Frequently Asked Questions

I cannot receive and send email with Desktop Fay. How do I enter my settings properly?

There are two ways to receive and send email messages. The first (and the best) is to use some Email client program, like Outlook Express or Desktop Fay. The second is Web-based mail using an Internet browser program, like Internet Explorer. Unfortunately some free Email providers will only allow you to use the second way so that they can show advertisements to you when you are receiving or sending your messages. Contact your Email provider to find out whether they allow POP3 access (the first way) and what the settings for their server are.

To enter your email settings, right-click on Desktop Fay window, select "Options..." and then click the "Receive mail" tab in the Options window.

For "Incoming mail server type" select the type of your email server - "POP3" or "IMAP". If you are unsure what to select, leave the default as "POP3".

For "Incoming mail server name" enter the domain name or the IP address of mail server from which your email messages will be received. If you don't know what to enter, contact your Email service provider. Usually this is "mail" dot last-part-of-your-email-address. For example if your email address is somename@somedomain.com , then there is possibility to guess your incoming mail server name as mail.somedomain.com . But this is only a guess - contact your Email provider to find out the correct server name.

For "User name" enter your user name for your email server. Usually this is the first part of your Email address (before "@"). For example if your email address is somename@somedomain.com , then most likely your user name is somename . Contact your Email provider to find out your correct user name.

For "Password" enter your email password.

The rest of the options in this tab may be left as is. Now click the "Send mail" tab.

For "Outgoing (SMTP) server name" enter the domain name or IP address of SMTP server through which your Email messages will be sent. If you don't know what to enter, contact your Email provider. Usually you can enter the same as for "Incoming server name" (see above).

The rest of options in this tab may be left as is. That's all... You should now be able to receive and send email messages with Desktop Fay.

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I have prepared a mailing list. How do I personalize each email when sending a message to the list?

Desktop Fay has macrocommands that you can include in email message subject and/or text. Before sending each email Fay will replace the commands with their results. The macrocommands are:

%Name - includes recipient's name;
%FirstName - includes recipient's first name;
%LastName - includes recipient's last name;
%Email - includes recipient's Email address;
%Exec() - includes the result of execution of an external program or script.

For example say you have mailing list of your customers. And you have a program keygen.exe located in c:\work folder. Say the program takes the customer's name as a command-line parameter and writes an unique code to the console as a result. You want to send those unique codes to all of your customers. Then you would write email message text something like this:

Dear %Name, here is your unique code: %Exec(c:\work\keygen.exe %Name)

and send it to your prepared mailing list. Each of the recipients will receive a customized Email message containing his/her name and unique code.

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I am not getting speech from Fay. Is there a compatibility problem with the speech engine that is used for MS Agents?

Fay is not a MS Agent-based application - the animation engine for her was created from scratch. So for the current version of Desktop Fay, speech is not an option. Future versions may have the MS text-to-speech engine built-in.

There is another way to hear Fay talk. Record any phrase as a wav file and use it as a custom sound for event reminder. You can have different sounds for different reminders.

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Is my email password stored in encrypted way on my hard drive?

Desktop Fay stores your email password on your hard drive in safely encrypted way. However though it is difficult, but not impossible to recover it. So if other people have access to your computer, you may choose not to enter password in Desktop Fay options window for security reasons. But in this case you will have to enter your password every time when you are going to receive Email messages, and Desktop Fay will not be able to check and notify you about new Email messages on the server.

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How Desktop Fay will handle possible malicious ActiveX components or scripts that could be embedded in incoming messages?

Actual representation of email messages in Desktop Fay window is handled by Microsoft Internet Explorer. So Desktop Fay will handle all message content exactly the same way as any Microsoft product, such as Internet Explorer or Outlook Express. It depends on what version of Internet Explorer you have installed and how it is configured. For example, you may choose to disable ActiveX execution in Internet Explorer, and Desktop Fay will not execute them as well.
It is recommended that you use some antivirus software that is able to automatically scan incoming email messages and to monitor scripts execution, such as Norton Antivirus 2006. Desktop Fay is fully compatible with such software.

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Why does she notify me about new messages over and over again even after I have deleted them?

She cannot notify of non-existent messages. If she notifies, the messages are exist somewhere on server. Most likely you have "Leave messages on server" option checked. It's recommended to switch off "Leave messages on server" option. With this option turned off (the default setting), the messages are deleted from server as soon as they are received to your local computer (into Desktop Fay) and exist only at your local computer until you delete them.

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