name you choose will be permanent. Full stop.
Once you're ready, click to confirm.

That's it! Now you should be the owner of a brand-new Facebook Page custom URL. If you have multiple pages, just repeat the process again.

More info can be found in the Facebook help section on the subject.

Enjoy! And visit me. And like me! I'm nice.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lauren-Wayne-author/104277789602502?ref=ts (sigh — so long, so ugly)
http://www.facebook.com/HoboMamaBlog
http://www.facebook.com/CarNatPar
(I set that one, too, while I was at it.)

Thanks again to Ellie for posting the workaround!

1 I only have a custom URL so far for my Hobo Mama page, because my Lauren Wayne page is soooo lonely that I do not as yet qualify for one. Anyone want to "like" me there? Anyone?^↩
2 Did I mention I need more fans? I need more fans.

^↩

Convert your time zone for deadlines

2010-04-06T02:19:00.000-07:00

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. This one will help in making sure you get your carnival submission in by the right time, no matter where in the world you live!

All right, this is probably one of the lighter tutorials for our carnival participants, but it does come up every month, and I might as well have a blog post to point people to.

All the writers outside of the Pacific time zone I set the deadline for want to know: When is the article due in their time?

This tutorial can also help anyone who's writing for an editor across time-zone lines or entering a contest with a firm deadline.

Submissions for the Carnival of Natural Parenting are due by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. Now, I'm not encouraging anyone to wait until the very last second to turn their entries in (although I generally do just that), but it's good to know the latest you can click "send" on the email, isn't it?

But if you live nowhere near Pacific time and can't do the math in your head:

You need a time zone converter.

Here's one:

World Time Server

The top line is showing you 11:45 p.m. (Daylight Saving Time) for Pacific time, the time zone I chose, because I live in Seattle. I wanted as much time as possible to turn in my article. I'm like that.

Find your own country, city, or state in the drop-down menu where it says "In."

Voila! Now you know what your actual deadline is.

Here's a cheat sheet for some of our most common entry time zones, adjusted for 11:59 p.m. PDT. If I say "next day," that means that time on the date after the stated carnival due date (for this carnival, then, April 7).

Time Zone	Adjusted Time
Hawaii Time	8:59 p.m.
Alaska Aleutian Time	9:59 p.m.
Alaska Time	10:59 p.m.
Pacific Time	11:59 p.m.
Mountain Time	12:59 a.m. (next day)
Central Time	1:59 a.m. (next day)
Eastern Time	2:59 a.m. (next day)
Atlantic Time	3:59 a.m. (next day)
Western Africa Time	6:59 a.m. (next day)
Greenwich Mean Time	7:59 a.m. (next day)
Central European Time	8:59 a.m. (next day)
Eastern European Time	9:59 a.m. (next day)
India Standard Time	12:29 p.m. (next day)
Western Australia	2:59 p.m. (next day)
Japan Standard Time	3:59 p.m. (next day)
Australia New South Wales Time	4:59 p.m. (next day)
New Zealand Time	6:59 p.m. (next day)

What time zones am I forgetting? I'll add places if you leave a comment with a request.

Hope that helps you as you plan your procrastination!

April 11, ETA: I realized you might like a chart for Eastern time as well, since some of our Carnival day deadlines are in Eastern. Here you go, a conversion of noon EDT!

Time Zone	Adjusted Time
Hawaii Time	6:00 a.m.
Alaska Aleutian Time	7:00 a.m.
Alaska Time	8:00 a.m.
Pacific Time	9:00 a.m.
Mountain Time	10:00 a.m.
Central Time	11:00 a.m.
Eastern Time	12:00 p.m.
Atlantic Time	1:00 p.m.
Western Africa Time	4:00 p.m.
Greenwich Mean Time	5:00 p.m.
Central European Time	6:00 p.m.
Eastern European Time	7:00 p.m.
India Standard Time	9:30 p.m.
Western Australia	12:00 a.m. (next day)
Japan Standard Time	1:00 a.m. (next day)
Australia New South Wales Time	2:00 a.m. (next day)
New Zealand Time	4:00 a.m. (next day)

P.S. A Facebook comment from mamamilkers said about this post: "I think you made have just taken nerd to the nth degree ;)" I'll take that as a compliment...

Create a Facebook landing page for new fans

2010-03-25T13:15:00.000-07:00

I was wondering how companies and blogs had sweet landing pages, and now I know!

If you don't know what a Facebook landing page is — and you have a blog or website or product or company or whatever you're promoting with a Facebook fan page — then you need to find out and get yourself one!

It's an html page that shows up whenever a potential fan clicks on your Facebook page link.

It's a way to give a quick snapshot of who you are and what you do, or to showcase a special deal or current offer.

If you're an author, you could put up an image of your latest book cover and invite people to click through and buy, or sign up for your blog.
If you're a blogger, you could tell potential fans what you like to write about and how they can get in touch.
If you're a store, you could highlight a current coupon code or the season's new line.
If you're a business, you could put up your mission statement and contact information.

Want to see some landing pages in action?

Love love love the Grumbles & Grunts one (of the Grumbles & Grunts blog), and that's what first inspired me to find out what a landing page was and how I could get me some of that action!

I want mine to look pretty like that sometime.

Other examples:

If anyone can come up with some more natural parenting-friendly examples, please leave the link. I seriously had so much trouble finding anyone I know who has a landing page, so I'm glad I'm getting the word out! :)

How to make a landing page

I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Do what I did — follow this Mashable tutorial:

HOW TO: Build a Facebook Landing Page for Your Business

Easy as pie. The how-to is 4 steps long, and it was very clear-cut.

