Outlook Express Help | outlook express problems

Before I go into how to install Outlook Express I must first explain one thing. Microsoft supplies two systems “Microsoft Outlook” and “Outlook Express” “Microsoft Outlook” is part of the Microsoft Management Suite of which Outlook Express is embedded. “Outlook Express” itself is an e-mail “client” that is provided with the windows operating system.“Outlook” connects to your ISP clients POP3 server to extract your e-mails that are being held by it.

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

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I hope from my explanation of IMAP in a previous post that you have an understanding of why you want to configure outlook express with the IMAP Mailbox protocol. These instructions will be geared towards those who have teir own web hosting but most of the instructions will also be applicable to those who have an ISP mail account whose ISP allows the IMAP protocol to be configured. There are some ISP’s that will allow IMAP and will provide extra storage for a modest charge.

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.

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In my previous post I have shown you how to configure your pop3 mailbox (or several) and also IMAP mailboxes. You may also remember that IMAP mailboxes are the safest as all the mail remains on the mail server. Now I am going to show you how to go about saving outlook express mailboxes.
If your hard disk fails and you lose all your data then with IMAP all you mail is safe. Allm you have to do is recreate your mailbox and then all your mail is available from the mail server. But what about if you have a “POP3” mailbox which I suspect most of you have.

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.

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Huh! what’s that Doc, what’s the difference between pop3 or imap?

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.

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