You will end up with a lot of rubbish in your deleted folder and in your sent folder after you have used outlook express for a while. You will also end up with a lot of your e-mails still on your ISP’s server that eventually will fill up your quota. This will then cause e-mails to start being rejected and lost. This article will cover all the essential outlook express customization necessary to manage your e-mails. Follow the instructions below to implement each area I think is most essential for the smooth operation of Outlook Express.

• Set Outlook express to go automatically to your inbox when started.

1. Start Outlook Express.
2. With your mouse left click on “Tools” then “Options”
3. In the windows shown below in the general tab click tick the “When starting, go directly to my ‘Inbox’ folder”.

4. Click OK.

• Remove e-mails from your ISP server after a set time.

1. With your mouse left click on “Tools” then “Accounts”
2. Select the “Mail” tab and then on e-mail account.
3. On the right click on “Properties”
4. Select the “Advanced” tab
5. In the window as shown below tick all the boxes under the “Delivery” heading and select a period you want the messages to remain on the server. Click “apply” then “OK”

The period you want to leave the messages on your ISP server is up to you but you should allow enough time for you to retrieve an e-mail via “webmail” if you accidentally delete it.

• Remove e-mails from the deleted folder.

1. Select “Tools” then “Options”
2. Select the “Maintenance” tab.
3. Under “Cleaning Up Messages” tick the box marked “Empty Messages frome ‘Deleted Items’ folder on exit.
4. Click “apply” then “OK”

You may not want to set this to delete automatically. If you don’t then you have to delete the messages manually by selecting the “Delete Items” folder then selecting the m4essages and pressing the “delete” key on your keyboard. It is important to keep this folder relatively free as the number of messages can mount up using a lot of disk space but more so slowing down Outlook Express.

• Remove e-mails from the “sent” folder

Saving a copy of the e-mails you send are save by default. If you do not want to save a copy you can prevent this by following the procedure below. I do not recommend this because if you send a e-mail and the recipient does not get it you can always send it again from the sent folder. You should periodically clear out the sent folder for the same reason as for the deleted folder.

To turn off saving sent messages.

1. Click on “Tools” then “options”.
2. Select the “Send” tab and delete the “tick” from the item marked “Save copy of of sent messages in the ‘Sent Items’ folder”.
3. Click “apply” then “OK”

Do you know if you have messages showing in the preview pane, this can trigger off a virus. To stop them from appearing in the preview pane this is what you need to do. First start Outlook Express. Click on Tools, then on Options, and then select the Read tab. Turn off the option to automatically download a message when viewing in Preview Pane. If you want to turn the preview pane off entirely just click on “view” then “layout”, Once there in the “Preview Pane” disable “Show Preview Pane”.

For maximum safety, all messages should be viewed in Plain Text mode. This setting is also controlled via the option in the Read tab.

Spammers use HTML and pictures to work out whether an e-mail address is ‘live’, and if their message has been opened. Users of Windows-XP SP2 can stop such snooping by the spammers. Click on Tools, then on Options, and then select the Security tab. Turn on the option to Block images and other external content in HTML e-mail.

One thing you should never do is open attachments in e-mail where you do not know where they came from.

The salient things you should follow are:

Set Outlook Express to view all messages as plain text (as per above).

Make sure Outlook Express is set to use Restricted Zone (as per above).

Don’t open spam. Delete it without opening.

Do not click on links in spam - EVER.

Do not try to unsubscribe from spam.

Beware of phishing.

Above all watch yourself and make sure you have virus software that checks e-mail as it arrives. You can get one here that I use and it’s free.

You may have already configured your “Outlook Express” for you first account I will now in this, my Outlook Express Help blog help you to configure outlook express so that all your family can get their mail down to your PC. Just simply follow these instructions.

1. Start outlook express

2. Left click on “File” move pointer down to “Identities” and then left click on “add new Identity”

3. In the “new Identity Box” type the name you want for this identity. Click “OK” This can be anything you want it does not have to be your name.

4. A box will come up saying, “Do you want to switch to xxxx now”? Click on “Yes”. A box labelled “Internet Connection Wizard” will appear. Type in the actual name you would like to appear in your outgoing mail message.

5. Type in your e-mail address for this identity. Left click on “next”

6. Type in your incoming and outgoing e-mail server names. This will be in the format mail.yourispdomain. e.g. mail.microsoft.com. Click “next”.

