SEO (search engine optimization) musings

i just did a web search for a topic where i don't have very much context to judge how relevant / reliable the results are

of course i reflexively ignored the paid results

for the "organic" results, if it's a topic i am familiar with, i may glance briefly at the top results - mostly for entertainment value, at the ridiculous junk that manipulated its way to the top

however, with something unfamiliar, i hovered briefly over the top "organic" result, wondering if it was worth the effort to click through to see how useful it might be

given the rampant manipulation behind high ranking, i wonder how many of us also reflexively ignore the top N organic results

recover outlook smart folders

got some really cool "smart folders" in outlook?

but outlook is crashing and even a rebuild didn't fix it?

so you just created an entirely fresh identity, which fixed the crashing (finally) - but you really don't want to have to try to remember how all those smart folders were built?

try this:

• outlook stuff is stored here: ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/
• within that, there's: Main Identity/Data Records/Saved Searches/
• yep; smart folders are in there
• move the "Office 2011 Identities" dir/folder somewhere for safe-keeping
• fire up outlook again, enter your account info & let it start downloading stuff
• it may help to quit here; the rebuild below may take less time
• it may help to run "Microsoft Database Utility" & let it kill the daemon (then cancel the rebuild)
• copy the "Saved Searches" dir from your saved copy, over the fresh copy
• run "Microsoft Database Utility", do a rebuild, and let it complete (this appears required)

after i did this, the next time i opened outlook, my smart folders were there; hope this works for you

(now i just have to wait for spotlight to finish indexing the rebuild :/ to confirm that they actually work - though at least the definitions are visible now)

notes:

• geez; a whole lot of mail showed up in different places; lots of cleanup needed :/
• i copied my own smart folders; might also work for copying to other identities
• i'm on outlook 2011, on os x 10.10 (yosemite); may or may not apply to others
• i've got the common config of a single "identity"; this procedure resets _all_ idenities