I'm complicated.

Call me boring, but I am uneasy when things are out of my comfort zone.  So when my office laptop was reformatted last Saturday, I spent the first hour at work this morning trying to customize some programs, especially my email settings.  It took me 10 minutes to figure out why I can't send an email without Microsoft Outlook requiring me to save the email address in my contacts list.  Thing is, I do not want to save all email addresses I send mails to.  Does this mean I can't email without saving the email address first in my contacts?!  So I checked all tabs - options, customize, tools - trying to resolve the problem.

But, I couldn't.  So I called an officemate, who's laptop was reformatted a few weeks ago, for assistance.  She can't solve my problem either.  Frustrated, I asked our IT Specialist for help.  I told him, we tried everything already.


Then he said, "Ma'am the email address has 2 @ signs." 


I read the prompt closely.  I says "Microsoft Outlook does not recognize "name@number@gmail.com". 

Oh okay.  So it wasn't requiring me to save the address.  Its simply trying to tell me that the email address is wrong.


Moral of the story?  Read prompts carefully, do not assume.  Sometimes,
problems have simple solutions.  I just complicate things.  10 minutes
of panic for nothing.