7. Type in your mail logon information. Ensure “remember password is set. Click “Next”.

8. On the next window just click “Finish” You should now be in your new e-mail identity in Outlook express.

9. Left click on “Tools” and select “Accounts”. A box called “Internet accounts” should be showing. Select the “Mail” Tab.

10. Click on the “properties” button on the right side of the box.

11. Select the “Servers” tab and tick the box labelled “My server requires authentication” Then click OK and then “Close”

12. Click on the “Send/Recv” icon at the top. You should then receive any e-mail that may be on your ISP’s server.

13. If there isn’t any mail for you click on “Create mail” and send a message to yourself. This will check that e-mail sending and receiving is working OK.

14. If it is OK then your mail will get sent. Click on the “Send/Recv” icon at again the top. You should then receive back the e-mail you have just sent.

Repeat to above for every new account you want. Technically there is no limit in Outlook on how many you can have.

It should be noted that you can only view one account at a time. In order to view another account you will need to “switch to that account. Just perform the following to view each account.

At the top left of the Outlook Express window click on “File” then click on “Switch Identities”. A box will open listing all your e-mail accounts or identities as they call them. Just double click on the one you wish to switch to

I hope you have found this Outlook Express help blog article useful.

Author:

Wilf Gerrard-Staton

When you first sign up with an ISP (Internet Service Provider) you are usually provided with an e-mail account and are given an e-mail address. This is in the for of “xxxx@yourdomain.yyy. an example would be joeblogs@microsoft.com. The “joeblogs” part is what you usually provide the ISP when you sign up.

You give this to your friends and acquaintances and they start sending you mail. This mail sits on your ISP’s server. How do you get at it?

Well one way is by logging onto your ISP’s webmail which most supply. Wouldn’t it be better if you can have it delivered to your PC? Yes of course you would, this is where Outlook Express comes in.

Your ISP should provide you with all the all the information that is required to configure outlook express. This should be your email address, the pop3 server addresses and maybe some port numbers. All this will become clearer as we go through the configuration process.

If you follow these instructions you can configure your “Outlook Express”. To do just that:

1. Left click on the “Start” button at the bottom left of your screen. (or maybe top left if for some reason you have managed to get your bar at the top of the screen) Left click on programs and find “Outlook Express” (Make sure it is “Outlook Express not “Microsoft Outlook”. Click on it.

2. Because Outlook has not been configured before it will automatically start a wizard. The first thing that comes up is box asking you what name you want to give this account. It can be anything, your name or something else. Click on next.

3. A box labeled “Internet Connection Wizard” will appear. Type in the actual name you would like to appear in your outgoing mail message. This is usually your actual name.

4. Type in your e-mail address for this identity. Left click on “next” (you should have this from your ISP)

5. Type in your incoming and outgoing e-mail server names. This will be in the format mail.yourispdomain. e.g. mail.microsoft.com. (These should have been provided by your ISP) Click next.

6. Type in your mail login information. (Again this should have been provided by your ISP) Ensure “remember password” is set. Click “Next”.

7. On the next window just click “Finish” You should end up in your new e-mail account in Outlook express.

8. Left click on “Tools” at the top of the Outlook Express window and select “Accounts”.

9. A box called “Internet accounts” should come up.

10. Select the “Mail” Tab and click on the “properties” button on the right side of the box.

11. Select the “Servers” tab and tick the box labeled “My server requires authentication” Then click OK and then “Close”

12. Click on the “Send/Recv” icon at the top. You should then receive any e-mail that may be on your ISP’s server.

13. If there isn’t any mail for you click on “Create mail” and send a message to yourself. This will check that e-mail sending and receiving is working OK.

14. If it is OK then your mail will get sent. Click on the “Send/Recv” icon at again the top. You should then receive back the e-mail you have just sent.

And that’s it. You can now get all your e-mail sent down to your PC and held on it forever. Later on I will be discussing how to configure the options of Outlook express in order to make it easier to manage your mail. I hope you found this Outlook Express Help article useful.