Testing your landing page

If you're anything like me and you try to preview the functionality of a visitor clicking on your link and finding the landing page — you will be disappointed. I say this because I assume you are your own fan? (If not, why not?)

Once you're a fan, you will no longer see the landing page as the default view when coming upon a Facebook page. It will instead default to the Wall tab. If you couldn't see some of the examples I put in the example list, for instance, it's probably because you're a fan of those sites.

But you can still check the html by clicking on the tab at the top of your fan page. You can also log out of Facebook and then surf to your Facebook page to make sure the landing page is what shows as the default view for non-fans.

Wanna see my landing page?

I don't yet have a public LaurenWayne.com Facebook page because it just now occurred to me to make one.

But here's my current Hobo Mama landing page.

I'd like to make it more sophisticated at some point, but it will do for now, to give visitors a quick intro to my blogs and all the ways to connect with me!

[ETA: All right, I made a Lauren Wayne Facebook page but it doesn't have a landing page yet... Feel free to fan me, and you can see any updates in the future!]

Share your landing pages in the comments. I'd love to make new Facebook friends.

HTML signatures in Gmail: An easy how-to

2010-03-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

Update, September 2010: Gmail has finally unveiled a rich-text signature function that replaces this method, though you can still read on for benefits and tips of creating an email signature.

I've been wanting an HTML signature in rich text for my Gmail account for when I send business emails, so I can promote my websites, Twitter account, and Facebook pages — but all in a streamlined and attractive manner.

Gmail doesn't currently support rich text or html formatting in the sig box, which is on the Settings page.

Here was the best I could do in plain text:

~*~
Lauren Wayne

www.HoboMama.com
www.HoboMamaReviews.com
www.LaurenWayne.com

www.Twitter.com/Hobo_Mama
www.Facebook.com/HoboMama
www.facebook.com/pages/Hobo-Mama/322453825286

Unwieldy, isn't it?

I don't like how lengthy the Facebook URLs are, and I don't like that the sig as a whole is a whopping 10 lines long. For Gmail to automatically parse the html, I had to keep at least the "www" part intact, which meant I had to use a plain URL rather than just, say, a blog name (www.HoboMama.com vs. Hobo Mama or HoboMama.com).

So, since I didn't like that, what did I like? Well, here's what I ended up with, using my super-cool and sneaky method:

•••
Lauren Wayne
Hobo Mama • Hobo Mama Reviews • LaurenWayne.com
Twitter • Facebook • Facebook Page

And here, my friends, is how I got there:

First of all, you need a place to edit your html. If you know how to hand-code html and preview it online, go to it. I found the easiest way in a WYSIWYG sort of way was to use a Blogger account. For my purposes, I used my standard Hobo Mama account.

In Blogger/Blogspot, create a new post. You can title it "gmail signature" or something else memorable in case you want to come back to it. You won't be publishing it, just saving it as a draft, and you can always delete it after you're done tweaking your signature if you want to keep your account clean.
Click on the Compose tab. Type in your signature as you want it to look. Use the Link function to add URLs to keywords. Change fonts and colors as you wish. You can add in special characters like bullets. You could even add images, such as a company logo. In fact, you could make your whole signature just one big image if you'd rather and know how to edit image files.
Copy the finished signature.

(Click on images to see them bigger.)

All right, now we head over to Gmail. As I said, you can't use any html or rich-text formatting in the signature box, so we'll skip that box. You could simply copy and paste your signature into each email individually, but that's cumbersome. The method I came up with isn't as easy as having a traditional signature, but it takes only a second or two each time you compose an email and it uses the Canned Responses feature in Gmail Labs.

Go to Settings in Gmail (top right corner).
Click Labs along the top tabs.

Scroll down or do a search for Canned Responses and select Enable next to it (yes, "email for the truly lazy"). At the top or bottom of the Labs page, click Save Changes.

Now click on Compose Mail. Make sure you've selected Rich Text as your messaging view. Paste your signature into the message box. It should paste exactly as you had it formatted in the Blogger box. You can change the font or layout further using Gmail's rich-text editing.
As an optional extra, if your signature font is formatted in a way unlike the way you would like your message to be (for instance, my signature is in blue, but I prefer my message font to be in black), add in a simple line of text above your signature that you usually use to start a message. In my case, I added "Hi!" I formatted "Hi!" in my preferred black message font. [ETA: I just realized what would be even easier and more convenient would be to add how you usually CLOSE your emails, such as your name!]
Now that you've enabled Canned Responses, there should be a line that says Canned Responses just above your message box. Click on Canned Responses and select Save --> New canned response... A box will pop up and ask you for a name to save it under; you can choose something like "business signature."

Now you can Discard your draft message.
Next time you go to email someone, either through Compose or Reply, click on Canned Responses --> Insert [business signature or whatever you called it].
Voila! Your signature appears. You can tweak it in the message box if you'd like, or go back to Blogger to do major revamps. If you want to save a change, simply click on Canned Responses --> Save --> [business signature] again, and OK the warning that pops up that you're saving over a saved canned response.

I know this method isn't quite as convenient as having a signature automatically appear whenever you click Compose, but it's the most streamlined way I could find for now!

The good news is this method lets you choose which messages you want to put a signature on. You could even have multiple signatures, such as a personal one and a business one, and choose which signature you want each recipient to see. You could put your address and contact info in emails you send to publishers, for instance, but your URLs alone for emails to colleagues, just saving each signature under a different name.

Hope this tutorial helped you! Let me know, or give me your own tips.