About the Author:

Wilf Gerrard-Staton is an old timer in the computer business going back before PC’s were even thought of. As well as this Outlook Express Help blog he has a Windows XP Slow Startup blog where he gives advice on fixing this problem. you can also find additional Outlook Express reading here

If you haven’t already got a e-mail address you should log onto your web hosts cpanel click on the “mail” icon and add a e-mail account. Zero out the storage quota box. This will allow unlimited storage. Take note of the e-mail address. For those using an ISP you should already have an e-mail address given to you.

If you follow these instructions you can configure your “Outlook Express” using the IMAP protocol:

1. If You do not have an outlook express icon on your desktop left click on the “Start” button at the bottom left of your screen. (or maybe top left if for some reason you have managed to get your bar at the top of the screen) Left click on programs and find “Outlook Express” (Make sure it is “Outlook Express not “Microsoft Outlook”. Click on it.

2. It is assumed that you already have one POP3 account configured so outlook express will open in your main account (identity)

3. Left click on the “tools” menu then “accounts” then “add” then “mail. A box will appear where you can enter a name you would like for this new account. Click “next”

4. In the next box type in the e-mail address for this identity. (The one you created in “cpanel” Left click on “next”wilf

5. Type in your incoming and outgoing e-mail server names. This will be in the format mail.yourwebhostdomain. (e.g. mail.microsoft.com.)

6. Click on the dropdown box marked “My incoming mail serve is a” and select “IMAP” . Click “next”.

7. Type in your mail login information. This should be your e-mail address and the password you gave it when you created it in “cpanel” Ensure “remember password” is set. Click “Next” .

8. On the next window just click “Finish” You should end up in your new e-mail account in Outlook express But we are not quite finished yet.

9. In the box that you end up with select the e-mail account just created then “properties”

10. Select the “General” tab and enter a name under “mail Account” overwriting what is there. I suggest you put the same as in the “name” field.

11. Select the “Servers” tab and tick the box labelled “My server requires authentication”

12. Select the “Advanced” tab. In the box marked “Outgoing Mail (SMTP”) there should be the number 25 which is the default port for sending e-mail. In some cases the ISP or web host provider uses 26. I suggest you try 25 first. If this does not work you can come back to the “Advanced” tab and change it to 26. If that does not work you will have to obtain the correct port number from your ISP.nfiguring-a-imap-mailboxnfiguring-a-imap-mailbox

13. Select the “IMAP” tab. In the box marked “root folder tab” you may have to enter “Inbox.” This should have upper case i and a period at the end (dot). If you get errors later on you may have to take this out. This depends how up to date the web host provider has kept his system.
Click on “OK”

14. When the next window appears just click “close”

15. You will then get a box saying “would you like to download folders? Click “yes”

16. All your folders should then be created. You should end up with an “inbox, a “sent items folder” and a “drafts folder”

17. Click on the “Send/Recv” icon at the top. You should then receive any e-mail that may be on your ISP’s server.

18. If there isn’t any mail for you, click on “Create mail” and send a message to yourself. This will check that e-mail sending is working OK.

19. If it is OK then your mail will get sent. If not check the port number per instruction 12. Click on the “Send/Recv” icon at the top. You should then receive back the e-mail you have just sent.

You have now set up your first IMAP mailbox. To add another IMAP mailbox make sure you are switched to the first one you created then repeat this procedure.

Well never fear there is a way of “backing” up your outlook express mailbox(s).

But did you know you can do this in such a way as to make it is easy to save all your pop3 mailboxes and of course your address books as well.

This little trick can be used to save all your critical files that you may need to recover if you have a hard disk failure.

Before I show you how to save your mailboxes I suggest using file manager you create the following folders.

C:\critical saves\outlook express\mailbox name1
———————————\mailbox name2 etc

Now I am going to show you how to save all your mailboxes automatically into these folders.

Follow these instructions.

1. Open up outlook express.

2. Click on “tools” then “options” The following window will appear.

3. Select the “maintenance” tab

4. The maintenance window will appear as shown below.

5. Click on the “Store Folder” button.6. The following window will show the current location of your mailbox. This is normally situated under your account folder which in turn is situated under the “Documents and Settings” folder.

7. Click on the “Change” button

8. You will get a folder window similar to that below. Drill down to the “Critical Saves” folder down to the mailbox folder you created at the beginning of this post. You will see that I have actually got four folders one for each of my pop3 mailboxes. Select your mailbox folder and click OK.

9. You will then go back to the previous window which will show the directory/folder string that you selected. Click on “OK”

10. A message will appear telling you that the changes will not be affected until you restart Outlook Express. What are you waiting for restart outlook express.

11. When you start up outlook express you may see a window briefly appear as it copies all the folders form you mailbox to their new location.

12. Reapt the above procedure for each of your POP3 mailboxes if you have more than one. Remember to switch to the mailbox before you start.

So what happens now.

From now on all your mail will be saved in this new location. All you have to do is copy all the mailbox s to an external device (I suggest a memory stick. They are quite cheap these days)

The “critical saves” folder can be used to save any other (e.g. browser “favourites” ) Then all you have to remember is to save this one folder, (I suggest weekly).

Restoring your mailboxes is a simple matter of copying back the “critical saves” folder onto your new hard disk. Recreating your outlook express mailboxes and then in the maintenance tab point the newly created mailboxes back o the “critical saves “ folder.

Hope this has helped you to understand saving outlook express mailboxes.

Wilf Gerrard-Staton.

Well one of my previous posts (Configuring outlook express) gave you the instructions to configure your mail connection using outlook express. In case I didn’t tell you, the configuration was set up using POP3 and just to make you a bit cleverer with words this stands for “Post Office Protocol 3”

There is another e-mail protocol that you can also use called IMAP. Making you even more clever this stands for “Internet Message Access Protocol” You really didn’t want to know this so lets just stick with POP3 and IMAP.

What is the difference between these two, I bet you would love to know. Well I am not going to get too technical here, I may even confuse myself. All I know is that ISP’s (Internet Service Provider) love POP3 and hate IMAP. So here goes.

Lets first talk about servers and clients, there are lots of different ones out there but we will just talk about “mail servers” and “mail clients” In the normal case the ISP runs the mail server and your PC runs the mail client. There are lots of different mail clients, guess what yours is called, I bet you guess right “outlook express”. We will just call the ISP’s mail server, mail server because we don’t really care what they call it. Now that is out the way and you have got a bit more useless information lets get down to talking about POP3 and IMAP.

POP3.

POP3 is the protocol that allows outlook express to access your ISP’s Mail Server and download any mail to your hard disk that is not currently on the hard disk on your PC. That’s it. Wow that wasn’t hard was it? But it doesn’t stop there. Depending how outlook express is configured the email on the mail server may get deleted once it is downloaded. Most times you can configure your outlook express to tell the mail server not to delete any mail for so many days or delete it immediately or if delete it in outlook express. Some ISP’s do not give you much choice they will delete it after a certain period anyway after they know you have downloaded your mail

Why do they do this? Well they do not want all this mail clogging up their hard disks, besides that, they usually limit the amount of space you are allowed to use on their hard disks. Some of them are not very nice about it either. If you fill up your quota on their disk they stop receiving e-mail for you. Not very nice. Some are a bit nicer and start deleting the oldest messages to make room for new ones.

That’s life folks. Lets talk about IMAP.

IMAP.

IMAP is almost the reverse of POP3. All your mail is kept on the Mail Server and any new mail is download to your PC as well. Can you see now why ISP’s don’t like IMAP. Your right, they have to maintain enough disk space to keep all your mail. So much so that most of them do not allow IMAP.

So what are the benefits of IMAP over POP3.

Answer these two questions.

1. 1. If you are using POP3 and you lose all your mail on your PC for whatever reason, how do you recover your mail?
2. If you are using IMAP and you lose all your mail on your PC for whatever reason, how do you recover your mail.

Well for number one you don’t, unless you have saved your mailboxes periodically and most people don’t.

For number two all you have to do is reconfigure outlook express again and hey presto all your mail is back again. I assume that this is obvious to you why.

It is unfortunate that ISP’s limit the use of IMAP as other advantages are.

•  You can have multiple PC’s configured and receive exactly the same mail on each. This is useful if you have a desktop and a laptop you can get the same e-mail on each. Also useful for businesses who need several people to access the same mailbox.

•  You can have several IMAP e-mail accounts and access all of them in the same window. With POP3 you have to switch between each Identity.

So there you are. You now know heaps more than you did at the beginning of this post.

If you have your own webhost you do not have the limitations as with an ISP, configure as many e-mail accounts as you need with as much space as you need. My next post will explain how to configure an IMAP account on outlook express.